Baycon is my local science fiction convention and I’ve been attending it, more or less regularly, since the 1990s. It’s moved from one hotel and city to another over the years and I have followed, “as the tail follows the dog.” My attendance came to a screeching halt in 2020 with the pandemic. The last convention I attended in person was FogCon in February of that 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 came the lockdown, as we called it. Conventions switched to virtual attendance. Althought I’m a somewhat slow adopted or tech, I’d become used to video chatting back in 2013, when I took care of my best friend in a different state while she was dying of cancer. My husband and I stayed in touch (via Skype, if I remember correctly). Then when my younger daughter attended medical school on the other side of the country, we visited by video chat regularly. She moved back to this area for her residency. Her final year was 2020, during which her regular service rotations were replaced by caring for dying Covid patients. Needless to say, I became quite cautious about my exposure. So even when conventions began to move from virtual-only to hybrid to in-person, I reconnected slowly. Even when I was ready to attend a convention in person (2023, which shows you how long it took me), armed with masks, hand sanitizer, and rapid tests, the universe conspired to jinx my plans. It was hard. I missed my friends and all the chance encounters and spontaneous expressions of community. All this is a prelude to my first successful return to in-person conventions.
Baycon programming had asked potential panelists to suggest topics. Two of mine were accepted, including Writing Beyond Trauma. Here’s the description I wrote:
These are 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 and heal? 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 and how do we use writing to regain it? In this panel, we will strive to listen respectfully and to leave time between each speaker to absorb more deeply what they have said.
As a survivor of complex PTSD, I’m passionately interested in how my experiences affect my writing but also how writing provides a path to healing. But trauma refers to much more than individual experiences: it includes community and membership in larger groups (such as race or gender/sexual minority, immigrant status, incarceration history). My co-panelists included two people of color, a Native Indigenous person (Ohlone) and a survivor of cancer. Several of us had lost people we loved to violence or lived with mental illness. Others had experienced genocide directed at our communities. As moderator, I wanted to make sure the discussion was safe, respectful, and inclusive. I reached out to my co-panelists before the convention to make sure I understood which topics they wanted to be included and which they would prefer to avoid. How might we tread the line between invasion of privacy and triggers while being open? One thing I did was to keep the discussion slow, with time to listen deeply to each person’s comments. On several occasions, I asked for a moment to let what someone had said sink in. Panelists shared strategies for unblocking the inner voice when it has fallen silent due to overwhelming pain and grief. These ranged 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 of words. The panel was rich, compelling, and deeply moving.
The same day, I was on a panel on Creating Original Worlds. When I was a young writer, world-building checklists were highly touted. I could never do that. My characters took me on guided tours of the worlds of my stories. My fellow panelists agreed that an organic approach to world-building is not only perfectly valid but works better for many writers. I’ve had the experience of not 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 the addition of a fantastical or science-fictional element. How a writer creates worlds also depends on whether they are a “pantser” or an outliner.
In the panel on Beta Readers and Critique Groups, the panel agreed that it was as important to know what advice to ignore as what to take seriously. We also agreed that while it’s nice to ask your mother/partner/child to read your manuscript, they probably aren’t the best source of helpful feedback. When approaching a trusted reader or critique group, it’s a good idea to specify what level of feedback you’re looking for, whether overall impact, sensitivity issues, or line editing. For myself, I rarely let anyone see my first drafts—second or third is usual. I still revise a lot because my rough drafts are very, very rough. I also value the community support of writers’ groups.
My last panel was Paying Forward, Backward, and Sideways, a love letter to those who have encouraged us. We told stories of more senior writers who mentored us, how our colleagues cheered us on (and vice versa), and our responsibility to the generation of writers after us. I was reminded of a quote from Samuel Goldwyn: “When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.”
In between all this, I hung out with friends I hadn’t seen in 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 favorite was The Worst First Page, in which panelists attempted to write truly dreadful first pages. Being great writers, they failed, often with hilarious results. One particular entry was so well done, the audience enthusiastically urged the writer to submit it for publication as a humor piece.