![\"wordfire\"](\"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/wordfire-300x300.jpg\")
Denver Comic Con was this weekend. I heard that 120,000 people attended on Saturday, making the convention the fifth largest comic con in America (the world?). Since the biggest convention I\u2019d ever been to before was a WorldCon, with maybe 8,000 or so people, you can understand that Denver\u2019s event was overwhelming. You know how babies can sometimes be over stimulated? I suffered the adult equivalent.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, I sat on three panels. Authors and literature are a smaller part of a comic con than it is at WorldCon, but a small part of 120,000 is still a lot of people. The panels were in big rooms and a lot of people came to them, even the late afternoon one on Sunday when many people were heading home.<\/p>\n
The panel I enjoyed the most was the one I moderated: \u201cThe Best Writing Advice I Ever Heard.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the record, here is the best writing advice tips I shared:<\/p>\n
The first came from Connie Willis. She signed a book for me once, and I asked her to put her top three writing tips in. The one that stuck with me most was \u201cRemember what you liked about science fiction in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second tip came from George Scithers on one of my early rejections, where he said, \u201cI hope while you were waiting to hear from me on this one that you were working on your next.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know where the third came from, and it\u2019s less a writing tip and more a career one about envy. The tip was \u201cDon\u2019t compare your beginning to someone else\u2019s middle.\u201d<\/p>\n
The panelists and I shared a bunch of other tips too. I tried to moderate to encourage brevity so we could get more content out and limit the long anecdotes panelists can sometimes be famous for. The questions from the audience in the last fifteen minutes provoked more interesting advice. I think the audience didn\u2019t waste their time.<\/p>\n
As I mentioned, the convention was overwhelming. I\u2019ve heard it said that the science fiction community is greying, and that we\u2019re losing our audience. From what I saw at this event, I\u2019d disagree. Yes, many of the people came because of their interest in comics, movies, anime and television, but it was all about science fiction and fantasy. I saw a lot of people buying books. The Wordfire Press display was consistently mobbed (I think Kevin Anderson is doing a marvelous job of selling books and generating enthusiasm, not just for Wordfire titles, but for all books).<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think a big convention like this is for everyone, but I\u2019m glad I went.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Denver Comic Con was this weekend. I heard that 120,000 people attended on Saturday, making the convention the fifth largest comic con in America (the world?). Since the biggest convention I\u2019d ever been to before was a WorldCon, with maybe 8,000 or so people, you can understand that Denver\u2019s event was overwhelming. You know how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3,41],"tags":[21,42,7],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-writing","category-writing-advice","tag-advice","tag-tips","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}