Clarion 2006

I attended the Clarion workshop for writers of science fiction and fantasy in the summer of 2006. It was, quite markedly, a life-changing experience--though not quite in the way I expected.

This is the archive of my blog from that time, describing my experiences there.

Afterwards, I'll also talk about my reflections now in the following years of just how Clarion helped and hindered my work.

Clarion Blog

June 16-17, 2006: Saying Goodbye

Here are photos of my journey.

I'm lucky to have so many friends willing to stop by and wish me good luck before a journey, but their presence often makes that departure all the more difficult. Where would I have to go that's more important than having lunch with Don and Ray, or having people over for a role-playing game?

In this case, Clarion and my writing destiny.

I'm lucky, too, that Candice is so understanding of my need to be gone for seven weeks (counting one working in DC). Not many people even know what Clarion even is, much less how significant it can be to the life of a person who writes speculative fiction. She understands how important it is to go, even if she's sad to see it.

The night before I left, we had everybody over for BBQ and cookie cake and conversation by the pool. It was the important kind of conversation, too--about Star Wars and Superman and weird new technology.

At the end of the evening, Don's wife Sylvie asked him how I felt about going to Clarion, and he said, "I don't know. I didn't ask. We were too busy talking about other things."

That's the way it should be, right?

For the record, I'm optimistic about Clarion and I'm approaching it with the beginner's mind: as empty of expectation as possible, and as willing to be changed as possible.

The next morning, Candice and I tearfully said good-bye as I drove my air-conditioner-laden Volvo up to South Carolina in the first leg of my journey.

June 17, 2006: Visiting South Carolina

I take advantage of my friend Scott's ill-considered invitation to "stay anytime you need to" all too often, probably, but he's the reason I haven't been killed driving back and forth to Washington. We hang out, eat a good meal at a Florence restaurant, and chat with the South Carolina Willcon posse.

This time, I saw Stuart (attendee of only one Willcon because he works in Puerto Rico) and Jason in addition to Scott. We had a good Chinese dinner, and then Scott, Jason, and I whittled away the evening by talking about religion, politics, film, and humanity--our usual subjects.

What's funny is that I met these guys at the gaming table, rolling dice and fighting orcs. As time has gone on, though, we find ourselves enjoying catching up even more. Don't get me wrong--I still miss the gaming--but we're better friends each time we meet, and sometimes gaming isn't an efficient way to socialize.

I closed the evening by showing Jason the photos of our excursion into the DeJarnette Children's Asylum. He was dumb-founded. Jason is the kind of person with such a keen tactical mind that he's reluctant to leave an ax in the yard lest someone use it against him. He was amazed that we'd expose ourselves to whatever horrible mojo surged within that place, not to mention the bums and crackheads probably lurking there.

"I thought at least Candice had more sense," he said shaking his head when her picture come up.

"Look!" he cried, pointing to the photo of the Universal Precautions Cabinet. "They used up EVERYTHING in the Universal Precautions Cabinet and it still didn't save them!"

June 22, 2006: Escaping the Surly Bonds of Earth

I'm not a particularly practical or grounded sort of person. I'd much rather live a life of imagination, and I work hard to escape the realities of work and economy.

I'm supposed to be writing books in a Victorian mansion, not riding elevators with Bluetooth-enabled zombies.

Still, I had to work the last few weeks before Clarion--maybe harder than ever before (in an office, anyway). It's as though the mundane and ordinary world would not easily surrender its grasp of me, and I had to writhe my way from its oily tentacles.

Juggling two jobs, I have done the following in the last three weeks before Clarion:

• Created seven computer-based training courses and three alternate versions
• Designed two websites
• Built an online help system and edited its content
• Written a book on creating computer-based training courses
• Attended two training classes

All I know is that I escaped the Census compound at 11:30am on Thursday and zoomed from Suitland. No doubt people ran out after me shaking their fists like in the Dukes of Hazzard. I'm okay with that.

June 22, 2006: Maryland and Pennsylvania

I suspect that if you ask certain kinds of people in Northern Virginia and Washington DC, they will confess that Maryland kind of gives them the creeps. I much prefer Alexandria and Arlington to any of the oddball places in MD, including Suitland where the Census lives.

There's just something odd about it that's hard to place. I feel uncomfortable there.

I drove through as quickly as possible.

For Pennsylvania, I decided to wind my way through the mountains towards Pittsburgh. Deliberately avoiding the bolder and broader lines on the map, I trickled up through tiny roads through tiny towns.

The map called one area Wills Mountain, but I saw no signs to that effect.

I stopped to take pictures of abandoned buildings, but otherwise I just dragged up and down Pennsylvania's steep and winding roads. My car, apparently no llama, groaned disconcertingly on some of those inclines.

The view was scenic, though: plenty of cool gray rock, steep escarpments, ominous signs directing runaway trucks toward gravel ramps, and acres of trees or corn.

June 22, 2006: Flight 93

As I said, I essentially trusted to the Force during my drive: any road going westish or northish was good enough for me.

So I was puzzled by the odd coincidence represented in a large wooden sign labeled Flight 93.

Flight 93? The September 11th flight 93? The one aiming for the Capitol? The Capitol from which I walked home that day?

I turned down the road to investigate, making my way toward Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Down a series of narrow ill-kept roads, I followed American flags and primitive signs. At the crest of a hill, I saw what looked like a tiny camp: the temporary memorial to the people who gave their lives on Flight 93 to save Americans, possibly including me.

I pulled into the parking lot across the street from the tour bus (always an ominous sign) and walked towards the memorial.

The only covered building was a shed, maybe twenty feet by ten feet, containing two narrow counters with photographs of the crash site. Through a hazy plexiglass window, you could see the field in which the plane crashed.

You could stand outside and squint towards the field. The only sign of the crash was a chainlink fence with an American flag hanging from it. There were no signs of debris or even a scar in the earth--those have long been cleaned up by investigators.

I dutifully squinted into the field towards the general area where the plane crashed. A tour guide explained to forty elderly tourists how the plane banked over the hill at 500+ miles per hour, rocking to knock the passengers off their feet before zooming upside down into the field. Less than a mile away, a Shanksville school shook with the impact.

Even more interesting, though, were the ad hoc memorials at the site. A fence held thousands--and I do mean thousands--of patches, badges, helmets, hats, license plates, decals, and letters from every police force, fire engine squad, and American Legion post in the United States. The flagpoles were slathered with stickers from organizations eager to represent their support for the passengers.

On every flat surface lay a sprinkle of memento trinkets--everything from cross necklaces to military pins to plaster statues of the Virgin Mary.

I'm twitchy about memorials, and I'm easily angered by people who show insufficient respect to greatness or nobility or idealism. I had mixed feelings standing there, looking at all of those heart-felt memorials. Many were deeply personal, made by children or family members. Others were obviously totems indicating solidarity with the passengers and crew. Yet some were just the weird mass-produced trinkets of embarrassingly garish colors and hoo-rah sentimentality.

How curiously American, I thought: tackiness and sentimentality and nobility all in the same place. I've always said that America is a nation of liars, but that our virtue is that we work so hard to make our lies come true. Of course we'd leave little bits of sentiment for heroes of the American story who died to make it true.

I paused for a moment of reflection to thank the people of that flight for possibly saving my life. I also apologized for seemingly hijacking their sacrifice, taking from it a personal meaning perhaps different from what they intended.

I hope I make it worth it.

June 23, 2006: Pittsburgh and Beyond

I missed a turn to avoid Pittsburgh and ended up driving through downtown in a lightning-flickered rain. The city is a Escher-inspired tangle of tunnels and bridges and tunnels over bridges and bridges crossing in the middle of tunnels. The laws of physics (not to mention urban design) need not apply in that town.

I made my way to Cranberry and stayed the night.

This morning, I gathered my things and headed for Michigan. I originally intended to stop in Toledo, but the music on the iPod was so inspiring and good ("All Fired Up" by Pat Benatar and "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake--yeah, yeah, shut up) that I kept going to Ann Arbor.

In Ann Arbor, it was the Superman theme, so I just drove all the way to East Lansing.

St. Elmo's Fire played as I entered the parking lot for my Holiday Inn Express just miles from Michigan State.

How curious that so many things have fallen into line to make this all possible: a weirdly free contract job, a second one to help pay for it, supportive friends, sad but enthusiastic wife, personal landmarks on the way, and a last surge of magical drive to get me there.

I walked around campus this evening, musing on my questions:

• Will I efficiently express who I really am to these people?
• Will there be freaky oddballs to avoid or escape?
• Will they ask to borrow my car?
• Will I ever have time to be alone or walk around campus?
• Will the instructors take me seriously enough to tell me the truth about my writing?
• Will the students have insightful comments or will they be full of shit?
• Will I learn how to write better stories more consistently?
• Can I somehow manage to generate enough ideas to write a story a week for six weeks?
• Why did I get that scholarship? How did I earn it?
• Will I seem hopelessly out of touch with the industry, loving as I do the old writers like Bradbury and Dick?
• Can I last six weeks away from my wife and cats?
• Can my pool last for six weeks without me taking care of it?

Strangely, I'm not worried. Even a complete disaster will show me something about writing, even if it is something as mundane as that I should go elsewhere to learn it. In the absolute worst case scenario, I get six weeks of quietly writing, walking around a college campus, and lurking in a library. That essentially is heaven by itself.

If I learn anything about writing, that's even better.

June 24, 2006: What a Wonderful New Smell You've Discovered

Today, I arrived at Owen Graduate Hall, my home for the next six weeks. I arrived at the counter, presented an ID, and was given the key to my room on the seventh floor. I saw no evidence of other Clarionites, so I just moved in all of my things.

Here is the photo album of my day.

As you can see in the photos, the dorm room was not exactly...clean. As you cannot see in the dorm rooms, the smell was distinctly that of an animal gone inside-out. I scurried to Target, sprayed everything down, and set myself up as well as possible.

Today's lesson: the reason they tell you to put an air conditioner in the window is that the back of the unit gives off more heat than the front of the unit gives off unheat. Good to know. I wedged my AC unit into the window, covered the gap around it with lumber from Home Depot, and fashioned quite a lair for myself.

Tomorrow is the official orientation and start of the workshop, so today I'm just here with a handful of other early arrivals. I've spoken to them only briefly, really: some of them seem to know each other already. I'm expecting to meet the rest during the orientation, asserting the trademark wit and flair surging around me in an opalescent aura.

In the meantime, I sleep with the Lysol close at hand.

June 25, 2006: Batter Up!

Today I spent more time with the members of my class, going to lunch and driving them on an errand to Meijer, the enormous grocery/department store that is like a big, festering Wal-Mart that someone scratched until it swelled. Some of the locals think it is awesome, and all I have to say to them is, "Have you tried your near-empty Target down the road? Because that's...clean."

Anyway, my classmates seem a fascinating bunch--each with special talents and interests. I'm pleased to see that we're not all alike after all, except in our interest to write.

We had our big orientation today. The Clarion staff explained how things work: from 9am to 1pm every day, we sit in a circle and each comment for two minutes on the story being critiqued. The writer of that story sits silently nodding until it is over, and then he or she says, "Thank you." The writer gets a small rebuttal after everyone else has spoken, but usually it is pointless; either the story spoke for itself or it didn't. The writer isn't going to get to explain the story in the real world, either.

We were also warned about blogging about Clarion. Apparently one of the first rules of Clarion is that you do not write about Clarion. No, I'm just kidding. They did warn us, though, that the specifics of what happens in the circle every morning is holy and cannot be discussed in detail with anyone else. That's how people can feel safe there. That makes sense to me, though I've read that some of the attendees are leery of what they view as censorship.

Samuel R. Delany, known as Chip, will be our instructor for the first week of class. Because no one has yet submitted stories, he culled four from the ones we submitted for getting into Clarion to use as examples for tomorrow's first session.

Mine was one of them.

He was sure to point out that these weren't the best stories or worst stories or necessarily special. They just happened to make good "heuristic tools," offering something interesting to talk about on our first day.

Our assignment tonight was to read these stories for tomorrow's class and offer our critiques.

Mine is definitely the weakest of the bunch, and I say that with no false modesty or hope for soothing. I mean, I'm here specifically to fix stories like the one I submitted, but I have to say I'm a bit embarrassed to be one of a batch that includes at least two immediately publishable major-market stories.

I write big ham-fisted funny things. I don't reach much deeper than a guffaw or a knowing roll of the eyes. That makes me sad sometimes, that I'm not moving people with my words like other authors have moved me. Part of what I want from Clarion is to learn how to make my work more emotional.

The stories I read tonight seem a lot closer to that goal than mine.

It'd be easy to take that as a bad sign, but the point isn't how good we are coming into Clarion but how good we are coming out. This is my six weeks to get my act together and really learn how to do this instead of fumbling along by accident.

Tomorrow my schooling begins.

June 26, 2006: Oof!

If today's critiques are anything to go by, my characters are flat, my humor is callous, my situations are unrealistic, my story structure is sagging, and my premise is inconsistent.

But it was funny. Sort of.

I'm sorry to say my story was not a hit among my peers. Indeed, it received criticisms far stronger than even my own in yesterday's entry. At least two reviewers actually used the word "hate" to describe their feelings toward the story and its character, all while I quietly nodded and wrote notes.

You get a complex cocktail of emotional chemicals in a situation when twenty talented people and a writing professional all agree that your story is a disaster.

The first surge is embarrassment. Mine was the third story to be discussed, and it really didn't put my best foot forward. It colors their view of my work going forward, and it undermines my credibility as a reviewer of their work, too.

The second is despair. I really thought I worked hard on that story, but it still didn't succeed. What am I going to do with all of this information? Can something so flawed even be fixed? Are these flaws somehow fundamental to me? Does this story somehow encapsulate my current state as a writer? Where do I go from here?

The third is anger. Partly at myself for making some sloppy mistakes. Partly at my mediocre Florida education in which no teacher or professor ever suggested that I work to do better than myself instead of just better than the fumbling average. Partly at Clarion for accepting someone on the basis of a story so obviously flawed.

At the end of it all, I quietly thanked everyone and said that I'd come here specifically to hear this kind of feedback, to work on evolving from a writer of epigrams to a writer of stories about real human feelings.

Of course, I have no idea how to do that.

I seem to have a peculiar emotional tone-deafness. I've developed my sense of humor mostly to avoid all of the feelings everyone else knows how to handle. I don't know what I'd do at a funeral, or if someone I loved was in pain. It was easier as a kid to suppress everything but humor, and that's a hard habit to break.

My humor circuit breaker trips whenever real feelings threaten to emerge. I'm a Cavalier poet, brandishing a rapier with a sneer, conveying canned feelings with eloquence but never allowing myself to dwell on them for long.

I just don't know how to do something more, to follow up and amplify that humor with something real and human.

Part of the Clarion experience is a personal meeting with each instructor. I sat down with Samuel R. Delany today to discuss my writing career, and he had some insightful questions but no suggestions on how to find the answers. He asked which writers I admired (Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith--sort of cold, callous, mean writers now that I think about it), what I wanted to do with my career (develop some skill at writing the humane and inspiring stories that made me love science fiction), and so on.

We talked about a story idea I have and he had some suggestions on fleshing it out, too.

It's a strange situation, talking about writing with someone who actually does it well. It wasn't the meeting of the minds I expected, largely because I felt very much like a naive kid prattling on about superficial things. Delany has a way of nodding knowingly as if to say, "Ah, yes. Someone at that stage." He's seen twenty years of Clarion students, and I'm sure there have been some like me.

They're probably selling insurance now.

I suspect my megalomania and perverse determination might save me from that fate.

All I have to do now is figure out what to do with all of these revelations.

June 28, 2006: A Sage Reminds

Norman Vincent Peale. Zig Ziglar. Victor Frankl. Jason Carraway.

Inspirational voices, all.

In response to my last message, Jason writes, "[L]ook around at those about you. Do you think any of them has a sack big enough to crawl through the window of an abandoned children's hospital?"

That just changed Clarion. Never will I look around that circle the same way.

Maybe that's my advantage: I'm just crazy enough to do almost anything it takes, to proceed against all rationality. A looming edifice of evil didn't give me pause. Why would a bunch of fledgling science fiction writers?

I've read more stories this week and discovered something else. The amazing story in that initial batch? It was as much an aberration from the norm as mine. All of the other stories so far have been capable, intelligent, promising--but not works of genius.

This is no conclave of the gods. Just people trying to improve their writing. People much like me, struggling to address their weaknesses.

But none of them has faced an empty Universal Precautions Cabinet and still gone through the rest of the asylum anyway.

Jason ends his message with, "Safe is easy Will. Our heroes didn't get to be heroes by being safe. Neither of us grew up rooting for bank tellers or hotel desk clerks. Keep looking for that horse Indy, it's around there somewhere."

Amen, brother.

July 5, 2006: What's it like to be critiqued at Clarion?

That's what everybody wants to know: just what happens inside the holy circle? What incantations transform mortals into science fiction writers?

Here, despite the stern warnings of the Clarion Foundation, is just how a critique works.

A person offers her story: "A priest, a rabbi, and a duck walk into a bar."

Then the critiques begin:

• I don't buy the priest. He wasn't convincing to me.
• What's the motivation?
• Where are the details? I want to feel that bar, that priest, that rabbi, that duck.
• What species is the duck?
• I've been a duck, and I'm sorry to say I couldn't read past the first page because of your anti-duck sentiments.
• Why a bar? Why not the gas-swirled steppes of NGC6514-IV?
• Where was the conflict? Make the duck an anti-Semite.
• Murray Leinster wrote this story in 1912.
• I worry that today's markets are already flooded with priest stories.
• I never got a sense of the alien nature of the duck. Where was his duckness? He seemed too human.
• I'd like to know more about this "rabbi" you've invented. What mythology does he come from?
• Your duck reminded me of an episode of Gilligan's Island in which the Skipper fashions diving fins out of palm fronds. Play up that cross-textual resonance.
• The humor felt flat to me.
• This flowed very smoothly. However...
• I really loved the concept but your writing was flawed.
• I really loved the writing but your concept was flawed.
• I loved neither the writing nor the concept, and you are flawed.
• The priest seemed entirely passive. What was his problem? How did he try to solve it?
• Flash fiction doesn't sell.
• This is a lyrical and absorbing triumph of world-building, perhaps too ambitious for a short story.
• What's with you and the rabbi stories?
• Wait. This went completely over my head. I read this as a vampire story.

As weird as all of this advice seems, every line of it helps. Every comment means something, and despite the seeming non sequiturs, all of this comes together in your mind eventually and makes sense.

That's what Clarion is like. People throw a bunch of odd things at you (cans, string, microchips, human skulls, applesauce), and somehow it all comes together as an intricate clockwork toy.

July 7, 2006: Moe (also starring Michael Swanwick)

Last night, we attended an excellent reading by Michael Swanwick at the Archives Bookshop here in East Lansing. The story he read, "Triceratops Summer," is available from Amazon for only .49 as a download, and it's a great read. Pick it up!

Nice as the bookshop was and great as the reading was and engaging as Swanwick's Hugo-winning genius was, the REAL star of the evening was Moe, the bookstore cat.

You can see photos of Moe (and oh, yes, Michael Swanwick) here on Flickr.

July 10, 2006: Touring the Atom Mill

Last Friday, we took a tour of the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, a facility in which scientists shoot beams of protons at various things apparently for fun. I was too embarrassed to ask just why they do all of this stuff, especially with my long-forgotten high school physics bubbling up only in pieces.

It's a big, complicated device you couldn't build so easily in your backyard, let's just say that. We walked through tunnels and vaults and rooms tangled in wires and electronics. There's magnetism involved, and we had to remove all of our electronic gadgets and credit cards in one room lest they be wiped. Strangely, upon entering the room, I felt something pulling near my stomach. Had I eaten a bolt? Or are my gallstones just iron-based? Hard to tell.

Our tour guides, enthusiastic beyond normal geekiness, seemed a little disappointed that we didn't immediately grasp just how amazingly cool this thing was. One looked to be about twelve, and she explained how to weigh very tiny things (like herself, I suppose, or our interest in physics). We have three actual scientists among our number, so they were able to hold up the technical conversation and represent the sf writing community. God knows I couldn't.

I feel vaguely guilty going to see this wonder of modern science, like a savage taken to the palace only to piss on the marble. I'm sure there are brilliant physics fans trapped in the Bayou who will never have the chance to fulfill their dream of seeing the NSCL, and I didn't even truly appreciate it.

Except as an interesting testament to the human desire to do big, weird stuff.

You can see pictures of our adventure here on Flickr.

July 11, 2006: A Day in the Life

Though I write about the interesting events of Clarion, I rarely discuss the day-to-day grind which writers endure in this boot camp. To sate your curiosity, I offer this outline of a typical day and a stream of photos.

Here's what happens:

1. I awaken at 6:42am and get ready for the day.
2. At 7am, I sit at my desk and work on an hour of writing (either in longhand for via the computer). If it is Friday, I submit my story via e-mail to the Clarion staff so they can copy my story for the other students and have it available this afternoon for critique on Monday.
   
   I usually shoot for a Monday critique largely to get it over with, and so I can't be blamed for not following the author's instructions that week--I haven't heard them yet!
3. At 8:30am, I go downstairs and buy a bagel from our terrible cafe. I then walk over to the adjoining building and take my seat in the empty critique circle.
4. After all of the other students file in, our director Liz offers some announcements--usually of trips to the gnarly local store Meijer or to the movies. Sometimes she'll also have news about Clarion itself, or about changes to our procedures.
5. Then the critiques begin. From 9am until 1pm or later, we review anywhere from two to six manuscripts, each ranging from 500 words to 10,000 words. The most common length is about 4,000 words.
   
   The person being critiqued sits quietly as each person around the circle speaks in turn for two minutes or less about the story. Most people offer a positive observation followed by the negative or constructive ones. Once everyone has spoken, the instructor speaks, often for longer than the two minutes. The critiquee can then explain him or herself, though I've learned not to do this: your story says what it says, and explaining what it should have said doesn't really help. So you just say thank you.
6. After the critique circle, we pick up the manuscripts for review tomorrow.
7. Then, I return to my dorm room to check my e-mail, read, and--I'm ashamed to admit--nap. It's draining to be in the circle all morning.
8. I'll rise from my slumber in the early afternoon and work more on my story, sometimes late into the night on No-Doz and occasionally Guinness.
9. On less stressful days, I go to dinner down in the cafeteria just for the social utility. Often, I drive a small cadre of people to a local restaurant to save them the horror of the cafe.
10. I will also grudgingly admit that I will sometimes play a video game to unwind. These days, I'm playing the Legend of Zelda in a Nintendo emulator.
    
    I'll also take walks through the MSU campus.
11. Sometime in the evening, I'll read through the manuscripts and make my marks upon them. I often do line-by-line edits, which are time-consuming. I always write a summary on the back so it is easy to mention it in the circle tomorrow. Sometimes, this takes until 1am.
12. Then I retire for the night.

What makes this challenging is its relentless nature: you're either writing, talking about writing, critiquing a story, or telling a person about his or her story. It's actually harder for me to write in this environment because writing itself does not stimulate more writing; I need some kind of external seed, a news article or a weird event, to get me going. Sometimes I wander around Barnes and Noble to find such a seed. I've purchased way more books here than I came with.

The day of my critiques are slightly different. They usually include a meeting with the author in which you discuss the specific issues plaguing your work. In my case, the instructors have told me these are:

• Lack of sufficient descriptive detail.
• Lack of empathy for characters, often descending into outright meanness.
• A weakness for relying on the dismissive quip to avoid real emotion or consequence.
• Slow opening scenes.
• Implying too much instead of directly saying it.
• Implausible situations insufficiently explored or considered.
• Failure to use the structure of a story with a strong beginning, rising tension, and a satisfying conclusion.

Most of these I already know. I came to Clarion to learn how to fix them, and my instructors and fellow students have offered varying degrees of help in solving them.

The biggest is my lack of empathy, a problem that frankly affects even my non-writing life. Feelings other than humor were not helpful in my childhood, to say the least, so I have a dense carapace of flippant epigrams by which I avoid normal feelings. I'm not sure how to correct that at 33 years of age.

One of my tactics, though, has been to ask some of the theater people in our group just how they get into character on the stage. That is, how do they physically and emotionally become Hamlet? What do they think about?

Learning writing is a Zen thing: hunt it too aggressively and you'll lose it, but hunt it too loosely and you'll lose it, too. The trick is to learn what you need and internalize it so you never think of it.

That's quite a trick, and I'm still working on it!

July 16, 2006: Half-Better

At the halfway point of Clarion, I'm not half-better yet.

So I'm standing in the Outback lobby with Nebula-award winning author Nancy Kress and fellow Clarionite Sean Manseau, waiting for a table. Nancy leans over to me, nudges me with her elbow, points at Sean, and says, "He's got talent."

I'm still puzzled about what exactly that means, but I'd better stick close to Sean from now on in case some of the talent rubs off on me.

Nancy, a columnist for Writers Digest magazine and well-known writing instructor, certainly knows about character and structure, my two weaknesses. Her best advice included combining an emotional and a physical story in each of our works, starting with a strong scene, and knowing what the main character wants.

She was also fun, telling us several SF writer anecdotes, including a nude Harlan Ellison one. Many of us splashed out our eyes with our liquor and beer after hearing that one.

One of my fellow Clarionites, Will Alexander, has a background in theater and he's been very helpful with the craft of getting into a character's head. A lot of his advice will help me write about more convincing people who aren't just crude copies of myself.

During the third week of Clarion, we've all found our stride. Most people are submitting a story every week, some horrendously long. The problem, of course, is that nothing written in a week looks that good, and some people toss together sentence salads to hand in while the rest of us wince.

We've developed a few code words that essentially mean, "This sucks":

• "I found the prose smooth and easy-to-read. This went quickly for me."
• "I liked the basic concept, but..."

The latter is worst of all, because the phrase implied to follow is, "...but you blew it."

My pattern these days is to hand in stories so we critique them on Mondays. This has the benefit of being part of a short day (few other people submit for Monday) and of freeing me from any ire of the instructor for not following his or her instructions because I haven't heard them yet! Of course, I'm also the sacrificial lamb, enabling the instructor to explain just what he or she does not like in a story, as exemplified by my own.

I handed in my first purely fantasy story for critique tomorrow, entitled "Grteo's Harp." An elf inventor builds the first abacus and uses it to inventory the Fairy Lands, despite the anger of his people for violating a trust in nature. He discovers, of course, something horrible.

We shall see tomorrow if the other writers also discover something horrible.

Joe and Gay Haldeman are our instructors this week. Joe will coach us on writing, and Gay will tell us about the business--she's been tending the family store for most of his career, keeping track of the industry, making connections, and so on. They'll be a great one-two punch for our week, I'm sure.

It wouldn't be a complete message without some photo links, so here they are:

• This is my latest Flickr gallery about Week Three.

• This is Livia Llewellyn's Flickr gallery for yesterday's reading.

• This is Stephen Gaskill's Flickr gallery. (Forgive the misspellings: he's British)

That should keep you all occupied until my next posting later in the week!

July 23, 2006: Can Someone Please Stop the Clarion So I Can Get Off?

Okay. Deep breath.

It is now the end of the fourth week of my once-in-a-lifetime experience of honing my craft as a writer, and...well, I'm sick of it.

In particular:

• I miss my wife and cats.
• Candice is making noises about attempting to backwash and/or vacuum the pool, and I'm frightened.
• My latest story? Not going well. My skills as a writer are actually getting WORSE at Clarion. How that is possible, I cannot say.
• I'm sick of reading stories. If you love science fiction and fantasy in the short form, come to Clarion: we'll cure you!
• I'm sick of contriving things to say about half-baked stories other than, "No. Just no." Or worse, "Close enough."
• I'm gaining weight because I have no exercise cycle or swimming pool.
• My glasses are falling apart and I have to get new ones this week.
• I'm running low on my blood pressure medication, and the threat looms large that my veins will burst in crit circle like one of those Water Willy things you had as a kid.
• Owen Hall, like Babylon 5 a "port of call for refugees, smugglers, businessmen, diplomats, and travelers from a hundred worlds," seems clogged with armies of strange people. If you're not bumping into guys in karate outfits or a hundred Asian engineering students in the elevator, you're passing a bear with a ball gag in the stairwell. We won't have to write science fiction if the trend continues--we'll be living it.
• Midwestern people are weird. They lack the laid-back lefty sensibility of the West Coast and the high-strung drive of the East. I worry about anybody who deliberately chooses the middle of anything. They move slowly in their stores.
• MSU, though generously hosting us, is a little disappointing as a university--and I say that as a survivor of the Florida school system. Their main library is grim, especially if they're closed after all sixty books in inventory are checked out.
• I've somehow developed a reputation for skirting the edge of evil in my writing, tottering often into a cold surly meanness. I am also the official Clarion apostate, cheering on anti-religious and anti-family-value stories with an enthusiasm usually reserved for Slubgob in the Screwtape Letters.
• Did I mention the story isn't going well? It isn't.

On the plus side, I'm having a great time with some new friends here, and I'm learning a lot about writing.

Joe Haldeman Week

Joe and Gay Haldeman, science fiction's nicest people, led us through week four. They had plenty of insight about the craft and business of writing, and they were very approachable and friendly. We spent most of my conference talking about Gainesville (where they live and I wish I still did). Even better, they liked my stories--even the ones everyone else hated.

We also attended a reading at the Archives Bookstore where I got to see Moe again.

Oh, and listen to a great story by Joe.

Here are the photos.

Poetry Slam

A highlight from last week was the Joe Haldeman Science Fiction Poetry Slam. Joe had us pick a random poetic form and a random science fiction trope from an envelope. Then we had to collide the two and offer the debris at a reading. Mine? A kyrielle about colonization.

What's a kyrielle? Who knows? It's some kind of troubador form, though, and if I ever find out who invented it, I'm going back in time to kick the inventor's ass.

The quality of the work was surprisingly good. You'd be surprised how cool a Shakespearean sonnet about life extension can be, or a concrete poem about generation ships.

The event faded into a musical jam soon afterwards, with Joe pulling out his Backpacker guitar and belting out a few songs. Gay, his human TelePrompTer, nudged him with the words. Alex joined in with his guitar, and several other Clarionites sang along. I abstained, my Norwegian singing genes having been declared weapons of mass destruction.

Here are the photos.

Picnic

Today, we piled into cars and drove out to beautiful Lake Lansing for a picnic. The company, as always, was great.

While the more athletic among our number played some volleyball, the rest of us went hiking on Lake Lansing's sprawling hundred-yard nature walk. Among the wildlife we saw: fat sweaty auto workers playing basketball, a snake crawling across an empty bag of Cheetos, and a bottle-gathering vagrant.

Here are the photos.

I'll keep you posted more frequently as these last two weeks progress!

July 24, 2006: Here Comes the Sun

Yesterday's rant notwithstanding, I'm feeling much better today. Thanks for asking.

Part of the reason those complaints seemed so suddenly important is that they contrast so sharply with the positive experience of Clarion. I will never again find myself in a circle of people as passionately committed to anything, much less writing. I will never again find myself among so many trying as hard as I am to be better writers, to say meaningful things, to create wonderful lies.

The annoying and omnipresent shadow of so-called real life looms large in these last two weeks, at least for me.

The good news today is that I finally finished the Story That Was Not Going Well. Though writing it was like shitting jacks, I'm generally pleased with the result. The omen that turned it all around? Turning on the iPod, pressing Shuffle, and then getting the Superman Theme served up first. There's only a one in 633 chance of that.

Here's hoping I have better odds of having gotten the story right.

July 31, 2006: I Don't Like Mondays

This is my last Monday at Clarion, and I'm inventorying the tasks for the rest of the week:

• Pick up my new pair of glasses today from PearleVision.
• Write the story attached to the AWESOME idea I had today at 3am by Wednesday morning.
• Hurry to a bookstore to grab a book about _____ _____ to refresh my memory. (Can't reveal who it is yet).
• Hand in the story.
• Continue reading the swelling waves of manuscripts as people frantically hand in "just one more."
• Attend the Kelly Link/Holly Black signing at Archives.
• Pack up my stuff and stow it in the car.

It's going to be a busy week, especially since I want to continue socializing with these people, too. It'll be hard to resist trips to the Curious Bookshop or the ice cream place. I foresee lots of caffeine-twitching nights in my future, perfect preparation for a 16-hour road trip.

August 2, 2006: And I'm Spent

Just in time for tonight's publicity-bedazzled signing and "graduation ceremony," I've worked all night to hand in my final Clarion short story entitled, "The Moon's Turned Black." It's very short -- 1,300 words -- but painful to write. Clarion, alas, hasn't made writing any easier: just better. Incrementally. Maybe.

I don't know much about what is supposed to happen tonight. Kelly and Holly will read and answer questions, and then the Clarion students will be photographed one by one as they retrieve their certificates. Slack-shouldered and dazed, I will stare into the camera with dull eyes.

My arc at Clarion follows Charlie Gordon's: I started dumb, got smart in the middle, and then slid inexorably back into dumb.

I'm hoping the latter phase of dumb is just a heightened awareness of how much I've yet to absorb and use, but just in case I hope my readers will put flowers on Algernon's grave if I forget to do so.

August 3, 2006: Dorothy Parker Redeems Me

Yesterday's painful 1,300 word story was a mock theater review of the Apocalypse written by Dorothy Parker's clone. Today we critiqued it.

I was so upset to hear that Robert Heinlein had already written this story in 1954.

No, I'm just kidding.

The critique went really well, if by "well" we agree to mean that most people seemed to really enjoy it. There's something to be said for savage critiques, but I've already had five of those and, well, I thought my reputation was on the line: I had to demonstrate that I could, in fact, actually write something good.

So I hedged my bets by finding the historical personage with a voice close to my own and modifying it for my own nefarious ends.

There are Dorothy Parker fans among the Clarion horde, and their compliments are very important to me. I wanted this story to be a gift and a shout out to some cool and funny people I've really come to enjoy here, and whom I'll miss very much when Clarion ends tomorrow.

Egad. Clarion ends tomorrow.

Sitting upon my bed are the final six manuscripts of Clarion. Tomorrow morning we'll discuss them and then adjourn to some kind of mass meal, perhaps with Kool-Aid (though, for purists, the Jonestown massacre was delivered via Flav-R-Aid). After that, who knows?

I'm not ready to talk about the end of Clarion right now, so here are some Flickr galleries:

These are the photos of the Clarion 2006 Monster Ball.

These are the photos of the Reading/Graduation.

August 5, 2006: And So Ends Clarion

This morning at 9ish, I drove away from Van Hoosen Hall after hugging Kelly Link goodbye. I was lucky enough to follow Aimee all the way to Cincinnati where we stopped for lunch before she returned to her life, hoping desperately that her neighbors wouldn't see an oddball like me parked in front of her house.

I'm still on the road, writing this entry from a hotel room in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'll arrive in Jacksonville tomorrow afternoon, probably.

I wish I could offer one of my trademark dismissive epigrams to encapsulate the whole Clarion experience, but I don't think I've processed all of it yet. I anesthetized myself on the drive with repetitive music so I wouldn't have to think about it.

When I do think about it, I'll probably think this:

A few years ago, I had a strange dream. At my house, I was holding a much larger and more elaborate Willcon including an expanded guest list beyond my usual close friends: my family, my insane estranged father (sane again), my ex-wife and her family, old school friends long lost. All of the people with whom I have ever shared even a moment of deep connection were all hanging out in the same place. There weren't a lot of them, maybe double the usual Willcon crowd. But we were all together, talking about weird and interesting things, sharing insight and perception.

The next time I have that dream, I'll have a few more guests.

Here's your epigram, then: home isn't where you are but who you're with.

I've met a few more people with whom I can be home, and leaving them now is a lot like leaving home. The irony is that I'm returning to another home, another group of friends I love (and who are flooding the house in two weeks for a real Willcon). I'm just sad that they can't all be in my life at once, that I'm split across time and space.

An even worse irony of driving home? I get to feel the drone of every mile separating me from people I'm going to miss, and every mile closer to people I've already missed.

I wish that road was shorter.

August 6, 2006: J'arrive en Jacksonville

Around 6:30pm, I pulled into the driveway of my home where Candice was waiting for me. She's been standing there since I left, now covered in vines. She shrugged, extended a hand, and curtly nodded as we often do in our prim Victorian household.

Not all of that statement is true. I guess I'm still in the habit of lying from Clarion.

It was nice to be home. The house is still standing, the pool is still blue(ish), the cats are still alive (and seem to remember me). We went to Biscotti's, the local eatery I've missed most, where I ordered my usual brie, garlic, and baguette. It was far tastier than anything the Owen cafeteria ever served me.

Waiting for me:

• A Moleskine notebook from Matt and Deena Warner as my Clarion "graduation" present.
• The latest Pet Shop Boys CD from my friend Matt Holloman.
• The awesome-looking Willcon yearbooks just in time for the tenth Willcon coming up in two weeks.
• Six issues of the New Yorker.
• Two issues of Weird Tales.
• Two issues of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
• Two issues of National Geographic Adventure.
• Two issues of MacWorld.
• A ream of mail.

I guess I've got some catching up to do.

August 6, 2006: Carrying Clarion with Me

The biggest worry I have is that the grim press of ordinary life will squeeze out not only the great friends I've met at Clarion but all I've learned about writing. To prevent that from happening, I've invented my own Clarion simulator, so I can have Clarion whenever I need it.

Reflections on Clarion, 2008

It's been two years since Clarion, and I'm just now recovered, both personally and professionally. I'm not saying the experience was disastrous, merely intense and far-reaching.

On the personal level, I returned from Clarion and got divorced. It would be nice to say that my divorce was an expression of my new commitment to an aesthetic and personal ideal, but truthfully I was a terrible husband for years before Clarion, self-absorbed and belligerently independent and emotionally distant.

Truth be told, Clarion proved to be a convenient breaking point from a relationship that I was already handling poorly.

If Clarion taught me anything, it is that you don't really have time to fuck around, and that's what I was doing both emotionally and professionally. I needed to restructure my priorities and energies, and a divorce proved to be the easiest way to do that without making difficult compromises. I felt I needed the license to abandon everything else in my life if necessary to dedicate myself to writing. I needed the license, in other words, to be a dick--and boy, I sure was one.

Could I have made that commitment while staying married? Perhaps. But I'd felt from my ex-wife that she already considered my priorities too skewed away from family and relationships and home, and asking her to tolerate even more distance and self-absorption wouldn't have worked.

For what it is worth, I've written far more after my divorce than before it. I'm not sure if that's a correlation or a not.

On a professional level, Clarion was a mixed blessing.

How it helped:

• It showed me exactly what level of dedication and commitment would be necessary to do it well.
• It introduced me to several writers with aesthetic aims similar to my own, people who weren't just fucking around.
• It introduced me to several professional writers who helped my writing in interesting and subtle ways.
• Some of the critiques were very insightful and helpful.
• It was nice to take six weeks and focus totally on writing, even in East Lansing, Michigan.

How it hurt:

• Because 90% of the critiques you get are from writers at the same level you are, few of their comments are particularly helpful for reaching beyond that level.
• Most of the critiques came down to the parroting of rules learned from books and other sources: "show don't tell," "anchor me in reality," that kind of thing. That's why it was easy to make the AutoClarion simulator--lots of people just regurgitated those very cliches.
• People being people, only a few of the other students "got" what I was aspiring to do and could help with advice on that level, not asking me to write stories they'd rather write or read.
• A few of the professional teachers were disconnected from the world of modern publishing.
• Everything I learned at Clarion was oriented toward making me a competent writer, not a great one. Not Will, certainly. Everything was about structure and mechanics and character, all necessary building blocks. But nobody ever talked about transcending that with voice and verve to make something truly wonderful and meaningful.
• I spent too much time trying to do it "right," following the rules from each writer and reader until they were tangled around me like spider webs. Kelly Link broke the cocoon by saying in our conference, "You write weird, funny, mean little stories. Why don't you just keep doing that?" And that was my Clarion Moment.

Making Clarion Work for You

If you are going to Clarion, your attitude and expectations are the most important factors in making it a better experience for you.

• Don't expect too much. You're not going to emerge from Clarion suddenly a professional, writing brilliant stories on demand. Writing gets harder after Clarion, not easier--the difference, though, is that the work you do actually helps instead of just grinding gears.
• Find the students and teachers who are doing your "thing." Maybe you're a nuts-and-bolts sf writer or a dark fantasist or a steampunk artist. Find the people there with your aesthetic and pay closer attention to what they say. You're not going to please everyone.
• No one "wins" Clarion. Embarrassing as it is to write a story that everyone savages, you're trying to learn things here, not impress people.
• Take risks. There's no point in going to Clarion is all you're going to do is write neat little stories with pat beginnings, middles, and ends that anybody else can write. Go nuts. Be flamboyant. My biggest mistake at Clarion was waiting until my last story to do something fun and weird.
• Take the "rules" and "tips" you get much like you would if someone were telling you how to fish or ski or build cabinets: maybe they're useful for you, and maybe they're not. You can go crazy following all the things people tell you at Clarion. You job is to find what works for you.

Probably the most important thing I can advise about Clarion is not to let it stop: keep looking for how you work best, for your subjects and obsessions, for your voice.

Almost none of the rules or suggestions I wrote down at Clarion are useful to me today. Maybe I've just absorbed them all. But the Clarion experience taught me how to look for my own principles, and I've developed more since Clarion than I did in all the years before it. Or the weeks during it, for that matter.

By all means, go to Clarion. But use it to learn how to be better at what you are, not better at being "marketable" or "acceptable" or "cool" or "literary." If you leave Clarion as anyone but yourself, you've failed yourself.