LESSONS LEARNED

(experiences at the 1989 Writers of the Future "Events")

by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Background: In 1987-8, Alan Wexelblat and I collaborated on a story called "The Wallet and Maudie." I've found, over the years, that I really enjoy working with a collaborator. It also keeps me writing, something that's always been a bit of a problem for me. Alan took responsibility for circulating the story to various editors. I think he started with The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but eventually it went to the "L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest."

That December, I was home sick when the phone rang. It was Alan (whom I'd only met once, when the story was nearly completed - we'd collaborated over the Internet), telling me that the WotF people had called to say that "The Wallet and Maudie" was the fourth quarter winner in the Contest. Muzzy, I thought I heard him say "a" fourth quarter winner. "No, man," he said, "We went all the way. First prize." The prize was a thousand bucks, and entry for the annual prize of an additional $4000. In addition, the story was to be published in the Contest's annual anthology, at a very respectable rate. Finally, we were invited to New York, at the Contest's expense, for various events during the week of 23-30 April, 1989.

As it happens, I'm a native New Yorker, but I live in California, and hadn't been to NYC in years.

Now go on with the story.

Sunday 23 April, 1989

I got off the rather overbooked USAIR flight at La Guardia Airport somewhere in the neighborhood of 9:00 PM Eastern time. This had been a connection in Pittsburgh from a flight that, for some reason, went from Oakland to Pittsburgh by way of Los Angeles. Nothing like the direct route, is there? Not that I cared. I wasn't doing anything else that day, so I had plenty of time to read and revise my story "Hazardous to Your Health," and I didn't mind the extra miles on my Frequent Flyer plan. Dressed in jeans, sportshirt, and windbreaker, it had been a comfortable ride.
I was met by a pleasant lady with a ragged placard, "WOTF." "Hello?" I said.

"Dan'l?" she said, in a familiar accent.

"Simone?"

Simone Welch of Bridge Publications, hitherto a voice on the phone, turned out to be from the Alsace region of Germany (or maybe that's France … which war is it?), which goes a long way toward explaining why I thought she was Suisse.

She led me, first, to get my baggage, and then to the airport lounge, where Algis Budrys and several of my fellow woffers - that being, apparently, the name for WOTF people - were already sitting around, drinking, schmoozing, and generally getting acquainted. I picked a seat reasonably upwind from Algis' cancer sticks and started getting acquainted, though I choose to schmooze without booze - in fact I used alcohol only once this trip, which we'll get to when we get to it. One of the fellow-woffers, Eolake Stobblehause of Denmark, was showing around the story that had earned him a finalist's place in the contest. It was a whopping 183 words long.

"It broke one of my cardinal rules," said Algis. "I always said nothing good ever came out of a legal-sized envelope."

After a bit of schmooze-time, Simone came back to explain that the guy who was supposed to drive us all out to Sag Harbor hadn't shown up.

Let me explain about Sag Harbor. Long Island is shaped like an immense fish, with its head facing west. Twin peninsulas nearly the length of the main island form the fish's tail. La Guardia is near the back of the fish's head, at the north-west end of the island. Sag Harbor is a resort town, former whaling community, on the southern tail, near where they join.

So there we were at ten o'clock at night, with lots of baggage and no ride.

LESSON ONE: In spite of the best planning, shit do happen.

We went down to the lower deck, where baggage claim was. Algis and Simone abandoned us for a while, during which we watched some guy get into a screaming match with the lady behind the Alamo Rent-A-Car counter because the car's trunk had damaged his skis, or maybe the skis had damaged the trunk. It wasn't clear which; they both seemed clear that something had been damaged, though, and that the reason was lack of a ski rack.

"Ah… New York," I sighed.

Algis returned and explained that Alternate Transportation had been arranged.

LESSON TWO: Shit can be dealt with.

Actually, I was impressed by how quickly they'd dealt with a nasty situation.

So we all trooped out to the area outside baggage claim. "Have to go over to the traffic island," Algis told us. The other woffers looked dubious, so I explained Rule One of crossing streets in New York: look straight ahead and walk straight forward. None of us got smooshed, so Rule One must still be true.

"Aren't you cold," asked someone - I think it was Eolake. Well, no; I wasn't cold. "I grew up around here," I explained. "This is a nice brisk spring evening." Well, it wasn't evening anymore; it was nearly eleven, and as we stood there waiting for the rental cars (the Alternate Transportation in question) to arrive, I discovered that my ears were beginning to feel pointy.

LESSON THREE: Your hometown is never as nice as you remember. Probably never as nasty, either.

So the cars arrived, and we headed out. Just outside the airport both cars stopped for gas. Don't they fill rental cars before renting them out in New York? Weird…

At the gas stop we discovered that I was about the only woffer who had had a meal in the past few hours, a "snack" on the PIT-LGA commuter flight. We agreed to stop for something somewhere. Unfortunately, that never happened, and there was significant grumbling - mostly in stomachs - before we reached Sag Harbor.

Somewhere not far from the Nassau/Suffolk County border we began seeing deer on the side of the road. Live ones, I mean, not road kill. They just stared at us like we were nothing, which I guess is about what they thought of us.

One of the other Woffers in the car - I think it was Mark Anthony (yes, that's his real name) - looked at the moon. "Do you remember," he said, "how you used to look up at the moon from the car and think it was following you?"

"Yeah," chimed in someone else, "and no matter how they tried to explain it to you, you could see it was following you."

I thought about that for a minute. "Mmm-hmm. And the real proof came when you changed roads. The moon changed roads with you. It didn't stay with all those cars back there, did it?"

We all agreed that the moon was following us now.

Algis also told us some stories of his life in the Great Neck area some years ago. It didn't sound like the kind of place where I'd have liked to live.

We finally arrived at the Baron's Cove Inn well after midnight. Considering it was only 9:00 Pacific, I was amazed at how tired I was - but there you are. Traveling is tiring in any direction.

We all trooped into the Budrys's room to receive room assignments. (Well, not really assignments; we picked for ourselves.) Alan had arrived hours earlier and roomed with someone else, so I opted for the one person in the earlier group who still had no roommate, coincidentally also the only person in the group besides Alan I knew, Gary Shockley. Gary was a member of the Wordshop, the writers' group I attended in those longago days, so I figured I'd be less of a shock walking in in the middle of the night than most of these other odd people. Eolake roomed with Steve Martindale, about whom far too much later; the other three - Mark, and a couple more Stevens, took the one triple room.

Edna Budrys proved at once that she is a Wonderful Person by producing the key to the next day's classroom, which she'd filled with random munchies. She'd known we'd be getting in too late to go out for dinner and hiked over to the local 7-11 on a mission of mercy. The most amazing thing is that this was completely in character for Edna; she's a Wonderful Person all the time.

And so to bed. Gary woke up briefly as I came in, greeted me, told me where the bathroom was. I made sure he'd done something about a wakeup call - actually, he had a beepie watch - and crashed.

Monday 24 April, 1989

Woke up not as refreshed as I'd like. This was to be a recurring experience for the next six days.

LESSON FOUR: You can't get too much sleep. In fact, you generally can't get enough.

When I woke up, Gary had already showered, so I did all my general morning stuff uninterrupted. There was a sign on the classroom window putting the first session off one hour "due to alligator blight," so I had time to head downtown to find some breakfast.

Before breakfast, I found Alan, who was heading back from breakfast. Greetings, hugs, etc. He told me that a bunch of other woffers were still eating at the Paradise cafe up the road a ways; so I went up and joined them.

By the end of breakfast I'd met just about everybody. Trying to "introduce" them all like this would be futile so I'll confine myself to remarks as they become relevant.

Breakfast consisted of some very good pancakes and all-right bacon. I noticed the Paradise's soda fountain and meant to come back for lunch later in the week, but never got around to it (though see Wednesday…)

The six or so of us who'd been at breakfast came back to the classroom together. There was a coffeepot but no coffee, and Edna showed up after a while with donuts and cold caffeine (e.g., coke) which was far better than no caffeine at all. Algis introduced himself and Tim Powers, a very personable fellow, and proceeded to the structure of the workshop.

Very interesting indeed: we were not going to workshop each others' work during the week at all. This was, Algis explained, a "master class," a concept familiar to anyone with a musical background. The assumption was that since we were all good enough to win the Contest we were all essentially professionals; the emphasis on the class was career management in the broadest sense.

Then he talked a bit about L. Ron. "I'm going to say a word," he said, "which I don't expect to hear in the classroom again until Thursday or so." The word was, of course, "Scientology." Algis confessed to carefully-maintained ignorance of the Church of Scientology and the tenets thereof.

But that side of L. Ron was not relevant here, he explained; what was relevant was that, before he became famous for Dianetics and Scientology, Hubbard was one of the most successful pulp writers of his generation, a man who'd been literally drafted to write science fiction because his name on a pulp magazine guaranteed sales.

L. Ron was something of a legend for productivity and sales. He averaged $700 a month in sales in a time when that was a lot of money.

(For the sake of comparison, the average freelance writer in 1990 made $4800/yr, or $400/month, at a much-inflated dollar. And that average includes the Danielle Steeles and Stephen Kings of the world, so the really "average" freelancer makes much less.

LESSON FIVE: Don't quit your day job until you see your name on the best seller list.)

To nobody's surprise, he'd been approached by Writers Digest and a number of since-defunct magazines to tell his Secrets; he seemed perfectly willing to go with it, and those articles were a major part of the class.

(It appears that John Campbell was not very enthusiastic about L.Ron at first, but was prodded by management who wanted those sales, and later learned to appreciate Hubbard for what he was. It also appears that there are so many versions of this background, ranging from that in the previous paragraph, which I presume is the Church of Scientology's version, to a very hostile version that claims that LRH made up most of the accomplishments his official biography lists and exaggerated the others, including his popularity as a writer. I choose not to judge, not having been there.)

The second major aspect of the class was a series of lectures by Algis and Tim on subjects ranging from keeping fresh to the care and feeding of editors and agents.

The third was a series of exercises. These were to be done either right away in the classroom, or on our own time, depending.

And the fourth was "twinning." Essentially, Algis assigned each participant a "twin," another woffer who was to work with him/her on joint assignments and check that he/she was doing independent assignments to the best of his/her ability. The basic idea seemed to be that twinning (a) gave you a second set of opinions and (b) gave you someone responsible for keeping you honest. In return, of course, you had to keep them honest. It helped me, at least, get more out of some of these exercises.

My assigned twin was Virginia Baker, a lapsed (but not quite Jack) Mormon from Salt Lake. Nice lady; we got along good except when I suggested that twins should share rooms. (Well, no, I never suggested that. I'm happily married and intend to stay that way, thankyewverramush.)

The first reading was on "suspense." I learned a fair amount about that but I'll tell you about it later.

Sorry.

I found myself puzzling over something, and this was the first time twinning proved useful. Suspense, it seems, is the quality in a work when a reader needs to know what happens; when a character the reader cares about has to make some decision of import, or otherwise affect the Outcome.

Well. Two examples popped into my head: Star Wars and On the Beach. In Star Wars, I don't think anyone doubted from the very beginning that before the movie was over Luke would blow up the Deathstar. And anyone who had any doubts that On the Beach would end with the whole world dying of radiation poisoning is either an optimist or very slow on the uptake.

So you know how both stories will "come out."

Then why are they so suspenseful?

The answer, which I came up with but could not have done without the helpful input of Virginia Baker is:

LESSON SIX: Suspense is not "what happens?" but "what happens next?" Thus, the suspense in Star Wars is not about what will happen in the end, but in how the characters will get there; and the suspense in On the Beach is not about what will happen in the end, but about how the characters will meet that end.

More lecture: on what a story is. Ajay has a strange 7-part schema of story, the most interesting part of which is what he calls "validation," the "so what" of the story. At the end of the story, the reader needs a sense that what she's just read matters in some way, something to validate the reading experience for her. This isn't (usually) a moral explanation at the end.

LESSON SEVEN: You can't glue the validation on to the end of the story; you've got to make the story matter as it progresses.

At this point we broke for lunch and "independent" assignments. Four of us went in search of lunch and wound up at a bar - it was the cheapest place in town; only cost about $10 for lunch. (2003 footnote: Ten clams was significantly more then than it is now.) Gaak. The food was good, though.

LESSON EIGHT: Don't take anyone's word that food where you're going is "affordable."

And on to the library. The library? Yes; the Sag Harbor Municipal Public Library, to do the afternoon's assignments. Which were to read a couple of articles by LRon and fill out some three by five cards.

I have to explain about those three by five cards; they're one of the most important things I got out of this workshop. Ajay had us turn all written assignments (except one, which I'll get to) in on these cards, which he handed out on Monday and kept available. His purpose was to keep the assignments brief, an exercise in brevity for us; but I discovered that here at last was the tool I needed not to lose all the Brilliant Ideas I'm forever generating then forgetting. I keep notebooks of all manner, but I tend to leave 'em behind because they're often inconvenient. These are shirt-pocket sized and can be filed in a variety of useful manners.

LESSON NINE: I vowed to carry these cards with me everywhere from then on. This resolve actually lasted only a few months, which may be another, delayed lesson, but they've been replaced with other technologies for remembering, uh, stuff.

(Incidentally, I understand Vladimir Nabokov wrote entire novels on index cards, one sentence per card, and arranged them at the very end. But he was weird.

Yeah. I should be so weird.)

The first Elronnian article was on Ideas From Your Life, more or less - actually, it was a rather dilatory interview. Then on a card we were to write down three situations from our own lives that would make good ideas, settings, etc. for stories. On one 3x5 card. Ajay was into brevity.

Then an article on research - which was why we were in the library. And the assignment: Write down three topics you'd like to research for story backgrounds/ideas/whatever. Now go research them.

And write down three more topics that catch your interest as you go along.

Well, that was actually easy, except for one thing. Well…two. Thing One was, the library had one book on Byzantine Architecture and none on Japanese ghosts. (To my delight they had plenty on serial killers, including one I want to get a copy of for myself.)

LESSON TEN: Always find out what time the library closes when you go in. I ran completely out of time, and they were not about to let this gang of out-of-towners check out books.

Sigh.

The final assignment of the day was: coonjine an idea from one card with one from another to make a story outline. Which proved to be frighteningly easy, but I was rather disturbed by the results. I never realized how much my imagination runs to the grisly. Anyone want a story about a little girl possessed by the ghost of Gilles de Rais?

Gary and I walked over to the local deli and bought sandwiches for dinner.

A small party went on that evening. Alan came in in the middle of it, having just completed the rewrite of the chapter he was going to give Algis and Tim for reading. (They'd agreed to look over one ms. by each participant.)

About this time I realized that I actually liked all these people. There were some who were pretty annoying - notably a guy named Steve Martindale, who was quite certain he was going to get rich writing car crash movies - but even them I liked at some very basic level.

I think there's a lesson there, but I'm damned if I know what it is.

Tuesday 25 April, 1989

Today's principal reading, children, was about Circulating. The article in question is reprinted in this year's WOF volume. Basically it's about how to get ideas from talking to strangers.

Class had been moved from the Baron Cove Inn to the Sag Harbor Inn, where the meeting facility was much better. Also they provided coffee and rolls, so getting up extra-early for breakfast was no longer a necessity but a luxury, which I eschewed for financial reasons. Sag Harbor isn't all expensive - they have some middle-price-range places. Sigh.

Tim Powers also got his first chance to lecture. Gaw-damn, he seemed nervous. I got the impression - shared with others - that he was a bit intimidated by Ajay. Understandable; I was intimidated by Ajay too. He's an imposing personality.

Tim's topic was sort of on what to do with an idea once you got it. He told us, for example, about seeing a strange short film: a guy was fishing. Sees a brown bag on the beach. Picks it up - it's a bag lunch. All right! Takes a bite of the sandwich -

- and the line snaps taut, the hook pierces his palate, and he's dragged into the water…

"Neat," thinks Tim. "Fishing, only backwards." And decides to see what he can do with it.

Now, he doesn't want to be ripping the film maker off so he thinks of another way to fish backwards. Image: guy with a fishing pole, line dropping into the water. Hey - what if the line goes up?

Okay, what are you fishing for in the air? Birds, of course. How? A kite with a baited hook or something.

At night.

Why at night?

Suspense, of course. He doesn't want to get caught fishing for birds. For this bird. Build the suspense; it makes a lot of noise when it's caught.

Why this bird?

These birds, uh, have pouches. They collect pretty shiny things like jackdaws.

Etc.

LESSON ELEVEN is really just Sturgeon's Other Law: Ask the next question. Follow where it goes. And ask the question you find there.

About now Ajay's begun smoking in the classroom, in direct violation of his own rule on the subject. He'd lasted a day and an hour - I was fairly impressed. Later, confronted with allergies (both Alan and I turn out to have problems with tobacco smoke - more on this bit of synchronicity later), he agreed not to do it again. No problem, as it didn't rain all week and he was able to step outside on the balcony any time his nicotine began fitting him.

(2003: I'm amazed - and very pleased - that he's still alive. Back then, Algis had an advanced case of That Nasty Cough Smokers Get Just Before The Doctor Tells Them It's Too Late To Give Up Smoking.)

Lunch: six of us, this time, wound up at the same bar. After about five minutes we suddenly noticed that five of us were the first-prize quarterly winners and the sixth was Virginia's roommate and Jamil's twin.

I haven't mentioned Jamil before… A Palestinian, but born in Michigan, raised mostly in Jerusalem, and currently an attorney in Washington, DC. His Personality Keynote: a repeated phrase, almost a hiccup, to the point where it's annoying. "You're beautiful. Let's do lunch." Varying versions of where this came from; one version is that a friend moved to California, and received a rancorous letter from his brother about what scum Californians are, so sent brother back a letter saying, "You're beautiful. Let's do lunch." The other is that in his office he can't tell people what he really thinks of them so when he doesn't think he should say what's on his mind he says that. Also, he likes to upset people - talk about sitting in the back of a bar at a convention and waving interesting people over to get into the conversation, and he'll respond, "where I come from, we sit in the back of the bar and point a bazooka at anyone interesting who walks in."

So I got this sudden weird feeling of connectedness: I was rooming with one of the other 1st prize winners, twinned with another, and the third was twinned with roommate. I think it was at this point that I realized that I would be completely incapable of resenting any of these people winning instead of Alan and I. Good thing, too, as it turned out:

Off to do the afternoon's assignment: Buttonhole a stranger, interview them and get a story idea. I worked on this for a while then went back to the room to ponder. I hadn't got anything yet.

'Bout 3:30 I set off again, and here I have to flash back to Monday -

- because I forgot to mention a phone call I made Monday afternoon. My maternal grandparents live on Long Island, about half an hour's drive from Sag Harbor (if that). There's no way I could spend four days that close to them and not at least visit, so we arranged for them to come into Sag Harbor and meet me for dinner about 4:30 Tuesday.

Back to Tuesday - I set off again in search of an interview victim. And, instead, found my grandparents, who'd arrived an hour early on the assumption that something was bound to go wrong and they'd better be prepared for it.

LESSON TWELVE: When you make appointments with old people expect them to be early. They've learned how not to be late, but it usually makes them early.

So we walked up and down Sag Harbor's one and only street with anything on it ("Main Street") for a while, trying to decide where to eat. I discovered that my grandfather had aged significantly since I last really had a chance to speak with him - he'd look at the menu of a restaurant, decide it was too "dear," and then want to check the same place out five minutes later. Short-term memory definitely going. Sigh. (2003: They're still alive, but Grandpa is lost in Alzheimer's disease; Grandma has Parkinson's.)

But long-term is making up the gap, a bit, and I got to hear more about times before I was born than I think I did in any week spent with them before. Kinda wish I'd had a tape recorder. I would've had half-a-dozen story ideas for the assignment, if the damn thing hadn't specified interviewing a stranger.

So we went looking for someplace to eat and found that there were three choices that weren't too expensive - the Paradise, the deli, and the same damn bar. The Paradise and the deli eliminated themselves: the former didn't serve dinner (the town of Sag Harbor rolls up the streets at 4:00 PM, which is no doubt a part of its rustic charm). This is why I never did get around to the soda fountain there, about which even more on Friday and Sunday - and the latter didn't have tables. Hobson's choice, but they didn't serve dinner until 5:00, so we found a park bench and sat for another forty minutes.

I made the mistake of asking how some of my grandparent's old friends were. "How's Aunt Tessie," I asked, thinking of a lady I'd called "Aunt" though she was no relative.

"We were at her funeral last week."

Oh. Sigh. So I tried some younger folks.

"How about Tony and Helen Vannis?"

"He died of cancer last year. She's got Parkinson's."

I gave up.

LESSON THIRTEEN: It isn't worth asking after the health of old people's friends. It just depresses everyone.

Dinner was nice, and they left me with a bag of bananas, oranges, and cookies, which stood me in good stead Later.

On the way back, I finally managed a decent interview - over at the marina across from the hotel, an electrician was installing lighting fixtures. I watched for a while and then asked about some adjustment he was making, and he started talking. I pretended to be from Kansas and not know anything about how marinas were run and that got him going on how it felt to be a permanent resident of a town that existed solely to serve the pleasure of rich folks who came out for a few months every summer.

LESSON FOURTEEN: Ideas are where you find them.

- which led, by a series of associations, to the story of Captain Future's Sidekick. See, the Wars are over, the Vicious Aliens have all been Pacified (one way or another) and the Chief calls C.F. and his S. into the office - basically to deliver a pink slip. "You're outmoded," he explains. "There's no more hero-work to be done."

CF'sS is secretly delighted; he's lived all his adult life in the shadow of this big boob and now he gets to watch him get dressed down as the boob he is.

Leaving, CF turns to his S for some reassurance -

- and the ending only works if you really make the reader understand how much S has lived in CF's shadow all these years, and how much he's resented it -

- because, finally, he can't do anything but give that reassurance. Not (though there may be an element of this) because his identity is tied up so tightly in the Idea of CF, but because, finally, he is CF's friend, and that comes before any resentment.

LESSON FIFTEEN: Changing the point of view can lead you to a whole 'nother story.

Party that night started in one room, moved to another (Alan's). Long discussions on Art Vs. Commercialism. The oranges went over pretty good.

Wednesday 26 April, 1989

Awoke ajoke agog agrog along the riverrun past shit and shower which brings us by a commodious vicus of recyrcultation back to the classroom in the moarning.

On the way over Alan took up a collection to buy Algis and Tim gifts from us all.

More chitter and chatter from the pros. Outside on the balcony for a group photo. An Elron article: Magic out of a hat. Basic concept: a bunch of pulp writers went into a room, each picked an Object in the room and (someone) demonstrated his ability to use each of these to generate a story idea. Elron picked a wastebasket. (Someone) thought a minute, decided it reminded him of one of those furry Russian hats, and generated a rather dull adventure plot around it. Elron then wrote his own somewhat better plot around said hat.

Which led to our assignment: each of us was assigned an object in the room. One individual got a pat of butter; another got the track lighting; a third was offered his own briefcase. Plot a story (on a 3x5 card, natch) around an idea generated by said object.

Note that the story need not, indeed probably should not, contain the actual object. Ajay gave an example of how he once sat fiddling with a paper clip, bent it into an interesting (to him) shape, and then burned the end black. Then wondered what it was and decided it was the firing pin for some superweapon and got a whole story out of that.

So. Tim P. assigned me to work with a vase of dried flowers.

Went over. Touched 'em, felt 'em. Spongy. Lung tissue. Made me think of breathing. A fairy tale bloomed in me widdle head, which may show up as a short novel or thereabouts some day.

Set in a mythical past of the distant future, a time that bears a relation to the here-and-now similar to the relation between the pseudo-medieval setting of the Disney Sleeping Beauty and the real middle ages. A time when blasters and swords are both "current technology," and magic and witchcraft are all the rage. In short, a time that some distant future might look back on as the generic Past. In this mythical time, a queen has baby, makes the usual mistake of not inviting one of the Wise Women. Wise Woman comes to christening anyway. Is killed in the act of doing something which everyone thinks is a curse. Her last words: "Death, death, baby's breath."

At this point the idea diverges. One side of me wants to go with my first impulse, that being the idea that it was a curse and the baby starts to breathe fire, the jerk who killed the wise woman goes a-questin' and finally comes back with the cure, the flower which To This Day We Know As Baby's Breath.

The other side, and I think I'll be going with this, has those last words be nothing more than last words. But everyone thinks it's a curse, and the aforementioned jerk goes out a-questin', looking for a cure for a curse which he doesn't even know what it is, and eventually comes back with the same flower. But in the meanwhile we get scenes at the palace with everyone panicking every time the baby hiccups, etc. A fairytale comedy.

LESSON SIXTEEN: Not only are ideas where you find them, sometimes there's too many of them. And SEVENTEEN: Don't automatically go with your first impulse.

The other assignment for the day was to write an essay "about 2500 words" discussing what we've gotten out of the workshop so far. Which wound up being a very rough draft of the first three days' worth of what you're reading now.

Also, the last thing before breaking Algis assigned us each a fourteen minute slot to come in and discuss the stories we'd given him and Tim. I was next to last. Since I'd already pretty well generated my 3x5 card, that left me with the afternoon and nothing much to do but write a short essay. Nooooooo problem, right?

Time for some exercise. I got out something I'd brought with me for the purpose: a flying disk made of cloth, with weights around the edge. I draped it over my wrist. "Salvador Dali's Frisbee," I explained.

Actually, the thing flies pretty well (though it's inclined to be carried by even light gusts, especially if you loft it), and several of us had a time flipping it around and discussing some abstruse points of physics Mark Maitz was interested in for an ongoing story.

Then I wandered up to Sag Harbor's one and only bookstore, and bought nothing…and then Alan and I wandered off looking for presents for Algis and Tim. And Edna; he'd collected more money than he expected and she'd contributed tremendously important to the success of the workshop.

We wandered for better than an hour and came up with very little, then I had to head back and get my critique. I'd submitted a fluffy little piece about a sentient car. Algis pegged it right away as a fluffy little piece. "Machines coming alive have been done," he observed. "But that's not the point. You're better than this. You're good enough to handle the real questions - where are we; how did we get here; where are we going; what can we do about it." Despite the implied compliment I didn't come out feeling all that good.

Tim, on the other hand, was very complimentary. "I liked it," he said. But I think he's generally easier to please than Ajay. Discussion with the other woffers led to the conclusion that the basic technique was Ajay tears you up then Tim bandages you.

I honestly don't remember eating any lunch or dinner that night. I may have made a PBJ, but I don't remember. (I'd bought basic PBJ fixings the first day to save money on food, but never used 'em much.) Worked on the Essay for a while then went to the only official room party we'd had. Swapped shaggy dog stories for a while with Alan, Algis, and others. Algis tells a mean shaggy dog story, but has to be coaxed into doing it. I asked him pointblank and he didn't feel like it, but then our Brit saved the day by asking what a shaggy dog story was. Heeheeheehee…

Also used up the remainder of those oranges and bananas.

Back to the room that night, and finished the essay till about 2 AM.

And bed.

Thursday 27 April, 1989

Skip all the wakingup shit. No breakfast. Packed and (per instructions last night) moved my stuff to a designated Suite, and checked out.

Meanwhile back in the classroom, we read some really WEIRD essays by Elron on the subject of What Is Art. He seemed to genuinely think that technique was antithetical to clarity (or perhaps that was just "technique beyond a certain point," which can be argued more plausibly; vide James Joyce. But actually Joyce is remarkably clear, in the sense that it's even more difficult to misunderstand than to understand him…)

Also Algis passed out a rather nice letter to the first-placers from Nancy Farmer, last year's Grand Prize winner. It was designed to allay the attack of nerves that was beginning to get to, I think, all of us by then.

Interesting quote follows.

"In 1987 the ceremony was held in New York. There were enthusiastic editors present to practically drag [Dave Wolverton] off to their printing presses when they heard he had a novel in progress. Agents were cruising like sharks…"

Remember that.

After some general final remarks we moved into the suite where baggage had earlier gone, and had lunch. Edna (or someone; but Edna is the usual suspect in these cases) had provided a largish cold cut tray and various munchies. We munched. Also turned in the essays, which had not been collected at the classroom. Ajay held court on the lawn and we discussed the business end of writing for a while.

And the bus came.

Load bus: load us. Farewell to Sag Harbor. Snapshot, Alan and I seated side by side on bus, Alan working on the conclusion to our latest collaborative masterpiece, I working on my fairy tale. Snapshot memory: trying to find toilet paper in one of those nastysweet smelling bus toilets.

LESSON EIGHTEEN: Always look before you leak.

Alan noted the blackening - not burning - of the forests by the expressway, which he attributed to acid rain. Made sense to me; I remember those forests as being very very green when I was a kid visiting my grandparents out there.

LESSON NINETEEN: You can go home again, but it doesn't help much.

Bus arrived in NYC right on schedule, dropped us at the UN Plaza Hotel, right across the street from the UN as advertised. Checked in, called home, and messed around in the room for a while, then headed for the WOTF Hospitality Suite.

This was to be, more or less, the nerve center for the next three days. Here I finally met Rachel Penk, who'd been the mysterious voice on the phone ever since the previous December, when Alan and I first heard we'd won. Also there was a scrapbook of photos and articles and stuff from WOFs past.

Dinner, such as it was that evening, was here, too: more cold cut platter, plus fruits and veggies and something that claimed to be soup.

LESSON TWENTY: When someone promises that all meals are included, bring food money. I put together something and chatted a while. Then someone - I can't recall who - took charge: it was Signing Time.

This was a new one on me. Nobody'd told us about this in advance. They take you down to a separate room and put you in front of a pile of about eighty million uncut page proofs - which is how Alan and I first saw the illustration for our story - and have you sign them. All of them. This was special acid-free paper which they were then going to bind into leather and sell for - are you ready for this? - a "suggested donation of $2000." This money goes to support the Contest. They said.

LESSON TWENTY-ONE: There's always somebody making a buck.

They split us into two groups for this. Alan was in the group taken down to the signing room first; while he was down there, I met Jack Williamson (who was a great deal of fun) and Jay Kay Klein. Also someone produced the Diplomatic Weekly or something like that - it's a sixteen-page newspaper that goes for $5 a copy. In the middle of it there was a five-page write-up on the Contest and Elron, including all sorts of minibios of the speakers for the Ceremony. Only later did I notice (on the front page) that this was a "sponsored" section - i.e., a five-page ad bought and paid for by Bridge.

LESSON TWENTY-TWO: If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Then down to the signing room: and gad that's an ugly illustration. By Todd Cameron Hamilton, no less. It looks like it was traced from a photo with no sense at all that proportions work differently on a line drawing. Sigh.

LESSON TWENTY-THREE: It's nice if you get a good illo, but don't worry about it. Don't count on it, either.

Actually, Virginia's story has an illo that would make a perfect illo for our story (if you've got the book see Page 223). But I don't feel bad; that was one of two illos for Virginia's (very long) story, and the other was ripped off almost completely from one of the Michael Whelan "Chanur" covers.

Started signing. Noticed right away that Alan had been having fun signing his name as many different ways as possible. Well, I wasn't about to let him top me; I have a history of screwing around with my signature and I pulled 'em all out of the hat. Some I signed (in red) right on top of where my name was printed. I was tired and getting a bit punchy.

And back to the Hosp Suite where Alan's group was…signing another 250 copies of the regular edition. So we got to see cover: Frazetta, with little naked space ladies on it. Surprise, surprise. Little winged naked space ladies. And, of course, when Alan's group was done, our group got to do the same thing. I briefly considered refusing, but went all sheeplike and did the Right Thing.

However…I may have done something nasty. I was farting around, varying my signature, and it occurred to me to wonder whether anyone would even notice if, say, I signed one "Ralph the Wonder Llama." I wondered that for a while…and then I wondered whether I'd done it. I honestly can't remember.

LESSON TWENTY-FOUR: You get pretty tranced-out after signing books for a while.

And so to bed, with a copy of the book finally in my hot little hands, and there I read Jamil's story. And Gary's. And Virginia's. Not, you understand, that I was feeling competitive or scoping out the competition (ha!) but because I figured, being the first place stories, they'd be the best.

…to sleep and dreams of workshops past.

Friday 28 April, 1989

I see I forgot to mention in Thursday's report that several woffers' "companions," including Alan's wife Jennie, had arrived Thursday. Consider it mentioned.

I got up per the clock and headed downstairs to go out. We'd been told to go to an Italian place called Il Mundo, about a block from the hotel, for brunch followed a talk by Charlie Brown (not, mind you, the cartoon character, nor the ex-CEO of AT&T. The publisher of Locus, the newspaper of the science fiction world). In the lobby I met Mark Maitz (from Los Angeles, and 2d place in Alan's and my quarter) and his companion. We walked out together looking for Il Mundo. It took us quite a while to find it because we walked right past it the first time.

"Brunch" turned out to be "continental breakfast." Coffee, soft drinks, croissants, and bagels. Nutrition? We don' need no steenkin' nutrition. Fredrik Pohl was there; also other Significant Persons.

After brunch we went upstairs to Il Mundo's meeting room. Charlie's talk was on the subject "Why you should all quit now." I don't think he convinced anyone; his matter was basically depressing Real Facts about the marketplace. Nothing new to me or anyone who reads Locus. He did cause me to nuke the novel I was working on, though. I'd been considering it anyway, because I'm not that enthralled by it anymore, and the one significant thing I came away from his talk with was…

LESSON TWENTY-FIVE: It's a lot easier to make a splash with your first novel than with your nth (where n is some number greater than one). So I've gone back to the drawing board to see if I can't come up with something at least moderately spectacular.

Incidentally, he thinks the current SF "boom" is about to "bust." I'm not at all convinced; I think he's thinking dinosaur. The SF boom/bust cycle was based on SF as a literary ghetto; in the wake of Star Wars and all its descendants, SF has become a mass market genre. This has an upside and a downside; the upside is that there is a permanent large audience for SF, but the downside is that the average sophistication level of that large audience is lower than the old audience. Books aimed at the more sophisticated audience, which will impress the more sophisticated audience, which would have been major SF titles in the days when the more sophisticated audience was a large percentage of the SF audience, will sell not-much-better than they did then…and as a result will be "poor sellers" in the new market.

LESSON TWENTY-SIX: Don't write to the Least Common Denominator - do your best work. But don't write in a manner that excludes/alienates the LCD, either.

(2003: I think myh evaluation of Charlie Brown's prescience has been validated by the markets of the past decade and a half. SF/F remains a major, but highly commercialized, market segment, driven by media tie-ins, sharecropped books, and interminable series featuring dragons, chicks with big breasts and bigger guns, or both. Nonetheless, we also have a marketplace where the likes of Kelly Link and China Mieville can - if not prosper - at least be publi

Alan and Jennie and I (oh my!) hit the streets. We'd both read the 1st- place stories the previous night (surprise, surprise…) and though (of COURSE) neither of us was being childishly impatient or nervous about it, we just sort of intellectually discussed the various stories' chances of winning, looking at the list of judges and going, "well, if she was one of the finalist judges, she'd probably like ours," or "Pournelle wouldn't like ours," or whatever. Alan wound up thinking Gary's would win; I figured on Virginia's. But hope springs eternal, right…?

We had six hours to do what we wanted - and "what we wanted" was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural History, and some shopping. Ah, to be young (2003: hey, I was 30…) and free in New York… We started walking for the MMA. Alan got a bit frustrated, I think, with Jennie and I because we kept getting interested in the contents of jewelry-shop windows and what he called "what fell off the truck sales." I saw a Russian Egg in one window and went in to ask: it was $500 (which is cheap for those things) so I decided that if Alan and I won the Big One I'd come back and buy it for Sheila (my wife). It's probably just as well we didn't win. Sheila would have been upset; can you imagine one of those things in a house full of kids and cats…? (2003: at the time, two cats; and my kids were 7 and, uh, 2.)

I had three Culinary Goals in New York: I wanted a chocolate Italian ice; an egg cream; and a good street dog. (There are street dog vendors in San Francisco, but they're no damn good. I got the first on the way to the MMA.

In the MMA, we mainly went through two exhibits. The Egyptian exhibit, part of the permanent displays, was stupendous. They have an entire temple in a specially-built room, set up to get daylight, with a pool that was empty but I gather that when it's filled they put lilies and papyrus plants in it. I've been to Egyptian exhibits in a lot of museums, and the "Treasures of Tutankhamen" exhibit that toured the US in the late '70s, but I've never seen anything quite like this. To walk up and see this thing gives you a sense of its sheer mass and historicity that no display of jewelry and random objects, even slabs and the like, can give - and that was humbling.

This was LESSON TWENTY-SEVEN, though I can't sum it up in a pithy saying.

The other exhibit we wandered through was Japanese 'stuff'. Swords, screens, incredible kimonos and hakamas, and so on. A bunch of those paintings you see reproduced of Kabuki actors with their eyes crossed. Jennie, who just picked up her MFA in theatre, was able to explain why they always have their eyes crossed in those pictures: those are of high-dramatic moments in plays the actors were famous for. You know how movie stills always show extremely dramatic moments? Same idea. And part of the stylization of Kabuki is that you cross your eyes to signal extreme emotion. (This also explains why they're always grimacing, snarling, laughing, etc., in those pictures.) LESSON TWENTY-EIGHT, again not easily summed up.

Then across the park to the MNH. We walked across the park, managing not to get lost or mislaid. Central Park is gorgeous in spring, at least during the day. This was about a week after what People magazine is calling "The Wilding," when a gang of black kids beat robbed badly damaged a white woman jogging in the park in the dark. (2003 update: apparently it didn't quite happen that way, but that's what we thought at the time ... ) Alan observed that they do this to black women a few blocks away and it never gets this kind of press. No, I observed, but it might if it was white kids doing it to black women. It's when it's interracial that it becomes News. More fine reportage from your Free Press, helping to keep alive great American traditions like racism. Grumble.

Again, in the MNH we targeted two exhibits: the dinosaurs and the rocks. I looked closely at the teeth of a T. rex and thought to myself that I'd met mammals whose entire bodies were smaller than one of those teeth. Alan and Jennie had some interesting comments about the relative size of mosasaurs. I've seen the exhibit before, many times, but it never fails to astound me in some new way. (2003: A few years later, we took our kids to NYC, and the single most important goal was to show them this dino exhibit. Which, lo and behold, was closed for rennovation. Oh well...)

On the way to the rocks I got interested in Gary Larson's "Far Side of Science" exhibit and promised to catch up with Alan and Jennie at the rocks. I actually caught up with them at the gift shop, where I was looking for something for Sheila (I'd bought stuff for the kids upstairs at the Dino shop), and then again at the rocks. Great stuff, but it doesn't translate well to the written word. Go see it sometime.

They keep the rocks in near-darkness, so my eyes hurt a bit when we hit the street. We decided to eat quickly, so I got my street dog, then caught a cab to Forbidden Planet, one of NY's two SF book stores. What a disappointment that was - we'd have been better off spending the time at the museums, or finding a good used book store. I did find a few things I wanted, including DESTROY! ("the world's loudest comic book") and a copy of Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides, which I later had him sign, but the store was pretty much a washout in terms of finding things I couldn't have found at home.

Back to the hotel, stopping briefly on the way for Alan and Jennie to grab a Haagen-Dazs cone, and into another cab to go to WBAI, the big Pacifica radio station for NYC. There we were to be interviewed by Mike Sargent. They had a bit of trouble finding us a studio, though.

Eventually they found us one. Mike started playing with knobs. Through the glass I flashed a "thumbs up" at his engineer, "Flash" Gordon. He looked puzzled. "I've always wanted to do that from inside a sound studio," I explained, but I don't think he got it.

Sargent started doing sound checks. "When I point at you, talk into your mike." We didn't have much to say for a sound check so we started reading the story, alternating as Mike alternated mikes. When he was done the sound check he played back a bit of it to see how it was reaching the tape recorder.

That was when things started getting spooky: I heard the voice on the recorder and couldn't tell whether it was Alan or me talking.

But things got spookier. Sheila's birthday, my birthday, and our wedding anniversary all fall within a one-month period from the second of one month to the second of another. Earlier in the day I'd learned that Alan's birthday, Jennie's birthday, and their anniversary all fall into that same period if you extend it just one day further back. One would almost think that there was something to this astrology business…

Our voices are similar because we're physically and culturally similar (both displaced Northeasterners). Physical similarity is a little weirder, as we're not related.

How similar? The first time Sheila met Alan (after we got word of winning, but before the Event), she saw the two of us in the rear view mirror of her car and did a double take. "My god," she said to her sister, "they're brothers." And, yes, there is that kind, and maybe even that degree, of similarity.

Anyway: at the end of the interview, Sargent remarked that he'd seen us doing something he'd never seen before. He'd ask a question and we'd glance at each other and know who was going to answer it, with none of this "You want to take this?" business. We were finishing each other's sentences. Hell, we even spoke in unison several times.

This had been going on all week, but Sargent pretty much brought it to (at least my) conscious attention.

Weeeeeeeeird.

Back to the hotel again. Up to the Dag Hammerskjold suite for dinner, the first real meal all day. A bunch of folks I knew had begun showing up, from Marta Randall to Gary's lady friend Lori Ann White (former woffer, former Clarionette, member of the WordShop, had a story in the then-current Full Spectrum anthology). I introduced myself to Fred Pohl, which I hadn't quite dared do before, and he asked which story I'd written. "Oh, you weren't one of the judges for my quarter," I said.

"That's okay," he said, "I was one of the finalist judges."

Ulp. Up come the butterflies. I told him which story, he nodded sagely, said something like "Good story."
- which led to another brief round of speculation. ("Fred would vote for ours," I decided. "It's the only one with real social relevance.")

Sheila showed up about an hour earlier than I expected. Which was fine with me, I'd missed her, but it certainly caught me by surprise. After dinner back to the Hospitality Suite for a while, schmoozing and looking at Charles Sheffield's books of space photos. Then to bed, setting the clock for Very Early because Sheila had forgotten to pack a slip to go with the dress she was planning to wear to the Ceremony next day.

Saturday 29 April, 1989

And here it was WotF Day at last. Up fairly early and rushed downstairs to avail ourselves quickly of the brunch offering - this time, they'd given us a decent brunch and us with no time (so we thought) to eat it. I got our nametags from Simone and we ate heartily but quickly and then rushed out to get a cab.

The cab took us to, yes, a Fifth Avenue clothing store where Sheila asked for the appropriate item. While they were fetching it she looked at dresses and wound up buying one for $300. Which she hasn't had the opportunity to wear yet.
(2003: Well, of course, eventually she did ...)

Then back to the hotel. Sheila went up to dress while I walked across to the U.N.

I have to tell you, people: I was raised to think of that as a Sacred Place. I've been there before - we took a class trip there in fourth grade and I sat in one of the chairs and listened to speeches, flipping the earphone thingy between languages because I understood the proceedings every bit as well in French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese as I did in English. I was ignorant, but at least I was multilingually ignorant. I would have been just as ignorant in Swahili or Martian.

So it was a strange and sobering feeling to walk up to this Sacred Place not as a tourist but as somebody with some real business there, something actually to do there. Maybe not a diplomat, who are the High Priests of that Sacred Place, but at least as someone with a legitimate reason - perhaps a worshipper come to make sacrifice. That feeling is one of the Big Things I'll carry with me from this experience for the rest of my life, so I guess it's LESSON TWENTY-NINE.

The ceremony was to be held in the Trusteeship Council chamber. If I'm not mistaken, the very last colony overseen by the Trusteeship Council had been released and declared independent in the last year or so, so I guess the Trusteeship Council chamber was pretty much available. At any rate, the UN has its own little writers' club and they'd arranged for the chamber to be available to us.

I asked the guard for directions to the chamber and he said, "Third floor," so I took the escalator up to three and got off and sure an' gomorrah there was a sign a-sayin' TRUSTEESHIP COUNCIL and I went in and bloody if I wasn't on the balcony so I went back down to the guard and explained that no, I was one of the participants, not audience, so he gave me directions to the second floor - big deal, take the escalator one floor instead of two - and into the Diplomats' Lounge, which is how you get into the Trusteeship Council chamber, and I went there and sure enough there were Ajay and Fred Harris (of Author Services, a literary agency whose sole client is The Estate Of L. Ron Hubbard) and a number of other people running around getting things together.

They didn't seem to think I could help, so I found an out-of-the-way place to sit for a while. I think it was Morocco. There was an abandoned magazine on one of the seats: EMERGENCY: MOZAMBIQUE. I took it to see what was going on in Mozambique. Interesting stuff. Ajay came over and made a request: "I'm always scrambling to get the support for next year's Contest," he said, so if it should happen your story is the Grand Prize winner, please say something nice about thanking Elron and Bridge and how wonderful this opportunity they've provided is and so on. It makes the politics a lot easier for me." Well, anything to make the politics easier for Ajay, I guess. I wondered if his coming to me about this Meant Something, but then I saw him whispering to the other first place winners.

So then Alan and Jennie showed up, and then Sheila. They moved us woffers down to the front. Jennie came with Alan; Sheila chose not to come down and sit in the back of the front row. Instead she sat on the center aisle and took pictures.

After a bunch of futzing about the ceremonies got started. There were two panels - one on The Artist's Role In Shaping The Future, and one on The Scientist's Role In Choosing The Future. The first featured Kelly Freas and a bunch of writer-types. Frankly, it wasn't very memorable - much like any convention panel I've watched.

The second was more memorable: featuring Dr Sheldon Glashow, Dr Jerry Pournelle, Dr Yoji Kendo, a couple more PHuDds, and Algis moderating. Algis began by asking Glashow to make a statement (he was going to have everyone make statements) and Glashow made it: an incredible didactic on the general shittiness of American education, with lambastation of SDI and the so-called "cold fusion" that was making headlines that year along the way. By the end of which Dr. Pournelle was bright red and smoke was pouring out of his ears, so Algis left him for last, letting him cool down. The others were fairly interesting but nothing spectacular until Algis let Dr. Pournelle have his say.

Give Dr. Jerry this: he did not interrupt Glashow, nor did he personally attack Glashow or his position. Instead he simply set it into contrast with a bright vision of the Promethean Future. And give him this: even when you don't agree with him - in my case, most of the time - he's a helluva speaker.

So that panel was kind of fun.

Then a break for "lunch" - finger sandwiches and no-host bar. At which I told Dr. Pournelle pretty much what I just said about him a few lines back, to which he gave a grunted no-response. I got the impression that he was more annoyed that I didn't agree with him than flattered that I liked his speechifyin'. Oh, well.

Back to the Trusteeship Council - well, no, not quite. Back to the Diplomats' Lounge, where we all lined up. Then Fred called in the Prize Ladies, who carried in the trophies. These things are neat-looking, better looking than either hugoes or nebulas. Mind you, I'd rather have a hugo or a nebula, but these are better looking. After that, Fred called first the judges and then the woffers, who one by one went up to the front, shook hands with Ajay, and took seats. Now, the schedule said, came the WotF awards - pins & needles time, you betcha.

But wait! There's more!

Because the fellah from the UN writers' club who'd arranged this whole thing had an award of his own to give out, medallions to each of the judges. And called them each individually, with "acceptings" for Niven and Campbell and Norton and McCaffrey who couldn't be there. (Pournelle accepted for Niven, no surprise, and earned Niven a chunk of my respect - "Larry wanted to be here, but he'd agreed to appear at a convention before the date of this was announced, and Larry always keeps his commitments.") All this while, the five trophies were sitting staring at us, and there was that big one in the middle…with masking tape across its plate.

Pins and needles became nails and then spikes.

And then they announced the Runners-Up.

And then the 3rd Place winners.

And then the 2nd Place winners.

And then the 1st Place winners.

By quarter, which meant that Alan and I were the last to go up there. We each said a quick word - I was the only person, as I recall, to thank a spouse/posslq/whatever. I thanked Sheila "for putting up with me." Everyone was shaking Ajay's hand; I think he was a bit flustered when I hugged him.

And then came the Big Moment, Nancy Farmer came forward to announce this year's winner…they took down the Big Trophy and had trouble getting the damn masking tape off and whaddaya know: Alan was right and Gary won.

The feelings at this moment are incredibly complex. Nothing of resentment. A slight sadness at not winning. A greater happiness at a friend having won. But, most of all, simply drainedness.

Gary had to actually make a speech at this point, and I kinda felt sorry for him; he was the official Quiet One all week, but what the hell.

And then photography and back to the hotel.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Alan and Jennie had to leave almost immediately after the ceremonies - they had a flight out that evening.

There were exactly one editor (actually, a pair of editors - Kris Rusch and Dean Smith of the Pulphouse gang) and one agent (Fred Harris, who wasn't exactly looking for clients) at the ceremony and the aftermath. So much for agents and editors crawling all over Gary, let alone the rest of us mere first place winners.

They had copies of the book passed out like pamphlets at a Christian Science Reading Room. Also champagne; I drank two-and-a-half little glasses, which was all the alcohol I had all week and was more than enough.

Some obnoxious little kid was going around to everyone asking if they were in the book and demanding a signature if they were. I signed. You think I'm crazy?

They shooed us out for a while and set the room up for dinner. We went back and ate dinner. Pretty good stuff, too. Sheila and I wound up at table right next to Sheldon Glashow and wife. I think Gary was there too but I was too buzzed to be sure of anything at that point. I only regained consciousness in time to watch the entertainment - a rather cool improv troupe. The asked for "the top news story of 2089," and someone shouted "the defrosting of Ollie North;" then they asked for a musical style to do it in and someone else shouted "Baroque."

And by god they did it, including a weird recitatif addressed to a hypothetical crowd of journalists. "They're dropping the baggie into the boiling water now. Don't push, you'll all have a Birds-Eye view…"

Very funny. Maybe you had to be there.

After dinner, a party. Sheila left early but I stayed and chattered with all sorts of nice people. I also discovered a Total Perspective Vortex, a box made entirely of mirrors set at trapezohedral angles and about the size of a coffin. Stick your head in (it's lit), look around, and watch your identity dissolve. Steve Martindale thought it was ego-reinforcing. Figures.
Mark Maitz had a plan for getting together a bunch of west-coast woffers for an autograph session at A Change Of Hobbit. (2003: It never happened.)

Eventually to bed.

Sunday 30 April, 1989: THE MIDDLE OF THE END:

Brunch was back to rolls and coffee. Sigh. We ate with Marta Randall and daughter, and discussed A Number Of Things including the proper way to approach an editor who'd had your story too long, and how to mention previous publications without bragging. Marta remains one of my favorite people in the world.

We packed and checked out, and put our bags in the Hospitality Suite, then went out in quest of an egg cream. The streets were all blocked off because George Bush was in the neighborhood. So what? I wondered. Were they trying to keep him from escaping? In an hour on the streets we found one, and also Sheila found a luggage shop and spent another $600. When we got back to the Hosp Suite Rachel remarked that Sheila has a black belt in shopping.

People were leaving in clumps - the party was definitely over. Hugs of goodbye to all manner of people. Sigh.

Time came for us to leave, and we shared a limo with Mark Anthony and his sister. This was the first time I'd ever been in a stretch limo.

The approaches to the airport were all blocked-off. Want to guess why?

That's right: George Bush.

(2003: This would be George Bush the Elder. He was President in 1989. Yeah, I know you knew that, but you'd be shocked how many of your fellow citizens don't...)

But we got there just in time, said goodbye to Mark and his sister, and got out of the limo.

THE END OF THE END

I bonked my head on the trunk getting my suitcase out.

The check-in lady was in a bad mood, but I think we cheered her up a bit. She got us good seats and checked our luggage. Then I went to the bathroom and came back to find that Sheila had done some more shopping - presents for her sister, my sister, and more for the kids. Yup: black belt.

Sigh. Onto the plane…which was half an hour late taking off.

Guess why. Right again.

I wish they'd managed to keep him in the UN neighborhood…but I guess they weren't good about checking limos leaving the area; at least they didn't check ours.

It also turned out that he'd taken off from Newark, not LaGuardia, so I don't know why they had LaGuardia blocked off. I do know why the flight was late - they don't let anything take off or land within 50 miles of where a President is taking off or landing. Grumble.

Flight home was pretty dull. We didn't buy headphones; I read the rest of the anthology, Sheila read magazines and Joseph Campbell. At SFO the kids were jumping up and down with impatience - I remember, as a kid, being pretty excited picking Daddy up at the airport; picking both parents up must be even better fun.

And home.

Thanks for reading all this.