How Do You Astrally Project to a Fiction Writer's Conference?
Cotton Underwear is the Key.
In order to complete my being publishable check list, I had planned to attend the Ann Arbor Book Festival's Fiction Writer's Conference on Saturday, the 14th. Unfortunately, I was a bit short on cash (or credit for that matter) as the conference approached and I had a decision to make.
Many a writer has had to starve for his art. In my case it would not be just me but my family of four as well. (I'm the guy that switched my major midway through my undergraduate degree from creative writing to professional writing, precisely out a fear of lack of funds leading to lack of food.) I wasn't going to repeat that college degree mistake this time, however. Creative writing would not step aside for food, even if it meant a starving family.
Unfortunately, I also owed $95 (the cost of the conference) on a credit card bill that was almost past due. While I might allow my family to starve for my art, my credit rating is incredibly important to me. It looks like this time, creative writing and a career in published fiction dodged the fear of starvation bullet, only to be taken out be the fear of a low credit rating. My credit rating is north of 700 for the first time in years. I was not jeopardizing that.
No problem, though, I got around the dilemma through astral projection. I would be able to preserve my credit rating and attend the conference. Astral projection had another significant advantage. Not only could I save the registration fee, but I could also attend whatever sessions I wished. Those poor saps that attended the conference in corporeal form could only express session preferences that were subject to available seating.
Of course, the disadvantage was the astral reception, which is similar to cell phone reception. My astral reception was not too good. I often had a hard time seeing or hearing what was going on. I have some vague recollection of a morning "Thinking and Description" session, during which I astrally described a mongoose eating a five pound ham. It was the only session of interest to fiction writers, since all the other sessions were poetry focused.
I only had one option for the second session as well. Non-poetry options included a repeat of the session I had just attended and a flash fiction/microfiction session. Everyone had a chance to write some very short fiction as part of this session. I wrote a microfiction piece about a writer writing a description of a mongoose eating a five pound ham.
The final session was quite interesting, "The Terrible Discovery and the Mechanics of Time." In this session, the group experimented with managing how information is revealed in their writing to either speed up or slow down time to maximize the terribleness of a terrible discovery. I wrote a scene about a mongoose just before it discovers the body of a dead pig. At least, I believe I did. By this time I had been astrally projecting myself for over five hours, and I might have been confusing an effort at the conference with an effort at the first exercise from John Gardner's Art of Fiction.
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