Balticon? Balticon!

It was noon, this past Wednesday, and I’d nearly recovered from Steampunk World’s Faire. When I suddenly remembered that Balticon was nearly here. I’d been contemplating day-tripping for the Writers Track panels, so I opened the schedule back up to look.

By 1 pm, I knew I couldn’t pick just one day. I cancelled my weekend, found crash space with a 3-line email and 10 minutes, and started to get ready. I had 50 hours until go time.

I added all the panels that looked interesting or applicable to my Google Calendar, then picked 2-3 each day that were essential. My track record of attending panels at Cons is typically very low.

That night, I frantically packed. I had an Anansi Storytelling rehearsal/casting call Thursday night and would be leaving work early to go straight up to Balticon on Friday.

Well, I’m home now.

It was worth it.

Now, to make the time to make all the inspired edits and improvements!

I’ll be talking about my adventures in the next several posts, but my final tallies are as follows:

Total Panels Attended: 19 (2 dance)
Total Hours in Panels: 23
Panels attended:

Friday:
• 6 – How to Write Religion
• 8:15 – Swing Dance

Saturday:

• 9-12 – Balticon Writer’s Workshop
• 1 – How to Build a Meal for your Invented World (ended up workshoppy)
• 2 – Targeting submissions: The Pitch
• 8 – Tales from the Slush Pile
• 9 – What Can We Learn From Bad Writing
• 10 – Off-Page Implications

Sunday:

• 10-11:30 – Character Workshop with Jo Walton
• 1 – Writing Interesting and Effective Short Stories
• 4 – Contra Dance (got cut short)
• 5 – Worldbuilding for Fun and Profit
• 7 – How to Incorporate Critique
• 8 – Point of View and Narrator Swapping
• 10 – Knowing that I Know That You Know: Xanatos Gambits and Chessmasters
• 11 – Confess Your Writer Sins

Monday:

• 10 – Handling the Unavoidable Infodump
• 12 – Editors’ Pet Peeves
• 1-3 – Descriptive Prose Workshop