I am bound for Seattle on Saturday *yay* at 5:00am *boo-urns*.
I’m beginning to obsess about it, reading Clarion Workshop blogs wherever I can (I’ll post links on the Clarion West page I keep threatening to put up). I also plan to write my own Clarion Workshop posts every day (if possible) so watch this space.
I’ve been threatening to highjack Andy LeBlanc’s video camera, so if the stars align, you might get some interviews, and maybe even a CW blooper reel. One can hope!
Added a new Blog to the old blogroll today. Scott Baker run’s the Oso Muerte blog, and has been shortlisted for Clarion West.
I’m really hoping he gets in because we really seem to be on the same wavelength (though I would mourn any of the current applicants who can’t come, of course). For instance, he’s really expanded on the Clarion West Reality show idea I mentioned in an earlier post.
Give Scott’s blog a read. He’s a cool writer with cool ideas!
Just saw this article at Locus Magazine regarding their new Clarion reality show. I have to say, their death match concept intrigues me.
Bowing to hard economic times, Clarions East and West1 have joined forces under the auspices of newly appointed director Dave Itzkoff and signed with the SyFy channel to participate in a new reality show called “Clarion Call: “Fight to Write.” Effective immediately, both workshops will be scaled back to three weeks and 15 students each. At the end of every day of shooting, one student will be eliminated. After the first 15 episodes have aired, the survivors of both Clarions will take each other on in a cage match televised live by SyFy and their new affiliate Shyte TV.
This has inspired me.
I’m going to borrow a video camera from my good friend Andrew LeBlanc and shoot a guerrilla-style Clarion West reality show, then upload it here (and by extension YouTube). Though Andy seems to think differently, I kind of believe a “battle to the death” style show starring writers would be boring as hell, but an informative documentary about a bunch of budding writers on the cusp of succeeding might be fun. And, as far as I’m aware, it’s never been done before.
So all you Clarionites, get ready to mug, cause you’re going to be on camera!
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.
Got the call today that I’ve been accepted to Clarion West for the class of 2009. I’m incredibly pleased by this. I’d actually applied to both Clarion and Clarion West, but CW was a clear favourite because it’s got awesome instructors, a vibrant writing community in Seattle, and is a short three hour drive across the border. I’m going to arrange for a PACE pass so that I can skip the line-ups there and back.
I’ll be posting my Clarion West Application Essay, so you guys can see what got me in (of course, the fact that the story I submitted with my entry placed 1st in Writers of the Future couldn’t have hurt 
).