Day 0 of Utopiales

Despite the trip by train to Nantes, I managed to write pretty well.

The start was slow, as I’m not accustomed to write on the small laptop keyboard, but once I got the hang of it, words flowed pretty fast. The trip took 2 hours, and I managed to produce 2500 words nonethless.

I then got to the convention desk and picked up my pass. I browsed through the con’s expositions.

I found very nice displays of original ‘V for vendetta’ strips, and a wonderful collection of Greg Broadmore paintings and sculptures. This year Utopiales’s theme of history is apparent everywhere here, everything has a steampunky feel. Very cool.

Then, I got tired about waiting for a cocktail that was late as usual – as soon as you put politicians in any meetup, things start to get slow.

I then went back to the hotel. For once, it’s nice to have the con hotel taking people in the restaurant as late as 11 PM. The last one I went to in Sweden closed at 9 and wasn’t even open on saturday. After a full day at the con, going back to the hotel and finding the kitchen closed isn’t a nice experience. This time, though, everything is looking good. I love room service!

I ended the day with some writing, meeting my daily 3000 words quota easily.

Day 1 of Utopiales

Today’s con was mostly meetups, and a few panels. They try to cram as many YA and middle grade meetups there, as this is the only school day and they usually invite schools to come in and see the con.

First meetup was in fact a presentation on alien history. Quite fun to follow. Two other meetups followed with french authors. They talked a little about their respective process. It was interesting to see how they work.

I went to lunch at this point, skipping the short story contest. At lunch, I got a glimpse of Brandon’s editor. Apparently, she comes here often.

Coming next were a couple of meetups, then the first panel begun “The new genomancy”. That one was about genetics and what could happen in the not so far future with genetics advances. The panel had two scientists and two novelists. Boy, that was an eye-opener. I always considered genetics to be a dangerous science (Star Trek fan here : I know all about the Eugenics Wars), but we’re reaching heights of danger here. I’m not talking about only eugenism there, but also the way we could basically stop Evolution if we wanted to. Scary stuff.

Next panel was “history is more unbelievable than fiction”. That one derailed as panels sometimes do. Instead of what I believed the panel would be about, the people here went on tangent after tangent. Glen Cook was at the panel, and he got as confused as I was about the topic.

The real gem for today happened to be the last panel about a couple of editors telling about how they went on looking for stories in an anthology. They used an online writer’s group to do the pre-selection (basically, they delegated the slush-reading to the people from these forums). They explained then how they managed to blind choose people from that writer’s group (unprofessional people like me) when pitted against professional writers. They ended up taking 4 out of 40 submissions from this group, which is about ten times the usual rate. They went on about explaining to the audience the joys and pains of having an editor ask rewrites of a writer. I knew everything about this thanks to WritingExcuses, but it was still very instructive to have live editors talking about it in front of me.

After dinner, I went back to the room and did my 3 000 words for the day. Act 1 is over at last, and act 2 is on its way. I’d better find some ideas for tomorrow, or I’m going to run out of steam very fast.

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