Still no word. It’s like waiting for a response for a wedding proposal. All the emotional investment hangs on one answer and the !@#$**! response won’t come. Thecarrier pidgeon probably got eaten by a bird.
I am taking my last-minute contact as a sign that I am a borderline talent. Maybe I’m on the waiting list. Maybe I’m in the “which four of these eight do we want” stack. Maybe I wrote the wrong phone numer or email address on my application. Regardless, my rejection couldn’t have been an easy decision, at least from CW. I have no confirmation yet as to whether Clarion (east) has started informing their rejects.
My West application was confirmed as received on the sixth of January. That’s right, January. My East app, February sixth. We’ll see if six is my lucky number or not. Damn, these workshops sure know how to make a guy sweat.
So I wait. I’m not alone; Jamie, Sandra (I think), and others wait with me. It’s still lonely, not knowing.
My blog has been stagnant a few days, hasn’t it? Why? Well, nothing is happening. I’m making progress on my first draft of “Kree” (still no better title…it really needs one), but that’s about it. No news from workshops, no useful blogging of others being accepted. Squat. As best I can tell, West has 15 slots still unassigned (well, maybe unawarded would be better worder; I bet they’re assigned by now) and East has all 18. I expect news from the latter this week if they are to meet their own deadline of March 20th (Friday). But what am I going to do if they run long, refuse an invitation? I don’t think so. West, on the other hand, has conflicting statements on their website. In the FAQ it says applicants will hear by mid-March while the workshop page says the end of March. Forum posts from people in the know have validated the later date.
So what to do now? I was watching television with my 2-year-old daughter and her show offered me advice (while I was typing on the CW forum, no less): “When waiting is really hard for you, just do something you like to do!” Thank you, Kai-Lan. So I am reading (John Kessel’s award-winning novella “Stories for Men”), writing (that Kree story), spending time with my daughter (she just got a Sit-n-Spin), and going to see The Watchmen tomorrow afternoon (reviews are everywhere, but I’ll surely add my $.02 here afterward).
Once my Clarion applications were submitted (maybe a little before), I started hunting books and stories by the instructors for both workshops. Some of that is covered in my earlier post, Treasures from the Book Cellar. I bought a collection of John Kessel’s early stuff, Meetings at Infinity, Rudy Rucker’s Software, Kim Stanley Robinson’s first two Mars books, an audiobook of Robert Crais’s The Forgotten Man… Most of it was used (sorry for not supplying a royalty) so I could still afford to eat those weeks. Only later did I start sifting through the few short story collections I already own.
John Kessel is everywhere. I am embarrassed to say I had never paid much attention to his name before writing my application. He’s in the Year’s Best book I have, he’s in Paragons, he’s in my Best Time Travel Science Fiction of the 20th Century (I think…I don’t remember; I’ll double check when I get home and edit here if I blew it). I had four or five of his stories just lying around the house. Still, I’m glad I got his collection.
UPDATE: Yes, Kessel has a story in the time travel book, “The Pure Product”.
I’ve had trouble finding a few authors. I’m trying to find them on my own instead of hunting them through their websites or Wikipedia entries (though I cheated with Kessel). I finally stumbled across an Elizabeth Bear story in Strange Horizons’ fiction archives. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ll get to it this week. I haven’t found Nalo Hopkinson yet. I’ll hunt her work more aggressively if I get accepted to CW.
The Clarion (east) crowd has been tougher to find. I saw the movie based on Holly Black’s and Robert Crais’ work (The Spiderwick Chronicles and Hostage) respectively. I have verified that my school library has some of Black’s books and I’ll read some if I end up going to San Diego. (My reading time is getting stretched thin trying to keep up with both!) Park, Hand, and Lai just don’t seem to cross paths where I am looking. Again, acceptance to east will get me hunting more aggressively.
I am also trying to keep up with other writers often associated with Clarion. Knight and Wilhelm are the most obvious pair. I read Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed a couple years ago, mostly from its recommendation in Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.
So my reading is keeping me busy. I am also working on my females-as-warriors story (tentatively titled “Kree” until I get a better feel for its theme) and checking the web fifty times a day for evidence of Clarion acceptances. I think it may be time to switch to decaf.
I have still not heard anything about Clarion or Clarion West. I have met no writers. I have not sold any new stories of late. But somehow I feel like I am starting to become part of a community of writers.
Part of it is the blog connection. I’m still pretty new at all this and seeing other writers’ blogs and reading them and linking to them and knowing they are dropping by here…it’s all so warm and fuzzy.
Another part is the shared anticipation I am experiencing with all the writers on the CW forums (except Jordan, that show-off 😀 ) as we wait for the phone to ring. The shared experience of simply applying for the workshop is bonding. Imagine what the actual workshop will do…
But I am happy with the bonding I am experiencing now. I feel like I am a writer. Only a barrel of sales would make me feel more like one. I’ll get to work on that now.
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.
There are reports that Clarion West has begun calling applicants. These are only vague rumors without corroboration and may be a hoax. The way it was worded declares that CW called, but not that they accepted or rejected him. Just that they called. They might have been checking on a clerical error in his application or a million other things. It’s the type of smart-alec thing I’d do to irritate people. It’s just how I roll.
But if calls are being made (requests may have been made not to announce), I may be hearing in the next few days. Or a t least by the 20th.
Grrr… (Growl of the wild Oso)
Update: Jordan Lapp, the applicant in question, is in for Clarion West. Props to him.
The neat thing about having a story in the BU slush at Baen’s Bar is the chance to rewrite a story based on the feedback it receives, then just toss it back out there. I’ve been rewriting “Leech Run” based on some fairly harsh criticism, much more to the point than Critters has ever been. I am fairly happy with the rewrite except for the one transition paragraph I need to rework to get rid of the lies. (I didn’t mean to lie, but the story flowed better that way.) I hope to have the rewrite posted there Monday.
While exploring other writer’s blogs, I discovered a post from someone exclaiming his delight at being selected for the Clarion workshop. I was a bit dejected seeing as I haven’t heard anything yet and the submission deadline has not quite arrived. It got me very nervous, twitchy. Then I reread the post and discovered it was from two years ago. 😐 It felt sheepish. I hadn’t realized how much I was counting on being accepted. I may not be and I know it. I just need to receive my official verdict so I can move on with planning my life…or at least my summer.
I was watching some television and was inspired by some characters’ moral options. Often we, as viewers/readers, see the options as the good option and the bad option. No, that’s probably too simplistic. There are very few truly bad characters who do stuff just to be bad. Similarly, how many people do good things that are completely against self-interest? Let me rephrase: we see the ethical option and the selfish option.
Not very interesting. I find myself intrigued by those gray options, the ones that give you a chill up your spine that the characters managed to pull it off. These are tough to write, tougher to make appear anything other than twist endings. Ah, but the morally ambiguous option is a beautiful thing when properly executed.
The short story “The Catbird Seat” is decent example. I really like it because the main character has originally chosen the most selfish (crossing into evil) option imaginable, to kill a coworker (if I remember correctly). By the way, SPOILER ALERT!!! in case you are planning to read some James Thurber short stories for pleasure. Anyway, he gets cold feet or lacks opportunity or whatever, instead planting a story in his target’s head so preposterous that she will surely share it and surely be thought insane, again if I recall the story correctly. It has been a while.
The brings to mind the question, “How do I write that kind of morally gray resolution into my stories?” I’d actually prefer they be grayer, more in the vein of putting the antagonist in a bad spot and leaving him/her a way to save face by giving the protagonist what he/she wants. Let the killer go but take away whatever treasure the murder was committed for. Let the cheater maintain victory as long as the true prize is abdicated. Give up the girl by spilling the beans on the competitor. It’s the lose-lose ending or at least the no-winner ending. It’s best if the protagonist walks away with a sense of satisfaction and the antagonist does not, especially if the protag’s cut seems less valuable than the antag’s.
I think there are three ways to achieve endings like these, surprising third options where win and lose are relative. One way is to luck into them, write a story that presents a clever option as you go. These are nice but are hit and miss. Another, plan the twist ending and build the situation around it. For instance, start with the idea: “the braggart achieves the ultimate stunt but can’t tell anyone without going to jail” or “crook can escape but only by giving the loot to charity”, then figuring out how one would get in that situation, what type character would suffer/gain most from this, what setting would this seem most poetic, stuff like that. That’s a lot of hard work and planning and might force the story to have an all-too-convenient feel, but I bet a lot of stories work that way. Then finally there is the kill-the-obvious method.
The kill-the-obvious method is where you plan the obvious ending to a story, then toss that idea. Plan another; toss that. Maybe write out the third ending and toss it. Toss another. At some arbitrary point you feel like all the choices are exhausted, so you craft another one. You might have to backtrack to foreshadow this synthetic option or even to make it plausible, but it can usually be done.
The man drinks the poison. No, he pours it out. No, he gets someone else to drink it. No, he’s immune to it. Again, no. So what’s left? Maybe he keeps it. Why? As evidence, to threaten someone, as a souvenir…whatever you want, but the point is, who would think of it first? Sometimes a morally “unusual” choice is the most interesting.
A long time ago (six years?), I went looking for a way to improve my writing. I looked around online (where else does one look these days?) and discovered the existence of workshops. This was where I discovered Clarion and its ilk, but I wasn’t ready for that and couldn’t begin to afford it. Fortunately I also I discovered Critters.org.
Critters is the world’s largest critique group (to my knowledge). It’s definitely the most open. Anyone can join and all stories can be critiqued as long as you critique a minimum average number of other people’s manuscripts — about three a month. I must confess, the first time I had a story critiqued by the group, it was politely demolished. Gradually the comments grew more positive, and now I find most of them say more good than bad.
Oh there’s always a few that carry an air of hostility, as if nothing written by anyone but them will ever be worth publishing. And there are others that just don’t prefer a specific story. But by and large, Critters leads me to believe my writing has come a long way. But what good are atta-boy comments to me?
Critters does a great job of letting me know if a story is confusing or if the pace is too slow (athough some people want every story to be a Jason Statham movie), or catching spelling and/or grammar mistakes. The members spot POV problems well, devour opportunities to say “show-don’t-tell”, and never miss a chance to question dialogue mechanics. These can be helpful because authors frequently are blind to these issues in their own work. I still run almost every story through the queue at Critters for this kind of advice plus the infrequent gem of insight someone drops in my lap.
What Critters can’t tell me is whether a story is ready to sell. Many Critters members have sold stories, but do they know what made their work saleable and what makes their other stories rejection magnets? I sure don’t. I like to think it’s a difference in taste, but I doubt it. I am confident that I am making significant errors that are fixable but invisible, often even invisible to the rejecting editor. Critters is yet to help me with those problems.
It’s not that I haven’t received comments that could push me in the right direction. I probably have. But which ones? I like to think (naively) that comments I offer to other writers are in the top quartile of significance (everyone knows they are the smartest, right?), but how is a writer to know how brilliant my comments are? Or are they rubbish? If ten people tell me that a speech pattern is hard to understand, I will probably change it. If three tell me it’s hard to understand, three rave about how perfect it is, another points out the misspellings the dialect created (without mentioning dialect at all), and two don’t even mention it, what is a boy to do?
This blog entry is not designed to disrespect Critters. Far from it, I advocate Critters to any writer, beginners to pros. What I want to do is make some suggestions on how to use it as a writer. Some day, I will assemble my thoughts on how to approach Critters as a critiquer (arguably a more valuable angle).
Investigate the accuracy of line edits. Do you really need a semicolon there, or will your original comma be sufficient? What is the specific definition of the word they recommended? These people may be English professors or burger flippers and it’s important to remember that fiction has room for the styles of either. Characters end sentences with prepositions and should. Even narrators should. “Correct” may not be the best way to write. After all, “Woe is I,” is the grammatically correct sentence. But the burger-flipper may not be the guy to listen to, either. Sentence structures should be varied while still being clear. Some people want every sentence to follow the same build, as if they will be expected to diagram them and want to know where each part lies. Look it up before you change it.
Never take a critter’s word as law. One person may say something that makes you slap your head and say “why didn’t I see that?” Don’t change anything yet. Consider everyone’s comments first. A problem in the story’s middle may not be caused by the writing in the middle. In my experience, Critters tend to notice different problems surrounding the same part of a story. They all suggest different fixes. Often those suggestions will fix one problem but not the others. Look for the fix that will take care of everything. Maybe that means merging two characters into one (seldom suggested to me despite the usefulness of the exercise) or merging two scenes or sometimes as simple as changing a few words. This is a vague comment but is the key to gleaning useful information from a cluster of critiques.
How is the critiquer’s writing? A few typos aren’t a big deal, but if it’s tough to decipher what a critique is saying, do you want to take its advice on how to clarify your story?
Sometimes the places that they “don’t know how to fix it” are the places that need the most attention. Think about it, an editor can request a rewrite with a shorter chase scene or with the flashback cut or a thousand words shorter. They can’t say “fix the part on page seven that seems not right for some reason”. I guess they could say that, but they won’t. Rewrites aren’t sales, but they are wanna-buys. If they like it but can’t put a finger on why they can’t buy it as-is, they’ll end up passing. So trust people who scratch their heads in places (in accordance with number two), they may be the most valuable comments you get.
If someone is tactless, they probably don’t know what they are talking about. Critter’s policy is to use diplomatic language, expressing every thought as the critiquer’s opinion rather than hard fact. Some things will come across a little harsh (no one wants to read ten thousand IMOs), but you know when someone thinks they are God’s authority on publishing. If they were so smart, they wouldn’t be messing up the Critter’s policy. Still, you should read their comments. Almost every critique has value, if only to reinforce the comments of others.
Don’t take it too seriously. Most of these people are far more focused on their own writing than they are on yours. Why should they like your story? You brought it to them to look for the flaws, they have nothing else invested in it. Editors at least want to like your story when they read it. Hey, I don’t like most of the stories I read on Critters. I only like about half of the ones I read in magazines. My opinion is worthless to you; my complaints and advice (combined with everyone else’s) can help you improve your story tremendously.
If you use it wisely, Critters can make your stories (and your writing in general) much better. It did mine. But it takes a lot more to make them good.
…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.
So what to do now? I was watching television with my 2-year-old daughter and her show offered me advice (while I was typing on the CW forum, no less): “When waiting is really hard for you, just do something you like to do!” Thank you, Kai-Lan. So I am reading (John Kessel’s award-winning novella “Stories for Men”), writing (that Kree story), spending time with my daughter (she just got a Sit-n-Spin), and going to see The Watchmen tomorrow afternoon (reviews are everywhere, but I’ll surely add my $.02 here afterward).
Scott W. Baker .net 