Every year I make a point to attend Readercon, the so-called “conference on imaginative literature,” held in Quincy, Massachusetts. I’ll be heading up there in just over a week. Each year I have so many wonderful conversations with so many incredibly smart and talented folks, but I always return home exhausted. And though I am tired, and my wallet is thinner, and I’m behind on work, my creative spirit is always renewed. A lot of beginning writers often ask: do writers need to attend conventions? And what are the benefits? What are the drawbacks?
First, I will say that, No, capital N, you are not required to attend conventions. You do not need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on hotels, meals, transportation, books, and other associated costs to attend a writing convention. Yes, some conventions have scholarships and funds for folks of limited means, and they might pay some or all of your fare. And of course, if you’re a guest of honor, the convention pays for everything. But that won’t be available to most, and so the burden of attending comes from our (often shallow) pockets. For some, the cost is too prohibitive, the travel too difficult, and that’s okay. Conventions, for me, are like eating dessert after a particularly satisfying meal. Delicious, but not absolutely necessary and perhaps, sometimes, a bit too overindulgent.
Let me explain.
I think incredible things can happen at conventions. I was introduced, back in about 2005, to such luminaries as Samuel R. Delany, Kelly Link, Peter Straub, Jonathan Lethem, and many others. I’ve made dozens of friends at conventions, hanging out in room parties, socializing at the bar, or sharing meals together. Some of these folks today I consider among my best friends. I’ve met and befriended editors who went on to buy some of my stories and novels. I’ve been turned on to others’ works as well, often coming home with a stack of new books to read, new authors to check out.
When you are surrounded by people who not only share your interests, but are passionately obsessive about them, a certain kind of magic happens. You can dispense with all the proving and justification for why you like such and such a thing. These folks love that thing too, and so you can move on to second-order topics like why you prefer Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to Discovery, the relative dearth of new young science fiction writers compared to, say, horror, and why you don’t need to read Ian M. Banks Culture books in order. And it’s with these second and third order conversations that the magic happens deep within my subconscious that leaves me feeling inspired. Not just to write more of my own fiction, but inspired by the relative health and enthusiasm within the SF community.
I often hear from my writing friends that it wasn’t until they found their “people”, i.e. their friends with mutual interests, that they truly felt at home. When I attend a convention, it is nothing but my “people.” Almost everyone there can be guaranteed to have a large overlap of Venn diagrams of mutual interests. Unlike, say, visiting your in-laws when you mention Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 and they give you that dumbfounded and slightly disgruntled look like you just started randomly reciting passages from Kubla Khan: “Ancestral voices prophesying war…”1
Everyone’s got their interests, but few places overlap like they do a convention.
But I’ll be honest. Sometimes conventions can suck. In 2018 I was up for the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for my story “The Last Novelist,” so I attended Dragon Con in Atlanta. And though ultimately I had a great time, the convention had over 100,000 attendees, and for the first day or so I was overwhelmed, lost, out of place, like a Canada Goose among a flock of thousands of identical birds. Then I saw a friend who told me which hotel and which bar that all my writer peeps were congregating, and thereafter my convention was great. I had again found my people. Also, the fans at DragonCon were among the most enthusiastic I’ve ever experienced. After each panel I had dozens of people wishing to come chat with me and the other panelists.
Once at Lunacon in Rye, New York, the organizers scheduled myself and writer Mercurio D. Rivera for a “surprise” reading, that wasn’t in any programming. The idea was that by being “secret” it would encourage attendees, like those secret invite-only after-parties rock stars sometimes throw. You can imagine how this one went. No one came, and the remorseful organizer has us read to them alone, in an empty hall.
After the World Fantasy Convention in 2008, in Saratoga Springs, NY, I came home with the crudiest of con cruds, that is, a bad flu. And it was horrible. Half my friends got sick, and I was laid up for a week.
At Readercon in ‘06, Jonathan Lethem called me “stupid” in front of a room full of pro writers. We were playing Mafia, and he dumped all over my theory of who the mafia is2. (If you don’t know, Mafia is a psychologically intense game where a group of people try to determine who the “killers” are before the mafia “kills” them all.) It turned out my theory was right, and Lethem later apologized. I laugh about it now, but in the moment it stung.
If you have a sensitive ego, cons can be an intensely emotional experience, especially because there are so many opportunities for interactions with talented and successful people. For someone who can be overly self conscious and critical, those early days going to cons were a roller coaster of powerful emotions: elation and embarrassment in equal measure.
On the other hand I’ve read my work to a packed room of people to thunderous applause. I’ve been on amazing panels, with wickedly smart folks, talking about issues that are very important to me: optimism as a counter-narrative to dystopia, the rise and risks of AI, and why Blade Runner became the default view of the future for so long. And I’ve made so many great, now lifelong friends.
Cons are great at cultivating professional relationships, meeting people with similar interests, and getting exposed to new ideas, all of which are importing things for a writer who takes their career seriously.
Are cons necessary? No. Are cons stressful? Sometimes, but they can also be incredibly fun. Are they worth it? Absolutely.
If you enjoy these blog posts, you may want to check out my non-fiction book Dispatches from the Outer Deep: A Guide to Writing, Editing, Submitting, and Publishing Long and Short Fiction, which collects my best essays on writing.
And if you haven’t yet seen, I sold a novel! Space Trucker Jess will be published in 2025 from Fairwood Press.
I’ve also sold a novella to Tordotcom, tentatively titled Songs of the New Sky.
Once, while waiting on a checkout line for bagels, a woman was arguing with the clerk over something petty and ridiculous, when my father proclaimed to all waiting, “Ancestral voices prophesying war…” At the time, teenaged me was mortified and ran out of the store. Today, adult me thinks this is hilarious.
My theory was the following: We had gone around the game circle and asked each game player to state whether or not they were mafia. I suggested that those who were mafia would be less interested in who was mafia, because they already knew. I carefully watched the body language of each person as we went around the circle, and I identified three people who seemed disinterested in the proceedings. I suggested to Jonathan that these three people were suspicious. It turns out I was right about 2 of the 3.
For all specialties, not just writing, conventions are essential for the soul. Yes, they can be expensive. If your pockets are as empty as mine have been too often, that means not attending as often as you would like. It also means researching, there are many smaller, less well known & therefore less expensive, conventions available to most specialties.
Some will claim their local critique group and writing friends provide all the feedback they need. Close friends are wonderful, but seldom give different advice than what they already told us. Reading articles can inspire new thoughts, but immediate questions are impossible. Fans can say "That was great." but can seldom help you see what made one passage better than another the way other writers can.
Most importantly, conventions let us speak freely about our craft, our marketing woes, our dreams to people living the same challenges.
I've been preaching the benefit of conventions to my fellow small business owners for the last 30 years (I've run an old fashion Brick & Mortar retail business for 40 years -- it took 10 years to see the light), especially for those struggling the hardest. Everything you said about writers is true of repair shops, independent florists, sewing machine retailers, painters, mechanics, window retailers, house cleaners & janitorial firms, window cleaners, concrete firms, carpenters, electricians... The only difference between writers and all the other many specialties is that we can visit everyone else's conventions and get fodder for our writing.
Everyone needs to visit their herd.