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.
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.
I had a nice comment or two from a Baen’s Bar user named Rad. Some minor hunting revealed him as a Clarion 2007 graduate (yes, the one whose two year old blog post freaked me out the other day). It’s nice getting compliments (even vague, keep-at-it compliments) from writers who have already passed the stage of their careers that I am in. Did he say I was brilliant? No, of course not. I did once have an editor say I was brilliant (or did something brilliant) only to not print the story. That sucked. But he said I “…have more going than most.” Not glowing, but nice.
It was especially nice after the painful critique he just gave “Leech Run” in the slush. Ouch. It was good stuff, a very in-depth critique not terribly dissimilar from what I strive for through Critters. But any time someone uses the words “Please no!” repetitively in relation to your story, it stings. He had a point, that I had overdone the headcounting. His advice helped my rewrite, but I have written myself into a corner (or a middle, if that’s possible) where I need to gut a small section and rework it, probably building in more action.
Anyway, it was nice of Rad. (You can look up his real name yourself the same way I did, but you have to be a Baen’s Bar member.)
My first order of business is to keep myself busy so I don’t go mad waiting to hear from the Clarions. Sure the application deadline is past (or will be in a few hours), but they still need to review last minute applications, compare scores on all the applications, select their top 18-20 as well as an alternate list, then decide when to start contacting people. I will be shocked if I hear something this week. That doesn’t mean I’m not holding my breath each time I check my caller ID.
So how do I keep busy? Writing, of course. I’m still trying to finish up my second version of “Leech Run” for Baen’s Universe, not that I’m terribly optimistic about it getting picked up. If it doesn’t (I’m not giving up all hope), I’ll set it aside until the workshop (I am still overly optimistic about that, in spite of myself) since it should be the first of my stories to be analyzed by the masses there. (It could be “Glow Baby” if I end up in San Diego, but I digress). Regardless, I don’t expect the rewrite to take more than another day or two.
I decided my next project will be to run with my woman-warrior story, as yet untitled but the file is saved under Kree.doc since Kree is the name of the alien race. Before I go too far, I need to read The Science of Aliens, which is sitting on my bookshelf. It will give some hard science credibility to my aliens and my story in general.
This project will probably take a few weeks at least. I won’t be surprised if I get distracted by another project before I finish, but I’m trying not to do that. If I get stuck, I’ll try to brush out another story for young readers, something under 2k words, so I can get back to the serious story. I have a lot of emotion, intrigue, and social commentary planned for this one. It may be tough, but I bet it comes out good…for me.
Anyway, that’s my to-do list for the next few weeks. I’ll likely know about a Clarion before the Kree story is done unless I hit an unprecidented rhythm. *sigh* Time to get to work.
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’ve just updated my look, adding a small but pleasant list of SF markets including links to home pages and to submission guidelines. I’ve started with some zines I know and love; some have printed my stuff, others have wasted trees on the rejections they send me. I plan to add to this list periodically. Use these links as much as you like. For a more thorough listing of markets, try the Duotrope link.
I always find it difficult to move on once I finish a story. I get a big “now what” hanging over me. Do I go back to an old, incomplete project or press on to a new story. I refuse to start any new novels until I get one or more finished. But short stories can be started on a whim.
So what to do? I have a story, “Thinking Out Loud”, that never sold despite being a very good story. Looking back, I find that I didn’t really build a protagonist the reader would care about. It occurred to me to rewrite the story from a different point of view. It’s a completely different story that way. I may try toggling back and forth between the old POV and the new one, which turns out to be jumping between an army general and an inmate/test subject. I think it will be a massive rewrite and am a little overwhelmed by the thought of it. I keep putting it off. It might be a good project for Clarion (cross fingers).
As for new projects, I have a few things I’ve brainstormed. One story about a future society where the females are the warriors. Lots of ideas as to why the women must fight, who they fight against, and what internal struggles the protag goes through. I need to develop the characters a bit more, but it’s got steam behind it. I have another that is basically a superhero-working-for-the-government story that lost all momentum. I’m not sure I’m ready to pick that one back up. And of course there’s my young adult SF novel (set on a sub-light colony ship), my military clone novel (probably my strongest idea), my SF comedy novel (hung up on the first major event), my YA fantasy novel (first thing I ever wrote; complete but needs a major rewrite), and my Fultus stories that need to be expanded to novella or novel length. Whew.
I may look through my unfinished works and see what grabs me, be it something here or something else. We’ll see. I think I agonize more over what to work on than over what to type. I’ve been in a short story mood with my focus on Clarion, but who knows. I’ll be sure to post when I make up my mind.
I think part of my problem with moving on is the pain of waiting to hear the fate of stories in market slush piles. “Brother Goo” is still in the mail to Cricket. “Glow Baby” is working its way through editors at Strange Horizons. “Leech Run” is in the slush at Baen’s Bar, fighting for an opportunity to slip into the Jim Baen’s Universe that way (past critical eyes of readers and editors alike). I can’t remember ever having three stories in the wind at once. Chilling. But I have to keep working. That’s what a real writer would do.
I looked at the updated list of WordPress global tags and noticed some more potential titles. They amuse me, so here they are.
“Sex Sotfware”: That could go a lot of different directions, couldn’t it? Anything from robots having sex together (for robot procreation…meshing software the way people mesh DNA to make a child). Or a computer program to help guys score (Will Smith’s Hitch meets Windows).
“Fun War”: A party in every landmine. This could be someone who loves the art of war in a very active sense or could be a war over types of recreation. A civil war over what is the national pass-time? Maybe too much. Or it could be a reality show about war, the producers coming up with more ridiculous goals for the armies. I’d hate to see that elimination round. Or (one more) kids enlisted to the army based on video game prowess. This reeks of The Last Starfighter, maybe even a little Ender’s Game.
“Faith Marketing”: They do it now, don’t they? A story about a cult leader that preys on shopaholics, maybe even home shopping addicts. Trying to buy your way into heaven is nothing new, but investing n heaven real estate or keeping up with God’s fashion do’s and don’ts or even an ad campaign about heaven. Not too terribly speculative, but it can go somewhere. I doubt I’ll write it.
“Musings School”: Could make a cute flash piece about a school for random thoughts. How do you teach people to think? It could be a dystopian society where thoughts are discouraged, but this underground school tries to get people thinking for themselves, starting small. What do you think about licorice? ducks? your government’s oppression of its people by sanitizing the media and ostracizing independent thinkers?
That’s all for now. Check the global tags for your own ideas or check out my previous post. Happy writing.
Scott W. Baker .net 