ApolloCon and things I learned this weekend....

So... this weekend was ApolloCon I got really great comments on the Merlin Story and I have about a million new ideas for stories. Not really I think I only got 1 this weekend which I think is pretty much brilliant. Nuns that fight evil-an urban fantasy.

My favorite panel: Urban Fantasy, and it was the very last one of the convention but very worth staying that long.

My least favorite panel: Library in the Future. I love Amy Sisson, she ran the writer's workshop but because I got my times mixed up and went to that one I missed out on Archetypes in Literature. Or whatever it was called. Boo. This was this one weird dude in the Library panel that is obviously very paranoid about the government and getting viruses on his computer. Which is all a bunch of baloney to me. The government has been monitoring the books people check out for years, its not a new phenomenon.

Favorite experience: Losing a little bit more of my shyness at these things and meeting new people. People don't believe me when I say I'm introverted because they know me and when I know someone I come of out my shell. But around people I don't know I can get very anxious and awkward. lol. One particular writer was really nice and was going to buy me a beer but alas I'm still a few months shy of legal age. Bull shit law. But he introduced me to some other writers one in particular Chris Roberson who I had wanted to meet and was too nervous the night before to introduce myself to. Also I'm hoping to try to get into the Turkey City Workshop. Maybe if I can make it to ArmadilloCon I'll cultivate more of the contacts I made.

Least favorite experience: Still feeling super awkward and lame. I'm ridiculous I know but I can't help it. I promise I'm not as weird when you get to know me. Nope I take that back I'm still weird but you find out I'm actually pretty charming and you want to be my friend anyway. lol.

Other randomness:
At the Library panel I learned about Librarything.com which I think is going to be detrimental to my online health for awhile. Just what I needed another online obsession, especially one about books which of course I can't pass up. It'll take me awhile to catalog all the books I have but then again like Amy said its a record in case they ever get burned up. *shudder* God forbid.

I want to read John Moore's books. I love love parody and its very similar to what I write. Walking around the dealers room I had picked them up and thought they looked good then he was on the next panel I went to. Go figure.

Oh! I met a Russian woman and got to talk about my theory that ballet and opera are under analyzed fields. Of course I clammed up when she said hi to me in Russian and later I felt like a douche that I didn't say anything back. My spoken Russian sucks SO bad. I just get really nervous and can't remember a damn thing. I'm really good at grammar and reading but no one sees those things. Bah.

I can't remember anything else specifically that was just wow-tastic. Oh, Amy Sisson had been to Clarion West and she gave me a lot of advice about applying and what to expect. Apparently they don't have as many people apply as they want you to believe. I thought my odds were slim to none. Plus this next year I'll actually have a body of work to choose from to send off rather than trying to write two new stories in time for the deadline.

I think that's a long enough post. I'm going to try and update this thing more often since maybe the writers I meet will look at it. Also hopefully within the next year I can start getting some stories published and next year my goal is to find an agent for my book!

I should be studying for my final today instead of this. So I'm going to go back to doing so. Peace out girl scouts!

New ideas and an update

The urge to put an update on me applying for a writing workshop makes me wonder, why? No one currently reads this. It's really only for my own use. Maybe my creative writing prof reads it every once in awhile. Although I doubt that with all the treadmill journals she has to do. BTW I'm a firm believer in treadmilling now. I will most definitely continue it on into my professional career and make my students do it too. Even my lit students. You could kind of tweak it for lit students and instead of writing, reading or if they have papers to write, writing too, but for reading you could change #4 to a reflection on what you read. It would be very helpful I think. Plus then I could see if my students were actually reading or not. lol. YES! Another strategy to ruining my future students lives. Really just enriching and helping them out in the end. But yeah they'll love and hate me all the same. :D I get goosebumps just thinking about it. hehe. Yes I do think I will take too much joy in being a mean ole professor who tries to make people learn. RAWR! hahahaha. ok enough of that.

SO! I didn't make the Clarion. I seriously doubt I had a chance of getting in but I tried. I'm now applying for Odyssey instead. This one seems more beneficial even in a professional way (although meeting Neil is still a life goal now) because its run by a former senior editor for Bantam Dell. HUGE publisher known for its science fiction and fantasy titles (its an imprint of Random House if that means more to you). Her critiques of your work they say are typed and about 1,000 words. How incredibly life movingly helpful will that be! Anyway I only have to submit one story for that under 4,000 words and its due to them by April 10. I'm planning on mailing it WAY before then. If I concentrate just on the Merlin story I should have it done in no time. I plan on staying in town to work and write all Spring Break. How nerdy and lame am I? lol. Oh well. I really think this all worked out for a reason because if Neil hadn't been an instructor for Clarion I never would have even tried for it. But now that I have and have the beginning of two great stories plus a butt load of confidence about myself as a writer I really might be able to do this other one. They say on the website they have around a 50% publishing rate for their graduates. But when you're getting comments from an award winning editor that's not surprising. You'll learn to write better and write to actually get published.

The story ideas I wanted to record for future use are as follows:
A shepherd boy (16-17 in age I think) who becomes an unlikely hero when his village is pillaged. He's shy, relates better to sheep then people and has a smart ass sheep dog who talks.

Also an Amazon woman who doesn't want to be a warrior but a housewife. I thought it would be funny because I'm writing an academic paper on characters who are all warrior women/heroines and don't want the home life. What if it was opposite, where the societal norm was to be a warrior and instead someone wanted to be a housewife. Also my mom is a housewife and people think she doesn't do anything. This would kind of be a tribute to my mom. :D Kind of a parallel to our world where the modern working woman is respected more than the housewife because she's helping contribute monetarily to the household.

Anyway that's all I got for now. More ideas will come to me I'm sure. I think I might do my exercise from creative writing on here later. The making a list thing. I want to make a list of things I'm passionate about. It helps inspire things to write.

Typing aloud, as I do...

Ok so I think I'm definitely going to do a backstory type thing on Avery since that will also give a good outline of the political structure of everything since his uncle would give him lessons and all that being the heir. Jacob, Nialist's son that's about the same age as Avery, will be a peripheral character along with the little sister and his uncle Nialist. I kind of have this idea of incorporating a seer in it too and that's why Joseph chooses Xavier for his heir instead of Jacob.

I have another idea for the other story. It's just a very basic idea of what would happen if the Muses were reincarnated in 21st century women. I don't know if I'm going to focus the story on a few of them that have intertwining lives. Also I'm not sure if I want them to be figuratively muses, as in aware of their abilities to inspire, or if they're aware, or if this might be a specific kind of role almost like a job that they take over. ... I'm thinking it would be set in New York or L.A. or Seattle. I'm thinking New York, where there's a large concentration of artists/artsy people. I don't know. Bleh!!!!! I hate getting started on things like this. But cleaning all weekend and getting dumped friday night meant I did nothing on saturday but sit on the couch and watch cheesy movies on tv putting me behind my word goal already. so this week I have to write 6, 000 words to catch up. Maybe I'll write 4,000 this week and 6,000 next week because I have two tests at the end of this week that are going to need a lot of my attention.

I think those are two very different story ideas which shows versatility. I'm just kind of nervous my novice-ness is going to show. The website said writers who haven't worked through the beginner's type problems yet shouldn't apply. Apparently this workshop is really hard to get into. But I did find out that my age shouldn't be that big of an issue. I was told that every year they have at least one person in their early 20's. I wasn't sure if my age was going to be a factor. But anyway I guess that's all I have for now.