Back from Olympus 2012

I've been back from this year's Eastercon, titled Olympus 2012, for a few days now, letting everything settle in. I'm also looking to use some of the ideas from the convention to kickstart my lagging... well, everything. The last year and a half has been quite.. distracting, and I'm trying to restart some interest writing and art, and return to some semblance of a routine.

Writing guests of honour this year were: George R.R. Martin, Cory Doctorow, Paul Cornell and Tricia Sullivan. Truly a great line up that need no introductions. Apart from the amazing guests, the writing segment of the convention seemed, to me, a bit more sparse than usual and consisted mostly of generating publicity and pricing (e-books), with a good discussion on YA stories (originally intended to be about dystopian YA). Of course, there was a good science program including a great presentation on worldships and an informative update on the modern Martian rovers and their missions. Oh, and Gillian Redfearn (Golanze editorial director), I have such a crush on you!

For my own part, I took along the usual 8 pieces of artwork this year, although nothing was new. Unfortunately, although I heard some good comments about a few of my pieces, none sold. For the second year in a row I did not participate in the T-Party workshop (which was a whopping 4 hours long this time). I probably would not have signed-up anyway, but the major reason I didn't was that I couldn't find information about it anywhere on the Olympus website.

While there were some interesting panel items, I probably enjoyed the author interviews the most. All authors were interesting to listen to but I think I got some of the most useful advice from the interviews with Cory Doctorow and Tricia Sullivan. Both of these authors have very busy lives, for differnt reasons, and both have had new family members this decade, which has meant a significant adjustment for them. The most useful piece of information, for me, they had in dealing with the constant demands on a writers time was to learn to write under all kinds of non-ideal situations.

This has been my pitfall in the past year and a half. I would like everything to be idea and I allow myself to get distracted very easily from my writing. It's precisely those reasons that I have recently considered downgrading my focus on writing. However, I've decided to give it another go--beginning with revising some of my earlier works while planning out future stories (I have a near-future YA in mind). The difference this time is that I am going to try and train myself to write under non-ideal conditions. With three computers of various ages in the house, this shouldn't be difficult.

I am installing Open Office Writer on each computer (so I don't go bankrupt with MS Word) and then I will set aside a two hour block each day at a different time. What I plan is to use a die to divide up the day and roll it each morning (of course, taking into consideration my hard commitments for that day). Since I have many other interests, especially with establishing myself and my brand for art, videos, graphic design, and publishing, this should allow me to focus on writing and make some progress, while still leaving time for other things. If this succeeds in getting me out of the 'ideal writing box' requirement, then I may push it buy intentionally fragmenting the writing times also. But one step at a time.

That's all from me for this week. As always...

Insight and longevity.