Boy, I talked to so many people. This morning Robin swept down upon me and we sat and talked about Luna for about an hour, about our plans and our ideas and what we were working on and everything. Really a very satisfying talk, and it was awesome to have some time to talk just with her instead of in a crowd, which was mostly how I’d seen her previously. I spent quite a while talking with Alexis after that, and we had lunch together before I had to take off.
Even leaving was totally conference-oriented, as a woman I’d met briefly earlier in the weekend was on the bus with me, so we talked about writing and what we wrote and all of that sort of thing for the ride over, and then on the train from one concourse to another the woman standing next to me had been at the conference, too, and so *we* ended up talking until her plane left. She was another fantasy writer, and we met up with a third one at the terminal, so yeah, just straight across until I went to get on my plane it was writing talk all the way.
The last woman I talked with, Stephanie, said talking to me had really lifted her spirits. Apparently she’d been feeling a little down and discouraged, and I’d ended up, for some reason, talking about how your odds as a writer were both awful and very good, as evidenced by Harlequin getting 20K unsolicited submissions a year, but I’d heard those numbers quoted at a con a few years ago and watched the thirty people in the room just deflate, and I had to point out that yes, Harlequin does get that number of submissions a year–but in that room of thirty people, there were two of us, me and Wendy Douglas, who’d made the 20K statement, who had been picked out of the slushpile. So 1 in 15 is rather more encouraging than 1 in 20,000, you know? You do have to write a good book. You do have to be persistent. But the thing is that I really truly believe that if you have talent and persistence, you’ll make it. I really, really believe that. Anyway, I went on about that, and it evidently made Stephanie feel better, so that’s kind of cool. :)
I’m reasonably certain I’m forgetting about 34563987 things–like the fact that Betsy kept saying hello all weekend, and that this morning on her way out she came through specifically looking to say goodbye to people, which, I don’t know, doesn’t seem like the thing I’ve seen editors and agents do at previous conferences, so I thought it was particularly neat–and that it seems like I met way more people this year than I have in previous years, and that I wish I could remember all their names and our conversations, and how Mary Buckham, I think her last name is, was there again and kept giving me a hard time (ok, I gave her one back, I admit)–and other good stuff, but I have already written more than 3500 words and this is *nothing* like working on my PHOENIX LAW proposal, so I think I’m going to stop writing on it and flip to my other window and work on that. :)
Zoof!