Wiscon, Day Two

[pantryslut]

Saturday morning I got up early again, this time with plans to attend the Dane County Farmer's Market. It's one of the biggest and best farmer's markets in the country, and it's a mere block from the hotel.

It's also pure torture when you don't have a kitchen. Especially this year. Morels galore! Huge, tan morels, just like I remember from growing up! Not these dinky (though flavorful) dark brown things we get on the West Coast. Morels you can stuff.

The farmer's market was doubly frustrating because I was craving green vegetables by this time. Piles of arugula made me dream of bringing my own olive oil and vinegar to the hotel, or maybe just finding a lemon and having at it.

But there were to be no greens for me. Only five-year cheddar, and apple cider, and almond scones. Which will suffice.

Barely.

Then I headed to "How To Plot A Story" by Pat Murphy. Plot, you see, is my bete noir. My facility with the English language is not, I think, in doubt. But plot. I struggle with it endlessly. Partly because I actually have conceptual, even ideological, issues with plot.

Moreover, most plot workshops are very mechanistic in their approach. but I had high hopes that this would not be the case here. I was not disappointed.

Perhaps it's because Pat Murphy started out in the same place I did, more or less. She described her characters as wanting to hang out in coffee shops all day, then going home and having sex. And so that's what her early stories were like. Yeah! So she walked us through a bunch of exercises to help find the engine (my words) that drives the plot. And that's exactly what I needed. I know how to "raise the stakes" (thanks to Pat's ex, Richard Kadrey, and an exercise I did with him in a one-on-one conference at Clarion), but now I also know how to generate the conflict in the first place. My toolbox is now well-rounded.

The most useful tip was that three characters is often just the right number -- two in conflict (or maybe not -- maybe all they want to do is jump in bed together), and a third to keep them off balance.

We discussed different types of "classic" plots and ways of generating tension-- the puzzle/mystery, obsession, emotional jeopardy, physical jeopardy, the ghost story ("don't go into that house!"), and the "how will this bad character be punished?" story. Then we drew a little slip of paper containing a classic SF trope -- mine was "sentient machines" -- and brainstormed a little plotlet from that, starting first with possible directions the story could go in, characters, setting, tone, point of view, and finally generating incidents or scenes as a place to start writing. It was all good. My summary does not do it justice -- this is definitely something you learn by doing. But I did. I feel like I have a much better handle on things now.

After that, it was time for lunch. This was a scheduled con programming staff lunch, a chance for us all to meet each other in the flesh. And it was a fun time. We went around the corner to the State Street Bar & Grill for burgers and fries -- oh no, more lack-of-vegetable fare, but tasty stuff. Almost as good as the gone and lamented Dottie's Dumpling Dowry.

After lunch were my two big panels, back to back. The first was the "Earthsea" panel. I arrived late in the green room and didn't have much of a chance to discuss things beforehand, and I hadn't done much prior preparation other than read the books. But I'm OK with that, I think fast on my feet, and I think I contributed some interesting things to the discussion.

Ursula Le Guin herself slipped into the room right as I was discussing why I was on this panel. In the midst of saying something like "I don't reread books much, but I find myself coming back to these five over and over again, so they must contain something unusual for me..." I kinda trailed off and mumbled at that point. It's not that I was starstruck. Steven and I had already joked that it was possible that Ursula herself might appear, but that if she did, she'd sit quietly in the back row, listening -- which is exactly what happened. But the timing was hard. "Hi, your books have special meaning and resonance for me." It just sounds dumb.

I did make her chuckle when I pointed out that just the other day, I had been ranting and raving about the cliche of the "feisty heroine is subjected to onerous arranged marriage," and had cried, "I want to read a book where the feisty hero is subjected to an onerous arranged marriage!" Then I stopped and realized that in The Other Wind, that's exactly what happens.

I was somewhat disappointed that we ended up spending so much time on Tolkien, but it's hard to avoid when the author herself brings him up.

My next panel was "Polyamory and Plot," and again, I missed the Green Room discussion and walked into the room with all the other panelists already seated. Well, I wrote up the darn description in the first place, so I felt prepared.

I think this was a quite successful panel. We actually managed to stay mostly on-topic, rather than rehashing "what is polyamory?" and "what are appropriate polyamorous ethics?" too much.

One of the places that I see fruitful poly plots emerging is when social structure is introduced to polyamorous relationships. Like, if one form of poly marriage were legitimized, but others weren't. Surely that's a fruitful site for story conflict.

One question we didn't answer was, "can negotiation make interesting plots?" Debbie Notkin, the moderator, said she was tired of stories that concentrated on endless negotiation, as if that's all that poly people did. And it made me think of Robert Lawrence and his complaints about "processing." Oh yeah, most of the time it's as tedious on the page as in real life. But I look forward to someone taking up the challenge.

We generated lots of fun ideas for the future. "The Werewolf Has Two Mothers." The polyamorous quest novel. And there's a cryptic note in my notebook about "over the bag limit -- too many spouses."

A civilian again, I headed over to "Confessions of a Slow Writer." Most writers there seemed to be concerned with writer's block, with procrastination and avoidance. Once again, I found myself in a unique position. My problem is, as I've said here before, I have a big head of steam and a tiny little valve. I'm perfectly fine up until I hit the page, and then my output is so minimal. I want to fix this before my head explodes. Everyone just looked at me funny when I expressed this. But I think that the panel was interesting, even fruitful, though Anne Harris said afterwards, "well that was depressing." I guess there is no comfort in numbers in this case.

Time for dinner! Once again, I hooked up with Bill and we snuck away for our ultra-traditional Saturday night dinner -- sushi at Wasabi, followed by ice cream at Chocolate Coyote.

Yes, I eat sushi in Wisconsin even though I live in San Francisco. It's perfectly decent sushi. All hail transcontinental flight.

The ice cream is more than decent. Dairy products and the Midwest. Mmmm.

Eating sushi also permitted me to score some desperately-needed green nutrition. Edamame and nori and such. I should've gone for the spinach, too.

Saturday night was the Tiptree auction. We were too poor to bid on any items at all this year, especially as this year, some items were bid up crazily. I blame competition between Kat and her sister. This auction made twice what last year's did -- over $7K. That's seven years' worth of just the cash award, folks. Wow.

Anyone who has never been to the Auction cannot realize how much fun it is even if you can't bid. Just trust me. We'd donated a tiny squirt gun acquired at the Clarion Reunion and Damon Knight Memorial Waterfight, and named it "The Cold Wet Vengeance of Karen Joy Fowler," as Karen was the Clarion auctioneer. It went for $30. Not bad!

After the auction, I went to the reading by Christopher Rowe, Gavin Grant, and Kelly Link. I missed Gavin's portion, actually. Kelly read a story from Trampoline that wasn't by her. I envied them the cushy chairs they sat in. I never get chairs like that when I read.

I still wasn't done with programming! Last but not least, at midnight, Steven and I performed "69" in its participatory form. No, you dirty-minded people, not like that. Steven's chapbook! When we do it as a reading, we have each person read one "chapter," one character. It's a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun this time, too.

At this point, I finally managed to crawl to the parties. The Tor party was managable at last -- usually I find them too loud and crowded, sorry. I missed entirely the haiku earring party, to my regret. I hung out in the Consuite a lot and ate hot dogs. Yeah, midnight hotdogs at cons are my secret vice. My tummy does not approve. Too bad.