At one convention, maybe a year or so ago, this was an actual title of a panel I was on – Pros at Cons. The idea was to explore what a professional (writer, or artist) actually DOES at a convention, how they might approach it differently from the reader, gamer or fan attendee.

[For those who haven't been at a con for awhile, scroll to the end for a short primer…]

The con goers get issued with a program which details the panels which will be available over the course of the convention weekend. There is a limited number of useful topics for such occasions, and some of the hoarier topics have been relentlessly trotted out at every con since God Created Convention.

This is where we come in, the pros you see seated behind the tables in the hotel conference rooms, facing the serried ranks of either depressingly empty or intimidatingly full chairs set out in rows before us.

You get to this point – you’re a professional. You’ve published books or stories, you’ve been PAID for that, or you’re a professional artist, or editor in the field, or simply an expert on some topic and were collared to take part in a panel discussing same. The panel of “Pros At Cons” looked at what was expected of the folk on THIS side of the table, the pontificators – whether we were really here as revered professionals or whether we were the hired entertainment, the performing seals, planted in our seats by the program planners to keep the masses happy and out of mischief over the course of a weekend.

There are many reasons one becomes a writer – and at least one of them involves a fundamental personality trait: writers are notorious for being loners. It’s a solitary profession where you retire to your office and face off with your computer, and it’s you in your own world surrounded by characters and creatures of your own making.

Some of us can shrug that off and at least put on a show of being gregarious at conventions, mingling and schmoozing and generally mixing with the crowds – and, to all intents and purposes, actually enjoy ourselves. For others, it isn’t so easy. Some folk are genuinely quiet and shy and not natural public speakers.

If you happen to run across me in a crowded party full of people I barely know, I’m likely to be the one cowering in a corner and hoping that someone might start a conversation because I sure as hell am not going to walk up to a stranger and stick out a hand and introduce myself. However – put me on a panel where I am supposed to speak about writing, and I blossom into an articulate and eloquent speaker with active opinions which I am not at all shy about expounding on or defending. It touches my passion, and that changes everything. I am no longer just a writer, I am WRITER, hear me roar. This is something that defines me. And I can conquer the tongue-tied shy little girl who often dominates my social interactions with strangers. When I am wrapped in that writer cloak, the things I have to say become meaningful given the writerly context in which they are uttered.

People like me go to conventions because we have written books, and conventions are where our readers are. At the one I was just at last weekend , I have had several people come up to me in the hallways just to tell me, “I liked your books”. That, in itself, is a pearl beyond price.

Ask any writer and they will tell you – we have no way of knowing what happens to our books once they’re out there, once they’re on shelves and in readers’ hands, and we have no further control over any of it. Hearing feedback – particularly when it’s the positive kind – is the only way we have of being able to gauge how our words affects those who read them. We go to conventions to meet people like this, people who have read our work.

We also go, and present ourselves at serried ranks of panels, because what we are really hoping to do is introduce ours