conventions

Conventions always contain a mix of emotions for me. Each one contains highs and lows. The fact that GenCon is by far the most expensive event of the year only amplifies some of those emotions. Some years the financial expense is offset by a large financial inflow, this year not so much. The combination of booth placement and the fact that we didn’t have very much new product meant that it wasn’t a particularly profitable year when viewed from a strict financial standpoint. We knew that going in. We’ve schooled our thoughts to think of this as a placeholder year financially. Next year we’ll have a game, the 70 maxims book, a new Schlock book, and we’ll put a lot of preparatory effort into ancillary merchandise. Next year should be really good. Yet I still had moments when I mentally ran through the math on this show and felt deeply discouraged.

The show has many important high lights. One of my favorite events every year is the crew dinner. We have a little GenCon family around our booth. It is always lovely to sit down for dinner with them and recognize how very different all our jobs are at the booth. Yet all the jobs are essential and we all are co-conspirators in making this thing possible. My attendance at the event both last year and this year have allowed me to build connections with the crew that I simply didn’t have when I was managing things at a distance.

I got to give two presentations this year, which triggered a series of emotions. Gratitude that the programming chair would trust me to deliver solid materials for two hours of his limited programming space. Then worry that what I have to offer isn’t what the writing symposium attendees would be interested in. That fear is naturally combined with anxiety that they will be interested in the topics, but disappointed with my delivery or expertise on the subjects. I’ve given enough presentations to know that once the event begins, I will fall into a flow of talking and it will all be fine.

There is a magic in giving a presentation to a receptive audience. It is far more interactive than the audience may be aware that it is. I look around the room. I see where they nod or write a note. That information feeds back into my subconscious and leads me to expand or elaborate on one point while letting go of another. My favorite moments are the ones where I say something and I see the face of an audience member change. There is electricity in that moment because I know that something I said connected with something in their mind. It happens more often in the Q&A section because people are bringing up concerns that are directly related to them. I love the part where audience asks questions. I have learned so much about my own thoughts by trying to give good answers. Sometimes a question causes a change in my head and opens up a new set of thoughts and connections. Then I get to say those new connections. This sometimes makes me look like a fount of knowledge, but really I’m just making connections between the current conversation and things that I’ve read, thought, or had conversations about before.

There were some really good thoughts that surfaced during these presentations. Those thoughts will be folded into my ongoing thinking and will inform presentations that I do in the future. The same is true of conversations which continued after we walked out of the classroom. I know that technically I’m the teacher in the situation, but I learn so much from these experiences. I learn from just sitting around and talking with other writers. I learn from not talking and listening while others talk. These interpersonal connections are a huge part of why coming to an event like this is worthwhile.

The connections with other people also feed into some of the hard emotions of the show. For every conversation where I feel connected and valued to the people in the conversational circle, there is a matching conversation where I wonder if I belong or if I’m interloping. My self doubts can eat at me during these events. I know how to short circuit those thoughts. I know how to stare at them, see them, and not let them stop me from joining in conversations. I also know that it is exceedingly unlikely that everyone is just putting up with me rather than actually wanting to be around me. Yet the more tired I become, the more plausible all of these self doubts begin to sound.

There were moments during this show when I just wanted to lay down and cry. Some of it is the self doubt. Some the mental math on finances. Some is overstimulation from being around thousands of people all the time and from my brain having to process all sorts of new input. Some is physical exhaustion caused by more walking than I’m used to, hauling heavy things, and sleeping less than is optimal. The down moments can loom large in my memory. I think this is one of the reasons that people post and tweet pictures of the shiny moments from conventions. There is a need to cement and document those good spots in memory because otherwise the good things get lost in the bleaker moments. Yet neither is a true representation of the entire experience.

High lights and happy moments are easy to gush about publicly. The lows mostly get acknowledged after they’re over. I was pondering on why I do my best to not let the low moments show on my face or in my actions. Some of it is because people are kind and they will want to fix it. They will want to do or say a thing to make it better. This is particularly true for people close to me because they’ll have an added twinge of guilt that they should have prevented the low. The thing is that the lows have far more to do with brain chemistry than with anything external. The real fix is a break to rest and reset.

One of the things I love about our booth team is that we all get this. We’re able to see the lows and call them out for each other. We send each other for breaks. And we speak reassuring words, not to try to bring someone out of a low, but just to counteract the negative thoughts that we know accompany a natural ebb in energy.

GenCon was amazing, hard, exhausting, surprising, fun, exciting, heart warming, lovely, brilliant, discouraging, important, enjoyable, and a dozen other things that slip out of my thoughts because my brain is very tired right now. Over the next week people will ask me “How was your trip?” and all of it will swirl in my brain. I have a hundred small stories about things that happened while I was gone. All of that will get summarized into a polite and brief answer of “good. I had a good trip.” Because to really dig in to how it was would take hours of sorting by talking.

For now I need to rest, and then I need to pick up the threads of life here at home. I was in the middle of many things and I must remember what they are. I’ll leave you a few pictures of the event.

The Bright Moments:

Getting to visit with our friends Jim Zub and Stacy King, whom we don’t see nearly often enough. Our table was right next to theirs, which gave us lots of hours to talk and laugh.

The ten year old girl who came to our table and looked through Howard’s sketch book. I was able to talk to her about drawing every day and about the scribbled page where Howard was just experimenting with new pens. It was such a brief interaction, but I could tell that this young artist was absorbing information to take home and use.

Another little girl about the same age who listened to Howard talk about art. Her eyes alight with possibility and dreams. Her dad was taking her from table to table to talk to all the artists.

Reconnecting with friends who come find our table and take time to visit with us.

The moments when fans seek us out to tells us that they love Schlock. Whether or not they buy things at the booth, they give us energy and remind us of why we do the things that we do. Those moments are treasures.

Getting to sit on a panel with six other creative people and talk about how to make space in our lives for creativity. It is always amazing to hear the different approaches that people take and the ways in which creative processes are similar. Then after the panel, having an audience member come up and thank us. I could see in her eyes that something said in the panel had given her hope and a new drive to create.

Talking with the convention center sound guy in one of the panel rooms. He’s spent fifteen years working at the Salt Palace convention center. He’s seen all sorts of shows. He told me that the comic cons are in his top three favorite shows because of the positive energy that the crowds bring. He loves seeing the creative energy and the inclusiveness. He loves seeing people realize that they are not alone. Listening to him talk reminded me that these shows are amazing and joyous gifts for many people. It was a reminder that I very much needed on a morning when I was feeling convention burned out.

Seeing creative energy and passion on display in all the costumes that walk past. It is always fascinating to watch costuming trends. Two years ago Loki was everywhere. This year he’s not. This year I can’t turn around without seeing Rey or Kylo Ren. Star Wars in general is much more popular. You can pretty much predict what costumes you’ll see based on which movies have been popular in the past year. But then there are some costumes that are evergreen. I always see Dorothy with Toto. There are always Tardis dresses. Browncoats are out in force. I saw a Merida that looked like she had just stepped out of the movie Brave, and it was the girl’s real hair. In front of my booth I watch people thrilled to see each other’s costumes and pause to take pictures.

The things that require decisions:

In between these bright moments are long hours of sitting at the table while people walk by, barely glancing at our books. It gives me lots of time to think about how each convention has it’s own created culture and feel. At GenCon people come for the games. They play games, they buy games, they talk games. At LTUE people are there to learn. They learn writing, art, and other creativity. This show, Salt Lake Comic Con, people come for the spectacle. They want to see the costumes, see the stars, get pictures, get autographs. This means that in the vendor hall, people are looking, not buying.

There is nothing wrong with any of these show focuses, but we have to guard our time and energy. This means we should attend the shows that feed our creativity and avoid the ones that drain us. It wears me out to sit at a vendor table for long hours during a show where most people are looking, but not buying. And most of the people are looking for something that is not us, so they walk by our table as if we’re invisible. Being stuck at the table means I can’t wander and go see things myself. I can’t sit in the green room to visit with other panelists and creators. I can’t hide and re-charge.

We’ve given it several years and experimented with several formats for our table, but this year I’ve come to the conclusion that the emotional costs of running a table outweigh the benefits. If we do Salt Lake Comic Con again, we’ll just do panels.

This is an important key to being a successful creative professional: recognize what marketing strategies work for you and which ones don’t. I have friends who avoid conventions altogether. I know people who shine at school visits or book signings. I have friends who swear by blog tours and others who say they’re useless. There are people who are running booths at this show and selling piles of things. There are people who love standing at a table and talking up their wares. There are people who love vending at this show. I’m not one of them, and that is fine.

*Note: This entire blog post was written while sitting at my booth with people walking past. This is a measure of how slow things are for us at this show. I’m very grateful that our costs are so low that I don’t have any financial regrets about this experience.

*Addendum note, added 3/30/16: I did the math. We earned $6 per hour for our time running the booth. That is not nearly enough money to pay for the inevitable energy drain where I have to fight off the fear that the disinterest of the comic con crowd is a harbinger that everyone everywhere has begun to loose interest, thus we are doomed.

This is the second day of me sitting inside a giant concrete box running a little store while hundreds of costumed people walk by. It is an experience that is both fun and exhausting. Every time we attend we’re performing an experiment on how to swing the balance more toward the fun side of the equation. This time we’ve gone smaller than in prior years. We only have one table and we’re placed in Artist’s Alley next to other creators who will help cross promote and who help us keep our energy from flagging. So far we are greatly enjoying the reduced pressure.

Last night we went out to dinner with several writers who have worked for DC, Marvel, My Little Pony, and other well-known comic properties. It was fascinating to hear behind the scenes stories and learn about how things work with licensed properties. But one of the most interesting things was that as we walked back to the hotel, at 9pm, all of them were listing off the work they still had to do before bed. Like us they’ll spend ten hours today standing behind tables, selling things, and talking to people. Howard will be working at the booth when he’s not talking. This is the part that is not always obvious to young people who long to work in comics. All of these creative folks work hard, without stopping or resting very much.

I am among those who are not resting this weekend. In addition to the show hours, I’ve also been commuting home to provide at least a little bit of structure to my kids. They’re teenagers and mostly can manage themselves without intervention, but the will forget to go to bed unless I remind them. And they’re not particularly good about getting themselves up for school in the morning. So I went home to make sure those two things happened. Also to re-stock some grocery items. And to pick up additional books that we hope to sell at the table today. Fortunately Howard has a hotel room, so only one of us had to commute. I didn’t have to worry about Howard being anxious over commute traffic and parking.

This show has already given me some gifts that I could not have had otherwise. I was able to re-connect with a dear friend whom I haven’t seen in years. I’ve also had my annual catch-up conversation with several friends I only see at SLCC events. Thursday was pretty quiet. Today the hall will fill up more. Saturday the true crowds will descend. Time to get to work.

LTUE Symposium begins tomorrow in Provo, UT. If you haven’t heard of this event, I highly recommend it. They have student pricing as well as general admission. You can find out details here

If you’re at LTUE and would like to find me to say hello, you can check the handy list below for my scheduled panels. In between panels I’m likely to be found in the dealer’s room at the table with Schlock Mercenary stuff all over it.

Thursday
10am Managing a Giant Project
1pm Marketing on a Budget
3pm Tragedy in Children’s Literature
4pm Crowdfunding

Friday
2pm Distributing Your Novel

Saturday
10am Picture Books
3pm Putting Emotional Depth into Your Children’s Fiction