Who's Yer Con 2017
Who's Yer Con is an annual free gaming convention put on by a local gaming group as a way of giving back to the community. This year it was held over the weekend of March 31-April 2, 2017 at the Wyndham Indianapolis West hotel. It's too small for us to even consider trying to sell at it, but because it's free, my husband always likes to go there and game. And it offers me an extended period of interruption-free writing time, which is also welcome.
Another family member needed the car, so we had to take the van. Because we were going to sell at Anime Matsuri in Houston the following weekend and could not count on having Monday to load our merchandise, we had to load before the con and drive the van fully loaded for an anime convention, even though we weren't selling.
Since my husband had a game in the first slot of the day Friday, we had to go over there early to get our badges. At least that didn't take too long, but I had to hold my husband's place too, since he can't stand for extended periods of time. We also tried to fit in at least one visit to the dealers' room, since we wanted to see if we recognized anyone on the other side of the table.
Once that was taken care of, I settled in to write as much as I could. I pulled out an old story from the previous decade and started trying to sort out what I even wanted to do with it. I examined several different possibilities for turning the snarky, sarcastic narrator into a full-fledged character who would interact with the titular character, rather than just comment upon his travails. By the time we were ready to go home for the evening, I had a pretty good idea of how all the pieces fit together.
When I got home, I made a couple of blog posts and did a little research, looking through some old notebooks. I also set up our meals for Saturday so I wouldn't have to rush to get them ready when we needed to be on the road.
On Saturday we headed back over to the hotel for our second day at Who's Yer Con. While I was sitting around, I made a bunch more notes on the story I was trying to rewrite, developing the insights I'd developed on Friday. Then I made some more general notes. We also went through the dealers' room another time when my husband was in between games, seeing if anyone had anything new out.
By the time we got home, it was already pretty late. I made a few blog posts, then went to bed.
On Sunday I got up with a definite scratchy throat. This was not a good thing, especially given that we were going to be leaving for Houston on Tuesday to do Anime Matsuri. However, I wasn't so sick that I could beg off going to the con, so I increased my Vitamin C dosage and got some cough drops to soothe my throat in hopes that perhaps it was just the dry air and not an actual bug.
When I got to the hotel, I made some more notes, this time on a group of related stories that I hadn't done anything with for years. I explored some of the background on one that was little more than an idea and a couple of scenes sketched out, trying to figure out where it was going to go. However, it still didn't seem to want to gel.
Since they no longer do the "burn off" drawings for prizes at the end, we just went home after my husband's last game. The dealers' room had already closed and dealers were tearing down, so there was no real reason for us to linger any longer.
When we got home, I had to rearrange some of the merchandise in the van. I had things set up to ride well partially loaded, but now I needed to move things into their places to ride well once we loaded our personal belongings in and were heading to our next event.
Copyright 2017 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated December 8, 2017.