Being There

As I write this, I’m preparing to attend Dublin 2019 – an Irish Worldcon. This will be my third Worldcon. I made it to Loncon3 in 2014, Sasquan in 2015, and four years later I’m diving in again, this time in Dublin’s fair city.

I’ve been to Dublin before, though it seems an age ago. To be fair, strictly speaking, it was last century. But this time is different. Instead of playing tourist, exploring the Guinness Brewery, Temple Bar, Trinity College and so on, I’ll be visiting another visitor. A world-within-a-world… the phenomenon that is the Science Fiction Travelling Extravaganza, dropping its anchor each year in a different city and straddling the world, many-tentacled, like Cthulhu’s benign twin.

Three Worldcons, and three books begun… none finished yet, but the third is mostly drafted and partly edited (there are reasons for that odd combination), and is really getting me fired up. I seem to have found, at last, the story I needed to tell, and it turns out it’s actually ten stories. All I can say at this point is that I’m bending a few rules – something I’m rather fond of doing, sometimes to my detriment. Eventually I’ll go deeper into how I began writing and what I’ve done so far.

There’s something qualitatively different about being there, isn’t there? Today’s techno-globalised world keeps us all connected all the time, and yet physical presence at an event is more than a gloss coat; more than mere icing on the cake. It’s kindling to the soulfire. Without being in the same building as thousands of like-minded people now and again, I’d never be able to maintain the momentum of conviction that I’m not alone, and that I’m pursuing a goal that means something.

And in an everyday sense, too, being there is important. You have to show up for work, even if work is just going for a walk to think about your latest character arc, or researching something obscure online. Writing really does mean altering one’s lifestyle – perhaps subtly, but altering, nonetheless.

And that’s what has led to this third trip, for me. Here I am, about to take the plunge – well, the ferry – and cross the Irish Sea. I have my laptop, a supply of snacks, clothes (mostly sensible), my passport, my health, a tin whistle (behave, or I might play it at you), and a stack of nice new business cards on order, arriving tomorrow.

I’ll see some of you there!

Sláinte!