Ever waited a really long time for something just to realize you have to wait some more? Welcome to my world.
I got an email from Clarion West. I’ve been waitlisted. This means that if John Doe is accepted, says he’s going, then develops a case of malaria that prevents him from attending, I’m in. Actually it is reasonable that someone would drop out of a six-week event like Clarion West. Job issues, money issues, love life issues, spontaneous success, spontaneous combustion…lots of possibilities. I do not wish these issues on anyone, but if they come up, I’m here.
It’s not clear how long the waitlist is. Just me? Two or three of us? A whole minor league team worth? Do I get a call for any dropout or just another male? I guess the issue is merely academic.
Still no word from San Diego. It should come tomorrow. I’m still holding out hope. I really think that application was stronger. We’ll see.
Good luck to the Clarion West class of 2009. I’ll be watching for your names in the big zines; you watch out for mine. It will be there.
Jordan Lapp (first applicant accepted for this year’s CW, congratz to him) posted his application essay on his blog. I thought this was a great idea, so here’s mine. I haven’t been accepted yet, but my phone is still connected.
Clarion West Application Essay
Scott W. Baker
Howdy, I’m Scott. Yes, I said it: howdy. I’m not quite sure why I say it. I was born near Rochester, NY – not exactly a “howdy” place. I moved to Tennessee when I was four, grew up surrounded by other displaced Yankees, none of whom said howdy. So why do I say it? It’s just another part of me that defies explanation.
I can’t explain why I wear Hawaiian shirts to work in the winter. Nor my (platonic) obsession with penguins. Nor why I have a Spanish nickname (Oso) but can’t speak the language. I certainly can’t explain why I have to quote Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles every time I teach an algebra class about radicals.
Oops, busted. By day, I masquerade as a high school math teacher.
Believe me when I tell you I am a good math teacher. Some of my students love me. Some despise me. Most regard me with the passing amusement owed a grown man imitating an applauding Tyrannosaurus. Do they remember that I was teaching them the triangle inequality when I did that? I blissfully choose to believe they do.
So why is a happily employed math teacher applying for a speculative fiction workshop? Why do amputees develop itches in their missing limbs? Whether it’s real or not, I feel there is a part of me missing, a part that can entertain, inspire, engross, or at least awaken something in people that wasn’t there before. I teach for a living; what I am is a writer. That’s an itch I have to scratch.
My favorite distraction.
Everyone that writes knows it is impossible to find time to write. If you want to have time, you must make time. Making time is one of the hardest things I have tried to do in my life. It has become even harder in the past two years since the most beautiful little distraction entered my life – Abigail. That two-year-old is the sweetest little migraine ever born. How do I tell her, “Not now, Abby, Daddy’s writing a story about energy-eating people in outer space?” So I try to work around her: losing sleep, postponing test grades, writing on the toilet, losing more sleep…and still occasionally saying “Not now, Abby, Daddy’s writing a story about the moral dilemmas of using clones to serve in the military.”
Six weeks of “no Abby, Daddy’s in Seattle” will be very tough for me, as will being apart from my equally beautiful wife, Christi. I will miss them both every minute. But a day will come when Abby is proud of her daddy for the sacrifices he made the summer of 2009 in order to fulfill his dream. Maybe it will give her the strength to sacrifice for a dream of her own one day.
Money will be the least of the sacrifices I make to attend Clarion West. If you know anything about teacher salaries in Tennessee, that’s saying a lot. Nonetheless, I understand and accept each of those sacrifices in pursuit of my calling.
The first time writing called to me, I was an undergrad education major. An idea crawled into my head and took up residence until I finally grabbed the keyboard and wrote a novel. I shopped it around long enough to learn how bad it was.
Next I wrote a quaint time travel story that actually sold to the first market I submitted to. It was a small story sold to a small market for small money. Still, the instant acceptance was not exactly a taste of the reality of writing – that reality check was coming for my next story. And the next few. I have made a (small) number of semi-pro sales in my career, but mostly just more rejection slips.
I have no formal training to write. The things I know have been wrenched out of “how to” books, imitated from other authors, acquired through online groups (like Critters.org), gleaned from experience, or found inside my soul. I fear these ponds are running dry. I need new resources if my writing is to continue to grow.
My small town in Tennessee has a genre-savvy population comparable to the clientele of a dry cleaner in a nudist colony. I need to immerse myself in a community of…well, people like me. Dreamers, cynics, wordsmiths, worldsmiths…writers.
I have been writing for ten years and have no intention of stopping any time soon, come workshop or high water. What I want is to write better – to write well. CW can accelerate that process, cram a decade into a few weeks. I need to understand my mistakes so I can learn from them. I need the criticism. I need the focus. I need the environment. I need Clarion West.
Every now and then I post something I think people might actually find useful rather than just entertaining or informative about me. I’m going to try to maintain a list of links to those useful posts on the right side (with all my other exciting links). Just another service I provide. If you see a post that belongs in my “useful” list, leave a comment and I’ll add it.
…and then, against all odds, something crawled out of the primordial internet and became Oso’s Blog.
If you found your way here without knowing who I am, good for you. I currently publish under the name Scott W. Baker. That being my actual name, it seemed a good choice. I am toying with the idea of publishing under a nom de plume, or maybe even a pen name, but as yet I am not convinced this would be wise. For instance, how would the dozens of people who have read my previous stories connect my past works to my current and future works? If I did adopt a pseudomymn, I have pretty well decided it should be Oso Baker. It’s a nice combination between my real name and my internet identity.
I guess my first post here should explain the origins of “Oso Muerte” in their entirety. As so many nerdy nicknames do, it started with a character in a role playing game. I wanted something tough, but my friends decided the character class I had selected resembled a dead bear. Being that my character was supposed to be South American, I named him “Dead Bear” in Spanish. Rather I tried to — it came out Oso Muerte: “bear death”. Anyway, the character was fun and resembled me in more ways than anyone cares to hear, so the nickname stuck to me, at least with that very specific clique. Seeing as no one else was absurd enough to use such a name, it became my go-to username for anything online. Try Googling it, see if anything other than me comes up. You’ll get my Amazon profile, maybe my MySpace page, maybe a few pages in Spanish about endangered ursines.
Still, the name comes across too Spanish for a pen name, especially considering my considerable ignorance of Spanish or Hispanic cultures.
I have maintained a blog on MySpace for a short time, but that didn’t quite suit my needs. So I am moving in here at WordPress, growing up and getting a place of my own in the http://www. I may move those old blog posts over to catch people up on the dizzying pace of my writing career (currently composed mostly of waiting). Until then, here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been up to:
CLARION!
Don’t get too excited, I am just in the application stage. Actually I am past the application stage and into the clawing-my-eyes-out-while-I-wait-to-hear-something stage. But currently my Clarion applications are the foremost issues in my daily writer-life.
For those who do not know, Clarion is THE workshop for budding speculative fiction writers. It’s a six-week bootcamp taught by five professional writers and one editor, usually award winners and often workshop graduates themselves. All other big-time workshops are built off its model. I have applied to both the American incarnations of Clarion: Clarion West and plain old Clarion (often called Clarion East despite its recent transplant to San Diego). There are other workshops — Odyssey, Viable Paradise, Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp — but I can’t bring myself to take serious time away from my wife and two-year-old daughter unless I truly believed the workshop could kick start my career. Not every Clarionite becomes a pro, but their track record is exceptional.
The story I submitted to Clarion West just earned an Honorable Mention from L. Ron Hubbard’s “Writers of the Future” contest. A higher placing would have inspired more confidence, but HM tells me I did something right. A simple rejection from the contest would have discouraged my hopes of attending Clarion. Still, there are no guarantees until there are guarantees.
I submitted that same story (entitled “Leech Run”) to Clarion East as well as a more recent work (“Glow Baby”), which was inspired by my daughter’s night light. Both stories were between five and six thousand words, though one was Firefly-esque space opera and the other is more SF invading modern life. Both these stories are making the rounds through different markets, though I may let “Glow Baby” take a pass at the Writers of the Future contest, too.
As soon as I hear anything about either workshop, I’ll be sure to post the outcome here. Well, maybe not right away. First I will have to hyperventilate, tell my wife, dance around the room, call my mother, cry a little, and then I can post here. Bad news will simply post without fanfare.
I am not basing my career on acceptance or rejection from Clarion (or CW). I will write come workshop or high water. But man, I could use the kick in the keyboard these workshops represent.
This blog will not be all about Clarion. It may not all be about writing or SF, either. It’s a blog and I’ll throw you whatever scurries though my odd little head. Right now my head is full of Clarion. (It has been accused of less savory fillings.) Come back to see what other stuff I might say.
Scott W. Baker .net 