WisCon Recap: My Panels
Jun. 6th, 2011 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI'm writing this quite a bit more after the fact than I'd expected, so I'm not going to be lingering on specifics very much. All four of the panels I was on ended up blurring together even while they were happening... while in theory they had their own individual focuses (exploiting the long tail, getting paid as an author, self-publishing, and cooperative self-promotion), they all ended up being mostly about self-publishing and the hows and wherefores thereof. Remarkably, this wasn't a result of me deliberately steering the panels towards my own personal hobbyhorse. It was more of a group effort. That's just the way the conversation went.
The one panel I felt most strongly about being on (and that I missed other things I was very interested in seeing to be on), "Shakespeare Got To Get Paid", was my least favorite panel of the four, primarily because one of the other participants apparently believed that he was both the moderator and the sole panelist... he began calling on audience members personally, answering their questions, and then immediately calling on another audience member. I had just enough gumption to get my words in edgewise, not quite enough to call him out on what he was doing, unfortunately. The individual's name was Matt Forbeck. I'm recording it here as a reminder for myself next year and a warning to anyone else who might find themselves on a panel with him. His behavior was rude, off-putting, and left me pretty well off-balance compared to the rest of the panels.
Other than Forbeck, my other co-panelists were awesome. I learned quite a bit from my repeatco-conspirators co-panelists Monica Valentinelli and Lori Devoti and I think that through our participation in multiple panels we fostered a sort of meta-conversation that stretched throughout the various panels... I know I saw some of the same nametags at more than one panel, and I think the last one (on cooperative promotion) probably was better attended than it might otherwise have been, due to people following us from the earlier ones.
Next year I'm going to do fewer panels. I believe I'm going to hold myself to one panel a day, as I had one panel on Friday and Saturday and two on Sunday and it made a marked difference in my ability to just relax and enjoy the con when I had two can't-miss appointments on Sunday.
One interesting sidenote is that an individual who attended the cooperative promotion panel shared that she'd been told that her work would probably be accepted as Young Adult if she would "lose the fisting scene", which I found amusing as I've been told similar things about Tales of MU. I'm of the opinion that what reads to some industry insiders as being "YA style" is simply a more flowing, conversational style of writing and I see no reason why accessible and organic writing should be restricted to a single demographic, and I am amused by the idea of using the label "YA+fisting" to describe the juxtaposition of this style with adult concepts.
And I think I'm going to cap this post off here. I might write more about some specific points that came up on the panels, but I want to at least get a general overview up before it becomes any murkier in my head.
The one panel I felt most strongly about being on (and that I missed other things I was very interested in seeing to be on), "Shakespeare Got To Get Paid", was my least favorite panel of the four, primarily because one of the other participants apparently believed that he was both the moderator and the sole panelist... he began calling on audience members personally, answering their questions, and then immediately calling on another audience member. I had just enough gumption to get my words in edgewise, not quite enough to call him out on what he was doing, unfortunately. The individual's name was Matt Forbeck. I'm recording it here as a reminder for myself next year and a warning to anyone else who might find themselves on a panel with him. His behavior was rude, off-putting, and left me pretty well off-balance compared to the rest of the panels.
Other than Forbeck, my other co-panelists were awesome. I learned quite a bit from my repeat
Next year I'm going to do fewer panels. I believe I'm going to hold myself to one panel a day, as I had one panel on Friday and Saturday and two on Sunday and it made a marked difference in my ability to just relax and enjoy the con when I had two can't-miss appointments on Sunday.
One interesting sidenote is that an individual who attended the cooperative promotion panel shared that she'd been told that her work would probably be accepted as Young Adult if she would "lose the fisting scene", which I found amusing as I've been told similar things about Tales of MU. I'm of the opinion that what reads to some industry insiders as being "YA style" is simply a more flowing, conversational style of writing and I see no reason why accessible and organic writing should be restricted to a single demographic, and I am amused by the idea of using the label "YA+fisting" to describe the juxtaposition of this style with adult concepts.
And I think I'm going to cap this post off here. I might write more about some specific points that came up on the panels, but I want to at least get a general overview up before it becomes any murkier in my head.