Worldcon 2012 Part II: Deleting Words, Literary Bheer

E.J. (Emma) Swift has a quaint English accent and is graceful, since she works for the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama. 

At the self-editing session, she surprised us by saying she enjoys deleting words from her rough drafts.  I think she said she deleted forty thousand words from one manuscript, and she was really happy about it.  I’m not sure what her book Osiris is about, but here’s the cover: 

Both she and Carrie Vaughn have multiple critique partners help them go over their manuscripts before submitting them to their agents.  Carrie is famous for her urban fantasy Kitty series, but I enjoyed her talk last year about pirates, as research for her young adult pirate novel. 

I was so intent on telling John Hemry that I’m writing a mashup of the The War of the Worlds (see my previous entry), I forgot to take a picture of him.  Here’s one from last year’s Worldcon. 

Of course, he simply nodded at my writing a mashup on the same novel he had written a “forgotten chapter” for.  A number of us had a chance to speak to him for ninety minutes.  If this sort of meeting takes place in the morning or afternoon, it’s called a Kaffeklatsch (and tends to be shorter).  This took place in the evening, so it was called a Literary Bheer, reflecting what was available to drink.  Only a small group is allowed, so convention members have to sign up early. 

This was so comfortable—a small group of people with common interests—that I think I’ll do them instead of the major parties where there’s a crush of people and conversation is difficult.  To get in any good conversation, I’ve ended up staying incredibly late, which can ruin the rest of the convention for me.  So I think I’ll stick to these more personal meetings, and small parties that are held by individual authors to launch their latest books.  This makes sense. 

In the next post I’ll wrap things up.