It was one hell of a earth-shaking to not make Clarion West. I thought I recovered from it pretty well, facing front and moving forward.  I haven’t done any writing since then, but that’s more a time issue than anything (I’m seriously backlogged on grades).

Then the CW networking baegan at the CW forum.  Hey, they need to network.  I want them to network.  But now I know why private forums are usually set up for groups like this.

I am very pleased to see some friends made it into CW.  Sandra I met last year on the forum.  Tracie and I frequent each others’ blogs.  KC is a fellow WotF 26 writer.  I chatted with Frank some the past few weeks.  I am proud of all of them and wish them the best.

But there’s a sinking feeling in my chest when I see their excitement and know I’m not part of it.

I don’t deserve to be at CW more than any of the people that made it.  I’m not that narcissistic.  I wouldn’t even claim to want it more than any of them.  How would I know?  Several days of 300+ hits here suggest a lot of people wanted it pretty badly.  But now I’m on the outside looking in at the people I was sharing this tension with, this buildup.

It means nothing, in the long run.  Not being selected means that someone didn’t like my story/stories.  There will always be people who don’t like my stories.

I am getting tired of a lot of the condolences being past my way.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the sentiment and the people offering them, but the cliche of it all gets old, like hearing the same line repeated in the receiving line at a funeral.

There are tons of pro writers that didn’t go to Clarion.  This is a fact and I accept it.  How many of those writers tried to go to Clarion and were rejected?  Twice?  Even dropped from waitlist to rejected?

You should definitely apply next year.  That’s basically telling me that my career will be the same place next year that it is this year, that I might as well start piling hopes in the same place they fell from this year.  I’d like to think I can get enough momentum going into (and out of) WotF that I won’t need Clarion next year (though may find it in my schedule a few years later, since I don’t expect a career explosion overnight).

I really thought you were going to make it.  Yeah?  So did I.  I guess that makes us both wrong.  That’s probably part of the problem: I was so sure I would make it.  I would never be that sure sending a story to Analog or F&SF; why would Clarion be any different?  Karma and hubris don’t get along.

So I wish the CW and C-SD crews well, but I’ve got to take a few steps back.  I won’t be visiting the CW forums anymore, at least not for a good long while.  I do want to extend a big thanks to Ken for his kind words on that forum (despite hitting most of the above); it means a lot to know that I was part of other people’s journey, regardless of how it ends.

Once again, I feel very alone as a SF writer in Tennessee.  It was nice, for a little while, to feel like part of something bigger.