A friend recently tipped me off to a limited open invite for a shared world anthology paying pro-rates. The trick was that they wanted a writing sample of your best work, and, as much as my Writers of the Future winning piece still ranks among my best, the anthology is Sword & Sorcery, and “After the Final Sunset, Again” is magic realism.

So I went to the Trunk, meaning stories that I’d written before I decided to switch to writing screenplays and graphic novels. These weren’t “real” trunk stories that had made the rounds already and been rejected everywhere. Rather they were good stories that I decided not to waste time on submitting, because I had moved on from short story writing. I wrote six stories at Clarion West and never even looked at them again. Several stories I’d written since CW had only gone to one or two markets.

The closest thing to S&S that I felt showcased my best work was an Asian-themed Magic & Mechanica piece that was my fourth story at Clarion. I’d always liked the piece, and David Hartwell of Tor (that week’s instructor) said that if I expanded it to novel length, it would probably sell. Thing is, I’m a much better writer now than I was at CW and the story needed work. However, I found out from Steve that the call for submissions had an overwhelming response and that the submission window was probably open for no more than a day, so I stayed up all night and wrote a new draft, and darn it, it turned out pretty well (and won me a spot in the antho. Yay!)

That got me thinking about my other CW pieces. I was pretty down on myself after the workshop ended and hadn’t bothered to look at them again. I even went so far as to throw out the crtis I’d gotten. But I feel like I’m a good enough writer now to see what’s wrong with them and fix them. As much as I’m still committed to writing long, I’m probably going to polish these up and get them into circulation.

Looks like I’m going to be a short story writer, novelist, screenwriter, and graphic novel writer by the end of the year. I’ll be a slog, but with my fingers in so many pies, something’s gotta hit!

So now that I’ve been accepted to Clarion West, I thought I’d post my application essay. I’m in, so something must have grabbed the judges’ attention.

Clarion West Application Essay (2009)

Here’s a little bit about me: four years ago, I was writing a novel with elves and dragons and a Mary Sue character as the lead. A friend of mine told me that it felt like a mixture of every fantasy novel I’d ever read. So I scrapped the novel and started writing short fiction. I’ve had to reinvent myself several times since then, and I hope to do the same at Clarion West.

I’ve had a few successes so far. I sold a story to Fantasist Enterprises–a small press anthology paying pro-rates. Recently, it was announced that I won Writers of the Future, and I look forward to attending the workshop. However, I’ve yet to sell to any of the pro magazine markets. At this point, I feel like I have the basics under control, but my writing is uneven. I’ve been studying Best-Of anthologies, reading broadly, and buying the pro-zines I’m subbing to. I’ve also been following the career of Clarion West grad, David D. Levine. He’s a great writer, and he speaks glowingly of his time at the workshop. I hope to accomplish many of the same things at Clarion West that he did.

I feel like I need to sharpen my writing. I know this because the members of my writing group are excellent writers. Every single week, I can see that I have things to learn. I am in study-mode. The WotF win has done nothing to change this. At this particular moment, I’m working on adding more voice to my dialogue, but in the past I’ve really focused on line-by-line prose, and how to generate more original ideas.

To this end, I’ve hunted out markets that provide personal feedback. I used to write stories that Clarkesworld might pick up because then-editor Nick Mamatas sent a mini-critique on each submission. They started out “scathing” and eventually went to “reluctant respect”. Unfortunately, he moved on before I could make “gushing praise”, but I still have hopes of gracing the magazine’s e-pages. Still, when he moved on and the personal feedback dried up, Clarkesworld dropped from Target Number One to Target Number Somewhere Below That. I’ve since discovered Baen’s Universe, which also gives personal feedback through their Slush Forums. My first submission there was pretty much panned, but I was able to take the criticisms I received and rewrite that story so that it might actually stand a chance. Finally, I recently joined the Codex Writers’ Group and have been benefiting from their critiques.

In an effort to improve my own writing, and also to give back to the short fiction community, I, with the help of Camille Gooderham Campbell and Steven Smethurst, founded Every Day Fiction. EDF is a flash fiction magazine with about 2000 readers which publishes a new story every day. Being the Managing Editor has given me the opportunity to discover what works and what doesn’t in the writing of others. EDF commits itself to responding personally to every single submission–an act only possible because of a sophisticated administrative back-end written by our talented webmaster. Because I need to respond to writers with a mini-critique of their stories, I have learned how to word them diplomatically, and also how to highlight the positive while I cite the negative. In response to requests by writers, I also founded an EDF writing group, whose members have been published in various semi-pro magazines.

In addition to being active in EDF’s forums, I also frequent other writing hangouts like SFReader, Writers of the Future, and Codex. I read a score of writing blogs, including Whatever, SFWA Members’ News, Writers of the Future, and many others.

I know that Clarion is right for me because I am still discovering things to improve about my writing. I’m not just learning how to fix one story, but actually finding weaknesses in my writing overall. For instance, in the Baen’s story mentioned above, the main criticism was that the start of the piece was slow and a little confusing. Not only was this crit dead on, but I went back and took a look at every story I have out there and it turns out that several of them had beginnings that were slow or confusing.

The opportunity to learn not just from the instructors but from eighteen other students at similar points in their careers, and to form a support network that will last for much of my professional life, would be fabulous. I hope that you will consider me for participation in Clarion West.

Tags: Clarion West, Codex Writer's Group