Savaged.

…

At Clarion West, we are issued tickets at the start of each week, maybe four or five of them. If we go over time, or start with a negative critique, or don’t get around to critiquing someone, we are supposed to throw the tickets into the centre of the room. At the end of the week, we put all the remaining tickets into a bowl and we draw for prizes like books and toys. Obviously, these tickets are fairly valuable, although very occasionally (maybe five times so far), someone will have a lot to say about a particular story and cast their tickets in.

Three people cast tickets in for my story.

Everyone agreed there wasn’t much problem with my prose (although one person described it as “workman”, which I’m not sure is entirely fair. Flowery, no. But workman? D&D writers are workman. I figure I’m a little more metaphorical than that). But nearly every other aspect of the piece was criticized. Only one person caught that one of my main characters was named Sally Hemings, and he thought it might have been for shock value. I held the Versimiltoad close to me the entire time.

I’m feeling pretty beat up. People tried to tell me that it was a good thing that my story meritted three tickets, but praise was thin. Few people understood the message I was trying to impart in the piece. At least, people found the rape to be inoffensive, which is what I thought would be the tricky part, so I guess I succeeded there.

I feel like a fraud. I won Writers of the Future, but my stories keep getting savaged. I’m sure everyone is asking themselves right now just how the hell I did it. I wish I’d never said anything at all about it, except that I thought it might help in my application essay (Turns out it doesn’t. They do no good).

I think that I tried to write an amazing work of literature, and I’m just not good enough yet to do that. I’m a beginning writer who’s not particularly well read, and I was arrogant enough to try and make a “Statement”. I need to just accept that right now, I need to learn how to write a “Story” well, and not set my sights any higher.

My next piece, “IN THE SHAPE OF A MAN” is going to be a fluff piece. Hopefully original and awesome, but no messages this time. Pure escapism. I hope it’s better received.

Tags: Clarion West, Week 2, Workshop

Sorry about how irregular I’ve become. Clarion West is truly the sweatshop you’ve heard about. Yesterday, in addition to the story I had due, I had to critique 35,000 words of story. That’s a third of a large novel. I got very little sleep.

Last week went well. I had my meeting with John Kessel. We spoke about my admission story and the story I turned in to critique. I need to flesh out the setting for THE HAIRY MAN IS DEAD, and I have some ideas on how to do that, but I might switch the sex of the main character to make the point a little stronger. I also asked John what I could do, beside write a great story, to win an award. He told me there are two ways. Either write amazing stories over and over until you get noticed, and then your stories will get noticed by those who nominate, or attract a large following on your blog and become very involved in the community. Since I’m a bad blogger, I guess I just have to write amazing fiction.

Our Mystery Muse on Friday was Ellen Datlow, which was pretty amazing. She had a lot of wisdom and insight to share about the business, but I was disappointed to find out that she wasn’t accepting work from new writers. The slush pile is just too big. I guess I see her point. Looks like magazines are the way to go.

I attended the Locus Awards on Friday and Saturday, and met tons of big name authors, as well as editors like Gardner Dozois and Gordon Van Gelder. It was funny to see the Clarionites dogpiling Mr. Van Gelder (myself among them). Luckily he was a great sport about it.

Karen Joy Fowler’s week is proceeding very well. Her friends are insane. She’s shared a few stories, but sworn to us that she will have our heads if we repeat them, and so I shant. If you, dear reader, are a friend of Ms. Fowler’s, no, don’t worry, YOUR story, she kept in the strictest confidence.

I really admire her. She’s a bestselling author and teacher, and is still very grounded, but she knows her shit. I mean really. Her work is amazingly complex.

We met Ted Chiang today as well. He came to class mostly to warn us against writing media tie-ins. He warned that it devalues prose in general, and I really see his point. HOWEVER, I think that publishing in general is moving back towards the old patronage system that was around in the middle ages (you know, where a lord supported a writer while they worked). Holders of valuable intellectual property like Star Wars and D&D are like those lords. I can see writing for them in order to be able to afford to write my own stuff.

I’m really worried about the story that is being critiqued as we speak (THE CHEMICALS BETWEEN US). It’s definitely the furthest I’ve ever stretched and I probably bit off more than I can chew, but I’m really proud of this piece. On nearly every level, I think it’s the best that I’m capable of writing right now.  Of course, that means I’ll probably take a beating on the critique. Lord, I hope I didn’t offend anyone. I think that, for the first time, I’ll be taking the Versimiltoad to a critique.

Anyways, I’m working on a new story, kind of a fantasy/steampunk piece for next week, tentatively called IN THE SHAPE OF A MAN, though I’m sure that will certainly change, since my protagonist is, yet again, female. I don’t know why, but I write best when I’m writing female characters. Is this true for any other male writers out there? Any theories?

Well, I was pounding away at my keyboard right up until the 7pm deadline (when John Kessel was scheduled to read at the University Bookstore), but I managed to get my story, “The Hairy Man is Dead” in under the wire (complete at 3500 words).  Am I happy with it? I think I was stretching for something, and the story does make a statement, which I think it essential in fiction. It’s very first draft-y though. There’s kind of an extra scene in there that isn’t attached to anything, and the ending needs to be strengthened. But we’ll see what the group has to say about it tomorrow.

Kessel’s reading at the bookstore went very well (I do have pictures, but no time to upload them). The biggest thing I learned was that summary is okay in a reading. Several times, Kessel broke from the narrative and said stuff like, “and then they land on the planet on the wrong side of the mountain range, which is trouble”. I spoke to him privately about this later, and he confessed that he’d written out the summaries in advance. This is something to remember.

That night, having turned in my story, I slept like a baby.

Day 3 is going well. I’ve read the other three stories due to be critiqued, and they each have their strong points. At least one of them, I privately think is publishable, but they were all good. In the light of day, mine is looking more and more flawed and implausible. Nate Parkes raised a really great point about the piece already, though. I think this is going to be like getting the benefit of my friend Andy LeBlanc’s (whom I’ve spoken about on this blog before) advice times seventeen. I hope my brain can handle it!

John Kessel is really amazing, in that he’s made an effort to engage each of us separately in casual conversation. This is really above and beyond the call of duty, especially for pheebs like me who can’t think of a single thing to say.

Tomorrow is my first workshop critique, and, not coincedentally, my private meeting with John Kessel. I’d like to go in there armed with a couple of questions about writing to ask him. I’d like to get your suggestions. If you can think of something I should ask Mr. Kessel, please leave it in the comments and I’ll ask him.

Anyways, I’ve just finished an outline for story number 2, which is tentatively called “The Chemicals Between Us”. My subconscious seems to be telling me to write stories that I believe will appeal to my instructors. For John Kessel, author of “Stories For Men”, I wrote a tale about immasculation in the workplace. For Karen Joy Fowler, I’ve come up with a piece that deals with rape.

I’d like to believe that this is not unconsciously sucking up. Rather, it’s getting them to critique stories that fall into their areas of expertise. I’d say this was a good strategy if it weren’t all bullshit. I’m just writing the stories my subconscious is puking up.

And I’m going to get to it right now. I’ll let you know how tomorrow goes.

Well, Wordpress ate yesterday’s posting, so I’ll just quickly sum up.

We were introduced to the workshop by Leslie and Neile, two wonderful women who do a lot of work setting up this workshop for us. After they’d explained a few tedious, but necessary rules (no bare feet in the house, etc), we were introduced to our first instructor, John Kessel.

He asked us to introduce ourselves to the group and go over some of our reasons for attending Clarion West.  Everyone had a different story and background. There was at least one PhD and several Masters level students, some of whom had studied English and Creative Writing. Others (like myself) were just amateurs looking to improve their craft.

We watched the movie Miller’s Crossing to help study plot, and then we were assigned a writing exercise to write a short story in an hour that used a huge number of silly words like “stallion” and “duplicate”. This being our first exposure to each others fiction, some people spent more than an hour on it, and there was probably a little chest beating, but all-in-all it turned out to be a pretty fun exercise.

When we read them the next day, at least two of the stories were absolutely amazing. The group got some good news later in the day when Tom Rodgers was notified that he won Semi-Finalist in Writers of the Future, and Miranda found out she’d placed as an Honorable Mention. Congrats guys!

I stupidly volunteered to write a story really quickly to be critiqued first, which means that I have to complete it by tomorrow at 7pm. This is a tight deadline. The reason I volunteered was because John Kessel would only be able to help workshop stories that were written by Tuesday or Wednesday, and Wednesday filled up immediately. My admission story was my Writers of the Future winner, and I suppose it would be nice to get his thoughts on it, but I can’t really change it since it’s published. It would be much more valuable to get his input on a new piece.

Our second exercise was to write a scene where a character is developed through their actions, and I accidentally wrote a whole story. I really like it though. It’s called “Flight of the Ad Suit”, and if it’s well received at group tomorrow, I’m thinking of submitting it to Jake Freivald over at Flash Fiction Online. Jake’s a great guy, and we’ve corresponded before, but I’ve been a little intimidated about sending him anything seeing as how I edit EDF. What if it wasn’t any good? What would he think of me then? So I’m finally going to overcome my insecurities and blast something out to him. Hopefully he enjoys the read.

Signing off for the day. Wish me luck on completing my story.

Got here at 9am because border traffic was exceptionally light. The house was locked so I had to call Neile after making a trip to the local Starbucks. I needed internet access to retrieve her number.

When I’d finally gotten in to the house and was halfway through unpacking, Cat Rambo showed up, and we had the greatest conversation. Cat is a hell of a writer. Don’t believe me? Go here.

We talked for about two hours about the Clarion Experience, which she went through in 2005. Her biggest piece of advice was to “experiment” and “take chances”. This is the place to take risks. I asked her what kinds of things to look out for in the class dynamics, and she graciously shared some wisdom.

I’ve been thinking that there is a real temptation to judge your peers by the writing you see at the workshop, but that’s just not the way to go. Because we’re all “experimenting” and most experiments fail. In fact, the writer who does the best in the workshop may not be pushing themselves enough, playing it too safe. I’m not going to judge anyone by what they put out here, but rather by the quality of the critiques they give (is that fair either?).

Picked up Tom Rodgers at the airport, which was a bit of an experience. Lucas and Miranda volunteered to come with me, and when we got to the carousel, we spotted someone matching Tom’s description. He was even wearing a NASA badge. Too embarrassed to ask him directly, we decided instead to shout out “Tom Rodgers” in his general vicinity. Did this save us from embarrassment? What do you think? In any case, he had a bad case of altitude deafness because he didn’t hear us. Nor did he spot my hand-crafted “T-Rod” signs. Finally, we connected over iPhone and found each other.

Had some lunch, and have retreated into my room to Skype Alicia. Just finished the 2nd draft of “The Naked Leading the Blind” and am ready to send it out. Wish me luck.

There’s a great bunch of people here, all of whom write very different fiction. I can’t wait to read their application stories, which will probably happen Monday.

Tags: Clarion West, workshops