Baycon 2024 Report
Baycon is my local science fiction convention and I’ve beenattending it, more or less regularly, since the 1990s. It’s moved from onehotel and city to another over the years and I have followed, “as the tailfollows the dog.” My attendance came to a screeching halt in 2020 with thepandemic. The last convention I attended in person was FogCon in February ofthat year. We knew that a nasty virus was afoot but nobody wore masks. We“elbow-bumped” instead of hugging. If anyone got sick, I never heard. Then camethe lockdown, as we called it. Conventions switched to virtual attendance. AlthoughtI’m a somewhat slow adopted or tech, I’d become used to video chatting back in2013, when I took care of my best friend in a different state while she wasdying of cancer. My husband and I stayed in touch (via Skype, if I remembercorrectly). Then when my younger daughter attended medical school on the otherside of the country, we visited by video chat regularly. She moved back to thisarea for her residency. Her final year was 2020, during which her regularservice rotations were replaced by caring for dying Covid patients. Needless tosay, I became quite cautious about my exposure. So even when conventions beganto move from virtual-only to hybrid to in-person, I reconnected slowly. Evenwhen I was ready to attend a convention in person (2023, which shows you howlong it took me), armed with masks, hand sanitizer, and rapid tests, theuniverse conspired to jinx my plans. It was hard. I missed my friends and allthe chance encounters and spontaneous expressions of community. All this is aprelude to my first successful return to in-person conventions.
Baycon programming had asked potential panelists to suggesttopics. Two of mine were accepted, including Writing Beyond Trauma. Here’s thedescription I wrote:
Theseare perilous times for many of us. As survivors or the loved ones of survivors,how has our experience affected us as writers? How do our stories transcend andheal? Escape? Educate our audience? Are there times when the pain is so great,the words simply will not come--what do we do when we have lost our voice andhow do we use writing to regain it? In this panel, we will strive to listenrespectfully and to leave time between each speaker to absorb more deeply whatthey have said.
As asurvivor of complex PTSD, I’m passionately interested in how my experiencesaffect my writing but also how writing provides a path to healing. But traumarefers to much more than individual experiences: it includes community andmembership in larger groups (such as race or gender/sexual minority, immigrantstatus, incarceration history). My co-panelists included two people of color, aNative Indigenous person (Ohlone) and a survivor of cancer. Several of us hadlost people we loved to violence or lived with mental illness. Others hadexperienced genocide directed at our communities. As moderator, I wanted tomake sure the discussion was safe, respectful, and inclusive. I reached out tomy co-panelists before the convention to make sure I understood which topicsthey wanted to be included and which they would prefer to avoid. How might wetread the line between invasion of privacy and triggers while being open? Onething I did was to keep the discussion slow, with time to listen deeply to eachperson’s comments. On several occasions, I asked for a moment to let whatsomeone had said sink in. Panelists shared strategies for unblocking the innervoice when it has fallen silent due to overwhelming pain and grief. Theseranged from picking up a different medium of creativity like music or crafts to“putting fears on the page” to using “baby steps” to reconnect with the flow ofwords. The panel was rich, compelling, and deeply moving.
Thesame day, I was on a panel on Creating Original Worlds. When I was a youngwriter, world-building checklists were highly touted. I could never do that. Mycharacters took me on guided tours of the worlds of my stories. My fellowpanelists agreed that an organic approach to world-building is not onlyperfectly valid but works better for many writers. I’ve had the experience ofnot knowing what research to do until the story demands it. I loved the phrase “reality-adjacent”to describe taking real-world history, cultures, etc., and tweaking them.Alternate history is an example, as are worlds that are familiar except for theaddition of a fantastical or science-fictional element. How a writer createsworlds also depends on whether they are a "pantser” or an outliner.
Inthe panel on Beta Readers and Critique Groups, the panel agreed that it was asimportant to know what advice to ignore as what to take seriously. We alsoagreed that while it’s nice to ask your mother/partner/child to read yourmanuscript, they probably aren’t the best source of helpful feedback. Whenapproaching a trusted reader or critique group, it’s a good idea to specifywhat level of feedback you’re looking for, whether overall impact, sensitivityissues, or line editing. For myself, I rarely let anyone see my first drafts—secondor third is usual. I still revise a lot because my rough drafts are very, veryrough. I also value the community support of writers’ groups.
Mylast panel was Paying Forward, Backward, and Sideways, a love letter tothose who have encouraged us. We told stories of more senior writers who mentoredus, how our colleagues cheered us on (and vice versa), and our responsibilityto the generation of writers after us. I was reminded of a quote from SamuelGoldwyn: “When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two peoplehappy.”
In between all this, I hung out with friends I hadn’t seenin person in four years, had a delightful time in the dealers’ room(gift-buying destination!) and got to attend a few panels. My all-time favoritewas The Worst First Page (with GoH Ryka Aoki, Cliff Winning, Mark Gelineau, and Amanda Cherry), in which panelists attempted to write truly dreadfulfirst pages. Being great writers, they failed, often with hilarious results.One particular entry (by Amanda Cherry -- look for it!) was so well done, the audience enthusiastically urged thewriter to submit it for publication as a humor piece.
