2002 Dargon Writers' Summit

Visit our 2002 Summit Flickr page to see all the photos plus captions!

The 2002 Dargon Writers' Summit was very special, and a wonderful experience that few of us will ever forget.

As you know, each year one of our writers plays host for a few days as the rest of us descend upon their home town for a weekend of magazine work, discussions about writing, the obligatory tourism, and social teambuilding. This year, however, was very different. Instead of visiting yet another American city, we were welcomed to Scotland by our Aberdeen-based writer, Stuart Whitby.

Since this would be a rare and expensive undertaking, Stu expanded the Summit from the usual three days to nine, giving us the opportunity to see much more of the area than just one city. In fact, he would have us on the road every day, seeing several sites per day, and eventually circumnavigating much of Scotland. It's unfortunate that only seven of our writers could afford the time and money to make the trip, for it was an absolutely fabulous time.

This year, our usual balance of 1/3 formal working sessions and 2/3 tourism and socializing was quite upset by the fact that we'd be in a different location each day, with no predictable timetable. Still, we were able to get in several discussions on topics such as effective critiquing, writing action scenes, and religion, as well as a dramatic reading of ghost stories we'd written along the way.

Although we spent the vast majority of our time being tourists, that time was hardly wasted in a land where the Middle Ages actually happened! We visited five castles, two cairns, a motte and bailey fort, two ruined cathedrals, studied a medieval weapons and armor at a museum, flew birds at a falconry, took a ghost tour, visited a distillery, drank absynthe, and learned about fishing at an aquarium, fisheries museum, and working fishing village. Among the non-topical activities were go-karting, cliff-jumping at the Linn o' Dee, and the obligatory visit to Loch Ness.

Looking back at it, Scotland invigorated our imaginations, gave us more insight into medieval life and material to work from, and simultaneously brought us all closer together, and it will remain vivid in our minds for many, many years to come.

At right are thumbnail versions of some of the pictures we took at the Summit. Clicking on an image on this page will bring up the full-sized picture with a more detailed caption. The photos generally are a reasonably-sized 30-65k each.

If you find these images interesting, check out our other Summits, which are documented on our Dargon Writers' Summit page.