http://www.clarkesworldmagazine.com/bowes_02_08.html
Link: Clarkesworld Magazine » I Like Writing but Hate Being a Writer by Richard Bowes.
I said that aloud as I sat stone cold sober at the World Fantasy convention in Saratoga Springs last fall. All over the lobby, bright faced young writers fresh out of workshops gazed covertly at editors and agents who passed them by with that blank eye that acknowledges no one. Desperate older writers without publishers circled endlessly like raptors over a barren landscape, while a well-oiled horror writer strode within an entourage comprised of his smiling wife and adoring groupies. (...)
The air was crisp, the foliage still turning. For a long weekend this fall, the streets of the tiny, picturesque town were flooded with what I've come to think of as The Blob, that floating spec fiction community that assembles, breaks down into component parts, and then reassembles at the next preordained spot....
(((It helps me a lot that I get around so much. For instance, Finnish science fiction fans are really artsy and elegant, whereas it's the normal
Finns who closely resemble sci-fi fans.)))
