Sorry that I haven’t been posting lately. Believe me when I tell you that we’ve been worked off our asses here.

For this Clarion class, Week 5 was our week four. There was a fair amount of drama, some people broke down (but recovered), and there were tons of in-jokes in the stories.

We held a Drunken Flash Fiction night. This was awesome, and fully deserves to become a new Clarion West tradition. We all got hammered then sat down in the common room, all sixteen of us, laptops open. We got two “one word prompts” from the person on either side of us. Mine were “motherland” and “gangsta land”. We had twenty minuets to write, then we went around the circle and read what we had aloud. Maybe some day I’ll be convinced to post the story I wrote on this blog, but my arm would have to be twisted something fierce. Let’s just say that I’m the only guy in the world who, when he tries to read in the voice of an African American gangsta, actually sounds whiter. Like Christopher Walkin, to be exact. People were falling out of their chairs laughing.

David Hartwell’s week was pretty tough. He shared a lot of Things You Don’t Want To Hear with several writers, and I know one of us was almost in tears. My story, “GAS PIPES AND SIGILS” (soon to be retitled), did fairly well in critique. The main comments were that my characterization was thin (as always), and the world needed to be developed more (as always in a first draft). Then it got to David Hartwell. He suggested that I was doing too many close-ups and that I needed a better ear for prose. A better ear for prose? Ouch. I went into private conference a little upset, but he told me that I write publishable stuff and that I needed to just take my prose from 85% to 100%. This was extremely heartening. He said that if I wrote an entire novel like the story I’d written it would probably sell, because he didn’t recall anything like it. Zing! He did, however, suggest that I buy a major poetry anthology and read it aloud to work on the meter of my prose. I will certainly do that.

The party on Friday was pretty awesome (for me). I got to meet one of my heroes, David D Levine. I’ve been following (and trying to emulate) his career. He was the reason I entered Writers of the Future, and he was the reason that I signed up for Clarion West. He’s a tremendous writer (did I mention that he won a Hugo!), and he’s pretty free with advice. It’s always nice when your heroes turn out to be great people in real life.  Unfortunately, I had to rescue a fellow Clarionite who’d run into some trouble, so I never got to say goodbye, but I hope to meet him again at a local con.

I also got to meet Jay Lake, who’s a pretty great guy. The first time I met him, he gave me a pin that read “My Mom Thinks I’m Better Than Jay Lake”, and when I reminded him of that, he chuckled and said that that sounded like something he’d do. He shared some advice about Writers of the Future (he won that too), and we spoke a little about blogging. Apparently, it kills conversation because people you talk to know all your small talk.

We got to meet Rudy Rucker and he seems really cool and pretty laid back which is definitely what we need. A few people have hit “critique fail”, where they have been reading a story and said “All the words are there, but they just don’t make sense to me in my current state”, not because the stories aren’t strong, but because we’re all so exhausted.

My last piece is entitled GIANT IN THE PLAYGROUND and is a hard-sci fi space opera (does that made sense??). The bones are there, but it’ll need at least two more rewrites. If I had to sum it up, it would be Sherlock Holmes battles Cthulu in space. Reconcile that to the first line of this paragraph, and you might just get it. Oh, and it’s based on a blond joke. So there.

Anyways, five more days until I get to see Alicia. Clarion West has been amazing, but I really miss my actual life. Six weeks is great, but I don’t think I could do a seventh.

Tags: Clarion West, David G Hartwell, Rudy Rucker, Writers of the Future

Well, just turned in my horror short story, THE SHAKEN LEAF, complete at 5300 words. The title is taken from this very mangled biblical quote from Leviticus “and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth“.

The premise is an interesting one, one I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years, and is my attempt to generate a completely original monster not based on tropes from any established mythology. I got tired of reading about zombies and vampires (even in pro mags like ChiZine), and wondered why there weren’t more original monsters in modern storytelling. Usually, when I ask myself, “Why doesn’t X exist?” that’s a cue for me to write one. Thus, “The Shaken Leaf” was born, though I’m thinking of retitling it “As From the Sword” since that has a better ring to it.

This piece gave me a lot of hassles, and I have to admit that I’m not entirely satisified with it. At one point, I found myself writing a “power up” point for my fleeing hereos, complete with medkits. It is not good to find yourself slipping into video game tropes. Ended up scrapping that scene completely and tightening the chase, so I suppose it may work now, but it’s far from my best work. What’s worse is that I don’t think it will sell. It’s an action horror, not a psychological one (though I hope it works on that level as well), and magazines seldom buy these pieces. Their reasoning? “Why isn’t this a movie?”. And I think they’re right too. I wrote this piece, in part, so try and develop the idea for eventual script treatment. Only time will tell there.

Next week I’m going back to what I hope is my strong suit: character-driven urban fantasy with a tasty sci-fi dressing. Structually, it’s a huge experiment, but I guess I’m thinking of it as a Hail Mary. If it works, I expect it to work big. If it doesn’t, well, I still like the idea, so maybe I’ll tackle it again with a more traditional format.

Nalo’s been great so far and I’m looking forward to my private interview with her on Thursday. For tonight, I might try and rent True Romance for the CW crew, or perhaps just outline my newest piece with the horrible, horrible working title of “Pruning the Tree”. No, it is not about landscaping.

Thanks to everyone who’s been commenting. I haven’t had time to answer a lot of you, but I appreciate you guys. This is much easier with a cheering section!

Tags: Clarion West, Workshop

We’re watching Twilight right now with Nalo Hopkinson. I asked her what lessons we should take away from the movie. She pointed at the screen with sagely authority and said simply, “Don’t!”

Tags: Clarion West

Hello all,

Sorry I’ve been so slow with the blog posts recently, but last week was crazy busy. I was getting ready for my weekend away with Alicia. I took a few pictures. Yeah, I needed that:

Anyways, Elizabeth Bear’s weekend went quite well. She’s really made a science of writing well, and is therefore able to show you the mechanics behind it. This suits me just fine, since I’ve tried to do the exact same thing, and it was like the apprentice learning at the feet of the master.

Her critiques were spot on, but still pretty enthusiastic, which is a great quality to have in an instructor. My private meeting with her went well, though we mostly just shot the shit since I hadn’t prepared any questions for her, and she’s pretty thoroughly critiqued HIVE GOD in the workshop. I think that story has legs, once it’s been to a second draft. Oddly, I think I learned a great deal from our “extra assignment”. Bear brought in a 1st draft of her short story “Shoggoths in Bloom”, as well as the full text of the story that was eventually nominated for the Hugo. I can see what works and what doesn’t in the first draft, and see how she worked to change it in the final text. This was a wonderful experience. Also, with Karen Joy Fowler’s advice to insert specificity into short fiction in mind, I could spot how Bear does this very effectively without tons of exposition.

Oh, HIVE GOD did well in the workshop, which kind of makes up for the beating I took on THE CHEMICALS BETWEEN US. I just don’t write as fast as some of the authors here, but this was a fun story, and I already have ideas on how to rework the second draft with Bear’s advice in mind.

I’m writing a horror this week, which might be the workshop’s first (if you don’t count a really excellent piece that evoked Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”–that has already been before the group). I’m looking forward to gross a few people out and murdering a bunch of characters, but since I spent the weekend with Alicia, it’s going to feel a little rushed. We’ll see how it turns out.

Going to meet Nalo Hopkinson in a couple of minutes. I’m very excited to meet her, as she has not only won the World Fantasy Award, but also a slew of Canadian awards that I think I also have a shot at, eventually. Her voice is also extremely unique and flavourful, so I’m looking forward to any help she might be able to offer there too.

I’ll just leave you guys with a few images I’ve taken of some of the people we’ve met so far: Gardner Dozois, Gordon Van Gelder, and Ellen Datlow.

Tags: 2009, Clarion West, Nalo Hopkinson, Workshop

Alright, I realized that that last post probably seemed a little whiny, so I figure I should probably mention all the great stuff that has happened recently.

At the Clarion West party on Friday, I met and spoke with Elizabeth Bear for about an hour. This is going to be a great week. One of the best things about talking to “Bear” as she likes to be called, is that there is one underlying conversation, and then a dozen tangents that she feels free to pursue while always returning to the core conversation. We spoke about her writing style, media fiction and paying the bills with your writing, and even about Racefail09. She mentioned the concept about Roving Internet Flash Mobs, of which I was not aware, but now totally believe in. She’s funny and awesome and not afraid to speak her mind. This is going to be a lovely week.

Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to Karen Joy Fowler, who is one heck of a decent human being. I think, thanks to her, everyone now believes in themselves just a little bit more, and that’s a hell of a gift. Nate came up with the idea to buy her a giant plush squish because, for some odd reason “tentacle love” seemed to come up as a theme all week, and Karen mentioned the concept of a “squid on the mantlepiece”, which is a term covered in the Turkey City Lexicon. We gave her the gift and then this NYT Bestselling author and Nebula Winner, put the squid on her head and wore it like a hat. I’m certainly going to miss her.

Steve, Lucas, Derek and I spent the 4th of July watching “The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra“, which is a spoof of 50s sci-fi movies and probably cost 20K to make. It was quite awesome. We followed that up with “Monty Python’s The Life of Brian” a one-two punch of comedy. Lots of laughter last night.

I FINALLY figure out how to start my insect story. I needed to find the voice of the piece, and I think I’ve done that. We’ll see how it works out. I need to practically finish it today if I want a decent submission for Tuesday, so it’ll be a fun day of writing awesomeness.

Thanks for all the love you guys have been sending me in the comments, though I’ve been pretty poor at responding to them. Your support is really helping me get through this. TTFN.

Tags: Clarion West, Elizabeth Bear, Karen Joy Fowler, Workshop