[Writer Post] Nerd Year’s Eve & Panel Questions
Happy Thanksgiving! (Well, Thanksgiving EVE). It’s going to be a weirdly low-key yet frantic holiday for me. Welcome to my world. Low-Key in that there’s only five of us doing Thanksgiving this year – so I made RESERVATIONS. Frantic because I’m going to a week-long Day Job Training in Maryland on SUNDAY. Jimmy will be a single Dog Dad for a whole week. WHEE!!!!!
My Day Job has expanded and is about to get longer term busy (but this is a good thing), though with every Creative Professional there’s the upstream battle of “Why are you here, a semi-literate monkey can do what you do.†Harsh but true. And the ever popular… “Oh, next time we do this, you should let ME (random coworker) get an early draft to add a major thing you missed.†(Info I’ve asked for over and over again for two months and didn’t know about.) True story. BUT… still… this is what pays for me to do things like….
MARVELOUS NERD YEAR’S EVE! I’ve talked to the brave (hah) soul who’s doing the program scheduling. She LOVES the panel descriptions (pre-approved by the MOST AWESOME, Devin Pike). I’ve created a series that (I hope) provides some basic background on not JUST prose writing but also applies to comics, scripts, art, CONTENT. Since OVERALL, the advice is relatively universal. Or at least CAN BE. One of the most resonant pieces of advice I heard was (thank you, Jimmy, for telling me who said it) was Mike Grell’s philosophy of “Full Units of Entertainmentâ€. He was talking comics, but it was true of prose.
If you want to know more… come to the panel in December!
So I’ve posted this on Facebook – need to get it on Twitter – and now here. I’m soliciting from all my Creative Professional friends (especially artists and comic creators) their favorite resources: market lists, podcasts, blogs, etc.) I will at least do a short handout for links that people can take away with them. So if you have a favorite resource – shout it out.
So, sidebar… this is all about Paying Forward. We HAVE to pay forward folks. New writers, artists, creators are NOT competition. They’re what will keep our genres, our pop culture, everything moving forward. I totally told a teenage girl in Barnes and Noble last weekend to contact me in the future if she wanted to do something with the stuff she’s written. I’d talked to her mom over a stocking stuffer display about this kid who couldn’t limit herself to ONE BOOK (yay), found out about the kid, encouraged said kid in front of the mom. We need these kids. We need them to love to read and write and create. Besides, she could be the next JK Rowling or Stephen King, and I want in on that ground floor.
Pay it forward, folks – or help me do it by sending me those links and suggestions.