The Valuation of GenCon

By / August 6, 2018

The value of GenCon is hard to measure, because so much of both the benefits and costs are made up of intangibles. The costs are measured in time, stress, and money. That last one makes it tempting to let money be the deciding factor, because it is easy to quantify while the other things are not. But a profit and loss sheet does not accurately represent the value of GenCon. We’ve never yet had a financial loss, but many years we don’t hit a hoped for dollar mark. That can be hard mid-show when we can see that we’ll miss. At that moment anxiety gets loud, fed by fatigue. It wants to spin tales of doom. When that happens we have to stop and recalibrate. We have to pull our heads out of the spreadsheets and focus on the intangible benefits.

What are the intangibles? Here is a list from this year:
Connecting with friends, catching up, hugging them, hearing about their lives.
Meeting new people who may become part of our expanding network of friends and business contacts.
Getting a line on a potential new printing partner.
Two contacts that might help me get Planet Mercenary distributed into game stores.
Seeing amazing cosplay, all the creativity and cleverness that is on display. All the mashups that delight.
Getting to play games for charity.
Reconnecting with a friend who has changed jobs and now works in a field where he may be able to greatly assist with a behind-the-scenes admin burden for the Writing Excuses cruise in 2019.
Figured out how to reconfigure our booth and business model to optimize next year.
Had ideas for at least three new creative projects.
Got information about applying for creative writing grants.
Got to teach and pay it forward.
Got to talk to people for whom our creative work made their lives better in some way.
Got to witness the ambient joy that is 80,0000 adults who understand that play should not end with childhood.
Got to see how the administrative work I do is critical to make this event happen for my team.
Got to have conversations with people who understand our business model and could sympathize with all the joys and frustrations.
Got to compare notes with others who ship products to customers and point each other at resources to make that job easier.
Participating in conversations where I learned interesting trivia that may someday inform a story or conversation.
Receiving creative respect from people who are supremely professional in their fields. That respect helps me recognize that I have become good at the jobs that I do even though I don’t have formal training for many of them.
Being told by my booth crew that we are worth investing in. That they willingly and enthusiastically build, haul, and sweat because we matter and what we create matters. This is from people I know are highly intelligent and who I know do not suffer fools lightly.
Listening to a comparison of how the RPG/game industry functions in ways that are fundamentally different from the literary publishing industry.
Got to be amused at Science Fiction and Fantasy publishing being called “literary publishing” but that is how it looks from the outside, all novels and stories are literary. Whereas from the inside “literary” is a specific sub genre of fiction writing.
Going out to dinner with groups of writers where we talk plot, travel, food, life, and then laugh uproarously at each others jokes.

I’m certain there are things which should be on that list, but which have slipped out of my brain.

Howard and I have this concept of the ten thousand dollar conversation. It is a conversation that opens a new possibility or improves a creative concept so that business revenue is improved by ten thousand dollars or more. We can never schedule these conversations. They always arise unexpectedly from the pool of intangibles. We figure out which things were critical only in retrospect. But I’ve gotten better at spotting which ones might be the ten thousand dollar conversations. This year at GenCon, I had at least three. They may not pan out, but the potential is there if I do the post-convention work that is necessary to make them happen.

I have six pages of closely written notes on the post-convention work I need to do in the next months. I said in a prior entry that GenCon prep begins in February. I’ve realized that is inaccurate. I’ve already completed the first preparatory task for GenCon 2019, I reserved our booth space. In the coming weeks I’ll have series of follow up tasks. Then there will be a lull. This coming year the lull will still have tasks in it. I’ll know more once I’ve had time to decipher my notes and assign deadlines for the associated tasks.

For today, I traveled home. I’m now trying to remember what my home tasks are. I’ve created a small to do list for tomorrow and a slightly larger one for Wednesday. These are only things that must be done, nothing that can be pushed off until I’ve recovered from the convention. By Thursday I hope to be back up to speed. I have shirts to ship, kids to launch into their school year, and notes to turn into tasks.

Onward I go, continuing this creative career that feels exhausting and frightening as often as it does exhilarating.

GenCon The Day Before the Show Begins

By / August 1, 2018

It is only when I arrive at GenCon that I remember why the stress is worth it. I arrive and my people are here. First and foremost my booth crew, who have done nearly as much preparation and advance work as I have. This year they had the booth completely set up before I even arrived.

This year our hotel is farther away than we prefer. This is a direct result of a brief mistake on my part on the day hotel booking opened. Thanks to the kind folks at the GenCon housing company, I was able to correct most of that error, but we’re further away. Because my crew did most of their work yesterday, Howard and I had time to teach me the route from the hotel to the convention center. The learning is necessary because something about downtown Indianapolis messes with my internal compass/map. I have to carefully learn my routes rather than trusting my instincts. One advantage of our hotel is that it is located on “The Circle” which is a beautiful historical section of downtown Indy. My learned path takes me past dozens of restaurants and interesting shops. Despite being further away, I’m glad I get to stay here at least once.

Another thing I did with my mostly free day was get extra sleep. I needed it after our 2am arrival at the hotel. Our plane got delayed four different times. The afternoon was spent on administrivia. I had to assemble and deliver the materials for our Game Chiefs who run the Planet Mercenary games during the show. I also had to double check the stock at the booth against my cash register to make sure everything matches up. There are always updates to make and things to do in order to optimize for each particular show. Then I had an hour or two to go over my presentation materials for the presentations I have ahead of me on Friday and Saturday.

Each thing completed is the culmination of tasks that have been hovering in my attention for months. I’ve fulfilled my obligation to my game chiefs and to the players who purchased tickets to our games. I’ve succeeded at providing housing for my crew, and merchandise for the booth. In the morning when we begin making sales I’ll have succeeded in preparing for the booth. Each thing done is a stress lifted. By Sunday evening I will feel lightweight. By then I will have traded those stresses for fascinating conversations, friends greeted, new people met, things learned, sights seen, and moments of joy. The net balance will be distinctly in the positive. It is every year. Sometimes when I’m paying out the stresses in advance I lose track of that.

The doors open tomorrow.

My GenCon Indianapolis Schedule

By / July 31, 2018

I will be spending the next week in Indianapolis to attend GenCon. If you’re also at GenCon or at the GenCon Writer’s Symposium, I hope you’ll make time to find me and say hello.

I have a lot of scheduled events, but in between them the best places to look for me are either in the Writer’s Symposium common areas or in the Dealer’s Hall at booth 1649.

Thursday
5pm Freelancing Life
A panel discussion about freelancing that takes place in the Ballroom of the Marriott Downtown.

Friday
9am Breaking Through the Blockages
A solo presentation on overcoming writer’s block. Austin room in Marriott Downtown.

3pm Cover Design Principles
A solo presentation about the basics of cover design intended both for people who want to create their own covers and those who are working with design professionals on covers. Austin room in Marriott Downtown.

4pm Public Face, Private Life
A solo presentation about balancing the need to be public online as a creative professional vs maintaining privacy and emotional balance. Austin room in Marriott Downtown.

6pm Worldbuilder’s Party
Howard and I will be hosting a game of Munchkin Starfinder as part of the Worldbuilder’s party. We hope you’ll stop by and play with us.

Saturday
9am Structuring Life to Support Creativity
A solo presentation about ways to arrange your life to allow time and support for your creative pursuits. Austin Room in Marriott Downtown.

12pm AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Howard Tayler
Howard and I will be sitting in a room ready to answer questions. Hopefully some people will be there to ask questions. Atlanta Room in Marriott Downtown.

3pm Schmoozing 101
A co-presentation with Elizabeth Vaughn. We’ll be talking about social skills, introductions, starting conversations with strangers, tools for keeping conversation going, and how to gracefully exit conversations. Among other things. Austin room in Downtown Marriott.

The State of Things and Cats

By / July 22, 2018

Life is not slow in the weeks before GenCon. It is also not slow when I’m in the middle of Kickstarter fulfillment. Particularly not when the first batch of shirts arrives incorrect and my contact at the manufacturer seems to have a magical ability to answer questions I didn’t ask and not quite answer questions that I did. It is like every communication is a near miss. I’d already decided never to do another t-shirt related kickstarter, I’ve also decided not to work with this particular company again. Which is sad because when we used them a few years ago, they were great. However, as of Saturday I have all of the items I ordered and 5/6th of them are correct. At least I think they are. Monday’s job is to carefully count quantities of colors and sizes.

In between dealing with shirts, I spent most of my week scrambling to put together promotional materials for GenCon. The last several years at the booth we’ve said things like “I wish we had Schlock URL cards” or “It would be really good to have a single sheet about Planet Mercenary that people could look at.” It is a lost opportunity to spend so much time, effort, and money to run a booth and then not have these basic marketing tools. This year we will have them. finally. They’re done and I just have to go get them printed up on Monday.

On the home front, one of my kids has finally decided to take their medicine (literally,) and their world has gotten measurably better. Which is what medicine is supposed to do. I’m still in the emotional place where I’d really like for the solution to be that simple, but I’m not quite believing that it is.

It’s also been about a month since we added a third cat to our household. His name is Milo and he’s a littermate of Callie, who we adopted last February. Last February the people who owned both of them planned to keep Milo as an emotional support animal. But this summer they realized that the ways their lives are changing, Milo would be happier if he could be reunited with his sister. He came to us on July 3rd. We’ve spend the requisite few weeks acclimatizing all the cats to each other. Callie and Milo hissed and growled at first, but now they get along great.

It is interesting to watch how the differing personalities of the cats fit different emotional needs in our household. Milo is the one who is content to be held and snuggled. Callie continues to be charming and a creature of instinct. Kikaa is less grouchy about the intrusion of other cats now that the younger ones pounce on each other instead of attempting to pounce on her.

All is going well, and I have a busy week and a half ahead of me before I depart for GenCon.

Quick Thought About Today and Dreams

By / July 15, 2018

In preparation for my presentations at GenCon, I’ve been reading materials about breaking creative blocks and organizing a creative life. A thought I keep encountering is that my days should match my dreams. Any future with my words published begins with a today where I wrote those words. Any future where I am healthier begins with a today when I took time to tend to my health. I won’t have the life or dreams that I want unless I am willing to sacrifice pieces of today’s time and comfort in service of those dreams. The hard part is that every thing I want to do requires me to give up some other thing that I also want to do. Even worse, many of the things which carry me closer to my dreams require me to give up something that is comfortable/happy in order to do something that is uncomfortable/difficult. However if I just do a few things every day, over time they become easier to do, less uncomfortable, and I begin to see progress.

Switching Gears

By / July 9, 2018

I shipped out the last of the RAM books this morning. That concludes a Kickstarter that began last October. I was also notified that the big shipment of shirts will arrive on Friday. Once that arrives and is shipped out, I will have completed the second Kickstarter. It is possible that by the time I leave for GenCon I will have zero pending Kickstarters. Even if we pull of an amazing scramble to get the next two Schlock books ready, I’m not likely to launch that Kickstarter until I get back from GenCon.

Right now our business plan and personal finances have us going from Kickstarter to Kickstarter. The landscape of ways that audience, internet, and software tools interact means that we have to constantly be evaluating what combinations are best to supply stories to our audience while also being able to pay our bills. One of the next experiments on the list is to try out Print on Demand products like shirts. Because I am never again planning to do a shirt based Kickstarter. The logistics on this one have been convoluted at every step. In theory POD products give customers more choices and me less inventory to manage. It is a worthwhile experiment.

Through all the business experimentation and shifting, both Howard and I are constantly aware that pretty much all of our income is based in Schlock Mercenary. We’d like to have other income sources, other books, other worlds. Unfortunately it is sometimes difficult for me to shake free from all of the administrative work so that I can focus on the creative work necessary to make other income sources happen.

When I was young and trying to picture my adult life, Small Business Owner was nowhere on the list. I did not know that to be an author also requires me to run a small business.

GenCon is looming large in my attention. I only have three weeks until departure. Most of the organizational work is done, but the writer’s symposium schedulers expressed an enormous amount of faith in me. I pitched five presentations expecting them to pick two or maybe three. They put all five on the schedule. I’m excited about this, but I have to make sure that I am up to speed on all of the presentations. I need to do this well, and that means brushing up in advance and making sure I have the latest available information.

But first I need to get past this week, which has a cluster of appointments for family related things.

Thought Experiment

By / June 27, 2018

If I were not worried about money, how would I spend today? It is a thought experiment. It isn’t the question of unlimited money and how that would transform my life, but just one of current needs met. If I could maintain my status quo, bills paid, with no additional effort, what then? The exercise is designed to help me see my priorities. Which work would I step away from because it is motivated by the need for money? Which work would I lean into because it is work I truly want to do? My answers change depending on the day. For today, I would spend the day more like I do when I’m on a writing retreat. I would go for walks in pretty places. I would read. I would think thoughts. And I would write. Other days I discover more of a desire to organize and improve my spaces.

With the thought experiment complete, I now need to figure out how to shoehorn into my day some of the things I would do if my day were unconstrained.

After an Unintended Silence

By / June 25, 2018

The number of blog entries that I partially write and then never finish is significant these days. It is increasingly hard to tease out stories I can tell on the internet from those that are too personal, too religious, too political, or simply not mine to tell. Would-be memoirists are told that they have to be bold and willing to give offense in telling their truths. I can see why when I read a memoir or blog and I am not given a full emotional picture because the writer has chosen to protect something. The words become vague rather than powerful when they are separated from full context. Yet there are relationships and duties that I prize more than I prize being a writer of raw truth. So I myself am intentionally vague at times. That likely limits my audience and reach. It also means that I will begin a post only to discover that the threads of thought are tangled up with something I choose not to share with the internet. So I leave the post fallow, incomplete.

I trust the internet less than I used to. In the past two years the level of anger and vitriol expressed on the internet has increased greatly. The algorithms of social media have had the unintended consequence of turning people I know to be good, into people who generalize and speak dismissively of others. I watch as people I used to enjoy interacting with either become unpleasant to read, or step away, drop out, vanish from the homes they used to inhabit online. I do not wish to vanish, but I have always been a person who falls silent when the conversation gets loud / vigorous / contentious. Yet on the internet to be silent is to vanish.

Every day on social media I see people shouting about causes that are important. Every moment has some emergency where I should signal boost, or send money, or lend my small weight toward swaying the choices of legislators. I could spend every penny and every minute on these causes. But then I would be in need of rescue. In scrambling to answer crises, I would have failed in doing the creative work which has the potential to heal on a larger scale. I am a teller of stories. I always have been. Stories are the most valuable piece of what I have to give to the world. Stories help us decide who we are as individuals. Shared stories are how we decide who to be as communities. So I measure out a portion of my time to crises, and a portion to daily maintenance, and a large share to the people who are mine to teach/serve/love directly, and a portion to the possibility of a brighter future. A brighter future that I help create by taking the time to craft words into stories which then move people, who then move society in better directions.

This is why I will come back to writing, even after a period of unintended silence. It is why, after dozens of abandoned blog posts, I will find the way to finish some.

Fixing Our Spaces

By / June 2, 2023

This past week we’ve had workers in our house doing some construction. I sometimes feel self conscious about the conspicuous consumption involved in home improvement projects. I was raised in the “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” school of thought. However I’ve increasingly become aware that the way we arrange our living spaces directly impacts how we live inside those spaces. If I am constantly surrounded by things that are falling apart, it contributes to me not making effort to take care of my surroundings. On the other hand, if my surroundings are beautiful to my eyes, I feel more at peace in my life. Unfortunately, beautiful is often the more expensive option, so it has been a long time coming. In fact, we’re working to re-make our house a little bit at a time. This week we finally had the funds to fix up the stairs.

Here is what our front entry looked like before any work was done. The big blocky thing you see to the left was a coat closet. You may infer from the hooks with coats on them that this closet was filled with things which we rarely had a need to access. It was shove space. And it was taking up square footage at the entrance to our house.

About eighteen months ago I decided that the closet needed to be removed. So I dismantled it. Unfortunately right after the dismantling we hit a financial tight patch and we ended up living with bare studs for the next year and a half.

This is what the space looks like today.

We have beautiful railing where once there was a big block of shove space. obviously there is still work to do. The wall needs paint, the flooring has to be replaced, and there will be additional fittings to make this front entry way a better place to put coats, backpacks and other items that are taken off when entering the house.

But I’m so glad that visitors to my house are no longer greeted with this view.

Instead they get to see this.

And when I’m sitting in my kitchen I don’t see this anymore.

Instead I have a view of beautiful railing and the front door.

These railings are only the beginning. They define how we want our main floor to one day look. They are a promise to ourselves that bit by bit we will make our primary living area into one that makes us glad to enter instead of one that constantly frustrates us.

Linkfest 2018

By / June 4, 2018

Sometimes I read an online article and I want to keep track of it for some reason. I might want to write a blog post. I might be planning to send the link to someone else, but now isn’t the right moment. It might be any one of a dozen things. What I tend to do in a case like this is paste the link into an email draft then close it. I was doing some digital housecleaning and noticed that my drafts folder had topped 50. Keeping links in email drafts is a sloppy way to store them. So instead I’m going to put all of them into a blog post with an easily searchable title. This is something of an experiment to see if this works as a long term link storage mechanism. So here are things I wanted to keep track of in the past several years, roughly sorted by category.

Business links
An etsy guide on writing a GDPR qualifying privacy policy.
A checklist for making sure your business is GDPR compliant.
A guide to getting started setting up a Shopify Point of Sale.
A list of crowdfunding options that can be linked to a website.
A detailed set of instructions on how to correct identity theft and credit problems. This was very thorough and explained not just what to do, but why doing these things was for your benefit.

Things about Mental health or parenting
An article saying that the increase in teen depression is probably caused by screen use, which I want to site in an eventual blog post talking about how the picture is far more complex both societally and personally than “screens are to blame, take them away.”
A concrete guide for parents who want sensible (not fear-driven) ways to guide their children’s tech use. This is written by a woman who has spent her career studying the interactions between tech and teens. She knows her subject.
An examination of race and emotional labor in the show Mudbound. Gave me some new thoughts to think.
Looking into the future for a child with autism. Key quote: “Your future should look like the best parts of your present.”
A powerful piece of writing on the interior of grief. Quote that particularly struck me, “There are some things in life that can never be fixed. They can only be carried.”
Thoughts from Jay Lake on grief. Key powerful thought: ”
It’s so damned hard, being careful of my own emotions and others. The people around me don’t feel free to express their negative thoughts for fear of upsetting me. I don’t feel free to express my negative thoughts for fear of upsetting my loved ones, family and friends. We all dance this strange dance of toxic consideration like elephants on ice, slipping and occasionally crashing.”

Things with religious content
An article for Mormons talking about how maybe we shouldn’t claim sole ownership of all truth. Which I’ve saved as a potentally useful link for helping some expand how they think about the religion we share.
A blog post about making religion more than a checklist of things to do. We shouldn’t be just aiming for checkpoints without examining why.
An article on making a prayer book. I’ve since discovered that writing prayers is a useful mechanism for me to focus my devotional thoughts.

Writer resources
A twitter thread with links to articles about the weird stuff that birds do. Potentially useful for worldbuilding.
The way that schizophrenics experience the voices in their heads depends on the culture they were raised in.
An article on why idle time is crucial to creativity. Grabbed this one to show to my son who lives most of his life with a screen in his field of vision.

Social or political topics
A woman examines her reactions to MeToo accusations, specifically where her own desire to minimize comes from. This is a fascinating glimpse into psychology and why we sometimes get defensive about things.
A woman examines the idea of redemption in the era of MeToo.
Words from Mike Rowe on following dreams. “Don’t follow your passion, but always bring it with you.” I thought I’d disagree, but discovered that I don’t.
A list of specific things to do to fight hate. This is from the Southern Poverty Law Center and helps deconstruct why some of our first instincts to fight back against hate speech are ineffective at best and harmful at worst. They instead give concrete, useful ways to redirect energy from empty confrontation into useful action.
A woman of color discusses cultural appropriation vs creative synthesis.
A woman who is tracking the abnormal things in the current US administration. This one is from week 10. I’ve been meaning to go check and see if she’s still making lists more than a year later.
An article on the problem of liberal bias in science.
You can’t actually boil a frog by heating it slowly.

The word Howard and I created to describe how fun it is to smoosh words together in the German language. wortrauchenvergnugen, literally Word smushing pleasure.