From: Tavia Chalcraft tavia@btinternet.com

Una wrote:

...

Sadly, I miss the fan fiction writing workshop .... I'd love to hear some reports from this.

Actually it was extremely disappointing. It was being run by someone B5

who

I didn't know, as well as Nickey Barnard, and no-one apart from the B5-er (least of all Nickey) got a word in edgeways.

Unfortunately Tavia's right. Nickey did try to keep steering things back on track, but the other panellist (Morag Kerr, to name and shame) kept taking over. She wasn't even a writer, just an editor (not to malign editors in any way, but what the panel needed was writers). There was little opportunity for anyone else to contribute or raise issues, so maybe it was a good thing that there weren't very many (about a dozen people at the most, I would say). That's not fair to any budding writers present who might have wanted to kickstart their fanfic career.

So Michael Sheard's interruption with his drill party was if anything a blessed relief, rather than a nuisance interruption. (Yes, it was amusing, but if this had been a lively workshop going on all cylinders I'd have been livid. Can I suggest to the con com that nothing like this happens next time? Losing ten precious minutes of a high octane session can really disrupt the flow.)

Neil