Knowing what I know about these fine folks, I suspected the workshop would be in Utah. It is not. It’s in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Yeah, that’s like an hour and a half from where my butt currently sits.
So I need to do one of two things: (a) figure out where to get a thousand bucks (give or take) so I can attend, or (b) find a sufficient excuse to explain to myself why it’s okay that I’m not attending. A roommate would make (a) a more feasible option by reducing the lower bound of the price to $750 (extras will still cost extra, of course).
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t Clarion or the WotF workshop, but it’s a week to be a writer and to get to know writers. And write.
Hard to say what my situation will be by June, financially and otherwise, so option (b) will likely fulfill itself via the workshop filling up before I can afford to buy in. But it’s an option on the horizon that would be pretty frigging awesome. I’ll be contemplating and brainstorming…
I’ve been putting this post off and now it’s almost too late. The deadlines for applying for Clarion and Clarion West are both this coming Tuesday. If you’re even slightly interested in attending either, go apply. Yes, they both have application fees, but those are to keep out the riff-raff that aren’t serious. It’s a lot more expensive to attend. But it’s Clarion. Stop dragging your feet and get those applications sent.
For those who don’t know, I was wait-listed for Clarion West two years ago and received a flat rejection last year. Clarion-Clarion (aka Clarion East or Clarion San Diego…not very east) has done naught but reject me. Mind you, I’ve only applied twice. And that number will stay at twice.
That’s right, I’m not applying this year. I’ve mentioned it around and I may have declared it here before, but it’s no longer economical to consider Clarion. At least not now. The price tag is only part of the issue. It’s the six weeks away from wife and daughter I can’t handle. I was prepared to sacrifice last year, as I was the year before, but my career is at a different level now. Not that I’m soaring; I’m not. I could still get a lot out of Clarion or CW or Odyssey (later deadline, more structure). It’s just not worth the trade-off anymore. I’ve placed in the Writers of the Future contest. I’ve attended the WotF workshop. I’ve met a gaggle of professional writers and made connections. I have a network of writers I connect with (two between Codex and the WotF vol. 26 group). Editors express personalized regret when they (still) reject my stories. So I’m out.
As for those of you who have applied to Clarion West, I’m happy to see the forum there starting to pick up steam. (I poke my head in periodically. I’m nosy like that.) I’ve made friends through that forum who I still keep in touch with. Some of them are on my blogroll. It’s a great place to network (not advance-my-career networking but more part-of-a-writing-community networking) and get intel on the acceptance/rejection process. Plus it’s not a bad place to acquire blog traffic; I still get people linking-in to my old posts through that forum, mostly my application essays (2009 and 2010). So go poke your nose in and say hi.
Oh, and check out my workshop page. It’s a tad outdated, but there’s good stuff.
As of this moment, I’m not sure if I plan to apply to Odyssey. If I put six weeks (consecutively and exclusively) into my writing career (and hence away from my family), I’d really like the word “Clarion” to show up on my resume. Does that make me a snob? Absolutely. How many words do I get to impress an editor? Sure, we’re even talking cover letter words here, but it takes a lot of time and money to get that word. As a teacher, it doesn’t matter what college I went to. My brother got out of college and went to law school; the name on the diploma mattered. Same here.
All that said, Odyssey’s lineup is pretty significant including big-ticket names from both of last year’s Clarions. The simple fact that I’m thinking about applying (despite that first paragraph) says a lot. Coalating data.
Odyssey’s Writer-in-Residence (per my understanding she stays the whole six weeks and serves as primary lecturer the final week the entire fifth week whereas the other lecturers stay for about 24 hours…do I have it right now?) is Laura Anne Gilman.
Weekly guest lecturers will be Alexander Jablokov, Michael A. Arnzen, Elizabeth Hand, Gregory Frost, and David G. Hartwell.
Be sure to check out my workshop page for more useful workshop links.
I’m going to a wedding on Saturday. (Trust me, this is related to writing; Clarion West specifically.) Weddings are generally happy occasions with people coming to wish the new couple well. But I suspect that every wedding has an angry spinster or two. Or a jealous younger bridesmaid. Or that guy whose girlfriend just dumped him. In other words, though wishing the couple well and meaning it, there’s always someone hurting as they realize how long it will be before THEY say “I do.”
I am the spinster at the Clarion West wedding. I want every attendee to have fun, learn, and succeed. I am trying hard to keep up with the logs of their experiences. But inside, there is that nagging feeling that this could have been my dance. I can deal with that. What I think is bigger is the issue of how long it will be before I get my turn.
Best-case scenario, I’ll be there next year. (We are planning another baby inside a reasonable window of time there, so we may be looking at two years! Let’s ignore that for a moment.) I believe I will make it into one of the Clarions next year. Does that make me egotistical? I suspect it does, though I like to call myself “confident”. Same thing. I doubt it’s a stretch for a writer on the waiting list to expect to make it next year. Anyway, that’s a long way off. I still have to write new stories, isolate my “best”, send them out, wait out that interminable acceptance interval, get accepted (please), find the money, make plane reservations, wait until summer, then FINALLY go. See, it feels like a lot. Still, I know I need this kind of experience to really get me going.
Ever watch American Idol? You know how there is always that guy that makes it all the way through the audition process and is the last guy cut, watching the dude standing beside him move on to primetime while he gets a heartfelt invitation to jump through the hoops again? That’s me. And the first episodes of the show are airing (or blogging) now. I watch; I cheer; I’m sad.
I dwell on this now because I am slumped. I can’t focus on writing. I have other distractions contributing (notably my involvement with my church’s bible school), but I’m also inventing distractions. I pulled out an old video game and am obsessing over it. I started reading a book that has been on my shelf for months (though that may help). I check my email for story critiques seven times a day. Writing just isn’t coming out.
Face it, I’m depressed about CW. Lame of me, but I am. I dared to hope and now I reap the consequences. I need something to snap me out of it. I go camping in a few weeks; I tend to do well there (not internet to distract me). I did some late-night freewriting for a story idea based on Japan’s Festival of the Naked Man; maybe breaking ground on a new project could get my wheels spinning again. Or seeing some of my stories in print. Or some forced keyboard time. Or taking those morning walks I keep insisting I’m going to do.
I need to do something.
Moving on to the divorce part of the post, I find myself very disappointed with the SFF Online Writing Workshop. The quality of the critiques I have received has been pretty good, but I am displeased with the quantity. So far it’s just two apiece on the stories I posted. Critters could usually deliver anywhere from eight to twenty, depending on the length of the story, though the quality of the comments was admittedly inferior (not immensely, but somewhat). It’s tough to determine a consensus with only two and a consensus is what critique groups should offer best. How do I make alterations based on that? To make matters worse (the way plot lessons always tell you to), my one-month free trial is over in less than a week. I need to decide: do I pay for a year or not?
I confess, a month is the time it takes for a story to reach the top of the Critters queue to get read, so maybe I need to give my stories a month at OWW to generate a reasonable number of critiques. Still, I find some things lacking. There is almost no incentive to offer a SECOND critique at OWW. A story with no reviews earns double poiints, so why comment on a story with one or two? The crit-4-crat approach may work better, but I have struck out there, too. I opperedC4C on my longer story and have since had one taker. I’ve been getting more attention on stories at Baen’s Bar (though, admittedly, the comments are less complete there).
We’ll see what I decide. It may be worth the fifty bucks to try to generate a community of people who want to read my stuff (even if it’s just because I read theirs). As for my jealous spinsterhood — this too shall pass.
I was rejected from Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. Ouch.
It’s not so bad, I guess. It was only based on a single page writing sample. Still, I’d have liked the experience. *sigh*
On the upside, I won’t be spending the money. That helps. Maybe I’ll try to get my wife to go to a three day photography workshop in the Smoky Mountains (it was in her photography magazine).
After my anticlimactic fumble at the goal line of Clarion West, I spent some time wondering what to do this summer to improve my writing. Write; that was the first thing. Read, critique, join OWW, fraternize, and submit were also on the list. But, golly, did I want that workshop. Face time with pros, some gut-wrenching time for Scott-the -Writer.
Orson Scott Card
So I thought about other options. It was too late for most; others were too expensive. I spent a lot of time thinking about Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. Card is one of my favorite authors and has a very good reputation as a teacher. His characters ae painted on the page the way they might be emblazoned on the ceiling of a chapel. Not cheap, mind you, but some of his time and attention could be really inspiring.
I did some procrastinating that masqueraded as thinking and very nearly missed the deadline. I mailed my application and writing sample on Tuesday; the deadline is Friday (tomorrow). I should hear one way or the other by next Friday.
I’m not sure what my chances are. The website suggests applying early. Ha! Strike one. The only writing sample they ask for is the first page of a finished short story. Yep, the first page. It makes sense. How many editors, or even slush readers, get past that point before stuffing a rejection in the SASE and shipping it back. But gosh, it sure put some pressure on my page one.
I cheated a bit, something I hope doesn’t come back to bite me for being “unprofessional”. You know that big space you’re supposed to leave in the top half of your manuscript, the one for editor’s comments or instructions to the typesetter or whatever? Yeah, mine was a little smaller than it should have been, squeezing a bit more writing onto that first page. *gulp*
The story I sent was “Glow Baby”, the story I sent to Clarion SD that did not go to CW. (I wasn’t even waitlisted at CSD, so maybe that was a mistake, but the first page was less pulpy than “Leech Run”‘s opening.) I stretched to get the end of a paragraph onto the page, really only two or three lines more than normal. We’ll see how that plays for me. I looked at several stories before settling on that one; the descriptions just rang truer for me than the others. “Glow Baby” is the first story I wrote where the setting was based on a real place, a place I was intimately familiar with in memory and emotionally tied to. If the story has a weakness, it’s probably the ending. The pace is slow, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I don’t think either of those potential concerns will be evident in the first page.
“Glow Baby” is my second quarter submission to WotF, too. I have not yet heard back from them (a good sign, yes?), but it was a bit of a late entry. The speculative aspect of the story really doesn’t show up until page 4, so it may be a hard sell to the contest. I did write in some foreshadowing (eerie pink light emanating from the window) toward the end of the first page or beginning of the second. Maybe that was enough to pull me through. We’ll see.
A big month for “Glow Baby” any way you look at it. Keep your nubs crossed.
As I mentioned in a few posts, I’ve been rewriting an old gem I found on my hard drive from at least five years ago, probably more. I think I just finished that rewrite, at almost exactly midnight on May 2nd. I’ll probably want to edit more in a few days, but I’m pretty pleased with the results.
I didn’t cut the massive opening sequence I had considered axing. It seemed to start kind of slow, but it was more the fault of excessive wordiness than anything else. Maybe I’ll stick it in Baen’s Bar to get some feedback.
In ways, “Secondhand Rush” is simpler than “Leech Run” which got slapped around. It’s simpler in that the protagonist’s motivations are perfectly clear from the beginning. His needs are simple, his life is simple, his goal is simple.
The story’s structure, however, is oddly complex. It violates Jordan Lapp’s rule that a first person POV story should have no scene breaks. I, in fact, jump periodically to other characters to eavesdrop of their conversations. The story wouldn’t work without miranda7 and LucAs [sic] popping in and out. It’s the nature of the narration that it happen that way. Trust me, it works. Some people may not like it, but it works.
miranda7 and LucAs also converse a lot like my students do with text messages. It’s a byproduct of their living situation (they are downloaded into computers for immortality). It may make their dialogue tough to read, but it’s always short blurbs and it fits the story.
I’m proud of this little creation. Sad that I shelved it so long ago. It wasn’t ready for the public and I wasn’t ready to fix it. I’m curious to see its reception. If I don’t declare otherwise here, I’ll have “Secondhand Rush” up in Baen’s Universe Slush by the end of the weekend.
In related news, I have put my Critters membership on hiatus. I still love Critters, I just don’t have time to keep up my crit count. That, and I’m considering joining the “sff online writing workshop”, maybe next month when school is getting out for the summer. (Tarcie, I haven’t forgotten.) Hopefully I’ll have another story ready by then.
This post is Jordan Lapp’s fault, him and Locus agazine. The idea has been swimming through my head for years. Locus ran an “article” about the fictitious Clarion reality show, Jordan mentioned it on his blog, now I’m posting my old article with a little poll. Enjoy.
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I am a Clarion Dreamer.Are you?
How many are out there like me?Hundreds?Thousands?Tens of thousands?How many people out there want to write?How many out there believe themselves to be writers?How many are waiting for that one break that will make him (or her) the next great genre writer?For me, that elusive break takes the form of a writer’s workshop – Clarion.
Or Odyssey.Or Clarion West or South.Pick your poison, they’re all the same…the same in the fact that I did not attend.Same in the fact that I’m certain that if I attended, my career would take off the very next day.
I understand that I’m wrong.I realize that these workshops can provide their attendees with tools and techniques that guide the creative process.I fully appreciate that the best an attendee can expect is to replace years worth of rejection slips with a few weeks of tough criticism and sleepless nights.None of this blocks me from my delusion, this mirage of miraculous success that is the Milford-model writing workshop.
Again I pose the question: how many out there are like me?How many writers know they’re better than the bums that go to these workshops?How many are convinced they can spot the flaws in another author’s story despite a depressing inability to correct their own?How many wish they could be at least a fly on the wall at such a workshop?
Writing is an art form, no different from singing or dancing or backstabbing in a jungle or racing around the world.Have I lost you?I’m talking about television.Reality television.Ironically I’m talking about the shows that require no writers (or only concept writers) because a million-dollar prize is a lot cheaper than paying a dozen actors and writers and shooting take after take.People tune in to listen to the recording artists of tomorrow.Or to see if Reuben wins immunity.Or if that obnoxious team can make it to China before the sweet old couple.Or if the guy from Saved by the Bell can dance.
Would people tune in for a chance to see what a Milford-style workshop is really like?Would they log on to read excerpts from that funny guy’s story?Or that hippie chick’s story?Or that arrogant fat guy’s story?Would they vote for the story they liked best?
I confess that what I propose violates one of the cardinal rules of the Milford-model: no spectators.All due respect to the late Damon Knight (Milford’s founder), but maybe the time for privacy has gone.A writer who wants to sell needs name-recognition, promotion.What better way than to throw that writer on the television for seven to fifteen weeks?
Like any show it would need a title.“Who Wants To Be The Next Asimov?”or more succinctly “Sci-Fi Writer”.The latter would work especially well if the show found its most obvious home on the Sci-Fi Channel.
The conference model need not be disturbed.One professional writer would guest-lecture each week, taking part in the critique process as well as providing insight into the profession in general.One would obviously hope to attract big names to this highly public event – names that would bring an audience to the show – but any author with a career substantial enough to warrant a two-minute bio could find a niche.(After all, how many American Idol fans really remembered Peter Noone?)
Could a show this narrowly focused really bring in an audience?Could it really be entertaining enough to tune in more than once or twice?Why not?Are speculative writers any more rare than clothing designers?Chefs?Singers and dancers?Washed up celebrities?If they all get their own reality shows, we deserve one too.In fact I contend that we, the speculative writers, outnumber most of these pigeon-holed reality contestants.How many science fiction readers are there?How many fantasy readers?Horror?How many of them write (or try to write or want to write)?That’s right, most of them.Try it: meet a stranger in the sci-fi section of a bookstore and ask her if she has ever tried to write this kind of thing.Don’t be creepy about it, just strike up a polite conversation.You may want to map out the exits first just in case she insists on telling you all about Druzida, the elf-vampire and her fifteen-thousand-page battle against the evil dragon, Thhrp.Or about the Glxx-ian invasion of Kalamazoo.Bottom line, the people watching reruns of Buffy, Star Trek, Firefly, Xena, or The Twilight Zone are more than likely writers,.
But how entertaining is a Milford workshop?I guess it depends on who goes.I understand that watergun fights and superballs were staples of the Clarion experience for years.So were sleepless nights, stories eviscerated by peers and pros, rivalries, coups against instructors, and priceless tidbits of knowledge.Sounds like good television to me.
So why am I writing this article instead of pitching this show to the big-wigs and becoming the next Mark Burnett?Well, that’s not what I do.I dream big ideas share them with people who might think they’re entertaining.I write, not pitch or produce.Besides, before I could pitch a show I’d have to support the claims I’ve made: 1) people would watch this show, 2) sci-fi fans are almost all writers, and 3) a bunch of geeky writers can be entertaining.That’s where you come in.Yes, you.If you’re reading this then you are likely part of my target audience, so I want to know what you think.Would you watch this show (at least a few times) if someone made it?Would your friends?Would my friends?If you think I’ve missed the mark, I want to know.Got an idea that might make this work better?I’m all ears.
Oh, and if you work for a network that wants to start filming this tomorrow, we really need to chat.
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.
It has come to my attention that, since about 7:00 last night, the hits on this blog have been flowing in at record pace. I suspect that, like me, there are lots of you looking for hints of Clarion SD acceptances and rejections. You are most welcome here. There aren’t a lot of sites or blogs talking about it right now, while I won’t shut up about it. Feel free to look around, maybe leave a comment. A little dialog could help us pass the time.
We are past Clarion’s published deadline for contacting accepted candidates. But what are we going to do, decline an invitation because it’s too late? I’m sure that something important or unexpected came up to delay our results. Maybe they still don’t know. (One slow reviewer or one lost-in-the-mail set of reviews would really slow things down. A computer crash would be devastating. I’m not saying any of these things happened, but I’m trying to view my apprehension through sympathetic eyes. I’m not very good at it.
If anyone has any news — even if you aren’t supposed to share it — I’d love to know that you know something. You can whisper it in my ear. I have heard of one acceptance that was requested not to make the news public. This is third-hand information and worth what you pay for it, but it’s the only hint I’ve heard. I have found evidence of no rejections.
I am waitlisted for Seattle, but who wants to sit and wait? I’ll be happy at either workshop, I just want to know. Chances of me sliding in to CW can’t be better than fifty-fifty. I’m really pulling for Clarion to come through for me. In the words of Willy Wonka, “The suspense is terrible…I hope it lasts.” Only without the second part.
In the meantime, introduce yourselves. Share your knowledge or your stress. We’re all looking for a community of writers. Accepted or rejected, we can start that community now.
I’ve been putting this post off and now it’s almost too late. The deadlines for applying for 
Scott W. Baker .net 
