Day: March 23, 2009

the actual rejection

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 14 Comments

For purposes of comparison, I am posting the contents of my rejection below. I hope that doesn’t offend anyone (including Clarion SD personnel). If it does, tell me and I’ll take it down; I’m not looking to step on anyone’s toes here. I simply wonder whether they all say the same thing or not, especially the way this one is worded. It’s very nice and feels halfway between personal and form, like there are two or three different rejection emails depending on your score. 

Dear Scott Baker:

Thank you for applying for the 2009 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop at UC San Diego. Your application has been carefully reviewed. We regret to inform you that you have not been selected for admission. However, the admissions panel feels that you work shows promise and says you came “very close” to being admitted. The reviewers encourage you to keep writing and to reapply in 2010.

Thank you for your interest in Clarion.

Cordially,

Tania Mayer
Program Coordinator
 

This was received three days after the posted deadline for notifying acceptances.  Feel free to compare your message to mine.  I’m curious if they are different.  You can post your letter in a comment if you like.  Whatever.  

For those of you that, like me, got a thanks-but-no-thanks, keep writing and stay in touch.  If we work together, we can all get in next year.  Or better yet, succeed without any workshop but each other.

-Oso

My Clarion SD Fate

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

Finally.  It’s a no.  I’m a little surprised since I though my application was stronger for SD than for Seattle, where I was waitlisted.  But reviews are subjective and there are some definite weaknesses in “Leech Run” and “Glow Baby” starts out fairly slow.  So I understand.  I won’t sneeze at my waitlisting for CW.  Maybe a slot will open for me, maybe it won’t.

So now what?  I guess I’ll check the usual suspect websites for the fates of others to offer congratulations or share condolences.  Then it’s back to writing.  It’s about time to finish up drafting my Kree story so I can enter the much more scientific editing process.  I should probably resume work on a novel, probably my military clone novel (wipe that Star Wars image out of your mind) as it seems the most promising.  The workshops had me focused on short fiction for a while.

I’m thinking of applying for Uncle Orson’s Literary Boot Camp.  It’s just a week, but it’s like $750 without room or board.  

I’m definitely going to investigate the convention circuit, trying to hone in on the most writer-friendly.  If anyone can offer recommendations, I’d be glad to hear.  Closer is better, but I have family in Dallas (not at all close to my end of Tennessee).  

Assuming no spots open at CW (the assumption I must run with for my own sanity), I’ll at least consider applying next year.  Circumstances may prevent me, but ambition won’t.  Unless I make it big before 2010.  Ha!

Congratulations and good luck to those that were accepted into Clarion, East or West.  

-Oso

The things you find…

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I was surfing the contents of my own harddrive, as I am prone to do every so often, and rediscovered an old story of mine.  It was so old the byline was S. Winfield Baker rather than Scott W. Baker.  I don’t remember submitting it anywhere and I have no record of sending it out, but I had gone to the trouble of typing “Disposable Manuscript” at the top.

It was a story set in a world where people choose to save themselves as computer programs before they die, that signalling the end of their “fleshtime” but not their lifetime since they live forever as programs.  The idea was that exciting memories would be hot commodities for the program-people since they can’t do exciting stuff.  Even if they could, they lacked the adrenaline to truly enjoy thrills.  Memories of thrills from their fleshtime were the closest they could get.  These memories end up no more than computer files and can be transferred to others.  If someone in storage had real money (useless inside the program), they could pay flesh people to do what they wanted to remember in exchange for the right to acquire that memory.  I’m not sure it took that many words to describe the setting in the story.

Anyway, I had put the story away as not SF enough.  Can you believe it?  Sure the guy doing the stunt is a real person and doing stuff that is (kind of) feasible in present society, but the story falls apart without the speculative elements.

It’s a better story than I ever gave it credit for being.  I don’t think it’s pro-calibur, but I’ll probably brush it up and circulate it through some semi-pro zines.  I may Critter it first.  Some of the techniques were clever.  I wonder if I did them intentionally.

  • The story is a memory that is interrupted a few times by program-people chatting in text-like format.
  • The story is told in first person, the flesh person being the POV character.
  • It’s really supposed to be the memory roughly as perceived by the program-person.  The sensory events are good but need more tastes and smells.
  • The POV character is part of a clever little subculture.

It’s not brilliant, but it’s cute.  A little disturbing, too.  It might have more meaning in it than some of my better stories.  Death, as a theme, often plays well.  This story gives a reasonable first person account of dying since the memory is transferred to someone else.  The explanation of why everyone can’t do that needs a lot more strength, but otherwise I was pleasantly surprised by this old story.  We’ll see what comes of it.

-Oso