Category Archives: Clarion West

Today I went to the bank after our last class.

The bank teller said, “Did you go to a party? You have glitter in your hair.”

“No,” I said. “I just graduated from science fiction camp.”

Pam,

I really wanted a steak. However, I’m glad An is going with you, because I only now realized the yogurt place will likely have a special sale this particular Thursday evening for its favorite customers. My frequent customer card has almost enough stamps on it to earn a free jumbo-sized oatmeal smoothie, so I might as well get that last stamp so I can use my card before returning to Texas.

Douglas

I’m posting this for the benefit of the people who know me well so they can stare agog at the alien creature I’ve become.

For lunch today I had a cheeseburger, french fries and a shake.

Here’s another one for Kira.

I turned in my week 5 story a day early so I would have extra time for what I said was going to be something different for week 6. But I’ve been running in place on the damn thing ever since and I’m not sure what to do. If I ditch it, I have to do it now and see if I can pull something together by Monday. Or I can keep grinding away and hope I have a breakthrough. I’m a little panicked right now.

I brought a couple of back-up stories with me but now I don’t think either of them are good enough. For my story I’ve made a major tone shift from what I usually do and I’m wondering if I can keep the story elements but switch back into my more comfortable tone. I don’t know. I’m tired and hungry and need a shower so I can’t decide right now.

I found new gray hair and I’m at Clarion West, coincidence?

(Kira, I took this photo for you)

I keep going through all my clothes, thinking I’ll discover something I haven’t worn yet. I thought I brought a big selection but I’m tired of all of it.

I went back through my Clarion West posts and noticed I keep writing the same thing over and over about not sleeping and eating. I’ll skip those topics this week except to say that I’ve finally reached the point where I’m tired enough to fall asleep, to need the alarm and to take naps. Today I took an hour and a half-er that will go in the top 5 of my “Best Naps of My Lifetime So Far.”

Sheree kept a pretty easy schedule this week. She talked to us one day about submitting and markets other than speculative fiction. It was nice to have some time to regroup which makes me sad that I haven’t gotten anywhere on my story. argh.

Here are a few quotes not just from this week but the whole workshop:

“The attention to the social structure that makes you the Jane Austen of middle-aged small-town American zombie stories.”

“So, why does he give her life? Is he just a warlock dicking around with nothing else to do on a Sunday night?”

“Loretta’s scalp does a lot of work in this story. It tightens, prickles, and gets cold. I thought she might just need a different shampoo.”

“Understand the slush pile–the native habitat of your manuscript.” (Cory)

My workout regime has almost vanished and other than walking and yoga once or twice a week, my exercise comes from reading and writing. My sleep has improved about 3%. I’ve managed to sleep at least 7 hours – 3 nights since I got here. My bedtime is between 12 and 1 and I wake up before 7a. I’ve woken up before my alarm every single day.

I still love not cooking but I’m at the point where I can’t eat one more deli tray sandwich. A couple of times because I didn’t want to go out and find food I ended up having peanuts and wine for dinner. That’s called an airplane meal. I feel like there’s food everywhere but I don’t eat as much as I normally do. Yesterday I hoovered a huge plate of avocado curry for lunch but then I never got around to eating a proper dinner and instead had Wheat Thins (Big) and cashews.

I’m still totally in love with all my classmates. Here’s what we look like:

Photo: Cory Doctorow

Our class photos are taken on Friday when we’re at our maximum in terms of sleep deprivation and brain deadedness. We’re even cuter in person.

The very back two are Pritpaul and Carlton. That’s Kira taking up two rows and in the blue shirt is Jim and the rest of his row is Christopher, Maggie, Owen, Douglas and Rajan. Then in the black shirt is Caren and rest of her row is An, Carol, Eden and Shane. The next row is Tracy, Theresa, Me and Kristin. And in front is our week #3 instructor Cory. Yes, that’s how he dresses. I should link to everyone’s URLs but I don’t have time right now. I should be writing and reading stories.

In other news I have gone 10 days without doing laundry. I haven’t gone 10 days without doing laundry since the 90’s. I’d try to keep it up and go 2 full weeks but then I’d have to go buy (or recycle, ew) underwear and that seems stupid when it’s so easy to power one single load through so I’ll do laundry tomorrow morning.

Can I mention again how much I love the never ending and completely unabashed nerdery? I’m already out as a nerd and live with one but it’s amazing to be in a house with so many of people that out nerd me on a regular basis.

Okay, here are a few writing things from Connie:

Only tell what the reader needs to know when they need to know it.

You probably won’t know exactly where your story starts until you end it. You need to start at the last possible moment. If you’re finding you have a lot of flashbacks, you probably need to move the beginning back.

When you’re working on your story you want things to go wrong. Take any situation and apply Murphy’s law.

Read Les Miserables and study for how the story is built and look for reversals and obstacles. Skip the boring parts.

The perfect title will mean one thing at the beginning and something different at the end. Or else go for something evocative.

When you’re looking for ideas: try to connect things not normally connected. Read stuff no one else is reading. Read tons of non-fiction.

She also told us: “You are never allowed to do a director’s cut.”

One more quote from the weekend:

Me – “We either need to go home or put some pants on.”
Kira – “If those are the choices, we need to reconsider our options.”

Wow. I can’t believe I’ve been here a month.

Another great week. Connie Willis is awesome. I have 10 trillion things to do today so I don’t have time for a long-winded post. Perhaps 1 day next week.

All of a sudden its getting too late for all the things I planned on doing like visit friends and try certain restaurants. Oh well. I’ll be in Seattle again.

A couple of quick Connie advice items:

If you’re going to do public appearances always be prepared for wardrobe malfunctions.

Never send your classmates clippings of their bad reviews in your local paper.

There were some great quotes this week but I don’t have them handy so I’ll give two of mine:

“You’ve got an alien in a thong and a talking woodchuck. It didn’t bother me that Dylan Thomas was there.”

“He seemed awfully easy going for an overlord.”

I’m frittering away my few moments of free time this week, writing this post. I hope I don’t regret it later.

Last weekend Bob went to see Stevie Wonder in Auburn and I drove down to meet him on Saturday and we hung out for about 24 hours.

I can’t explain how strange it was to be with him again for the first 1/2 hour. This workshop is such a full immersion meal deal that it’s like a I’m in a completely different life. So going leaving this and seeing Bob felt surreal at first.

This doesn’t mean I wasn’t very happy to see him.

Bob’s super power is finding weird motels and this was no exception. It was sort-of in a Lowe’s parking lot. We had a view of pallets of bark-dust from our window. It was clean, comfortable and totally low end. The continental breakfast was a basket of muffins on the check-in counter. But the staff was very nice and the location decent so it worked out fine.

We had a big lunch. It seems like we eat all the time at the workshop but at the same time I don’t think I’m eating as much as I usually do and I was super hungry.

We went to Emerald Downs (we’ve never been to the horse races before) and we had a blast. It’s funny to me when I’m in situations where I don’t know what I’m doing, sometimes I’m very timid and sometimes I don’t care. This was an I don’t care. We went to the program booth and said, “We need a program,” and they said, “Which one?” and we said: “We don’t know. We’re new.” And we did that all afternoon. “How do I place a bet?” “What’s a superfecta?” and “When do I get to ride?”

I picked horses purely by their name or how pretty I thought they were. I did not come out ahead. I also didn’t wear sunscreen and got nice pink shoulders.

Later we went to dinner. Bob had found a Greek/Italian place but when he phoned, the message said they were on vacation. We did a drive-by anyway, just-in-case, and they were open and he practically did back flips.

After dinner we did a quick drive around Muckleshoot, the view of Rainier was incredible. We stopped in at the casino. I have been in at least 20 Indian casinos so I didn’t think I could be surprised but this place blew my mind. It was as big as Texas and went on and on with machines and tables and people and restaurants and a bar with a band so horrific they were awesome.

Fun time. I will also report that I slept 7.5 hours — my longest night of sleep since I left home. Then I returned home Sunday by Noon and worked on my story until 1:30am. I had a hard time with my story for this week and was tempted to bag it and not turn anything. My deadline is 9pm on Monday and I worked all afternoon and by 7pm I knew it was at least decent enough that I wouldn’t be humiliated. I should explain that I hold myself to high standards. My classmates will speak out on what’s not working but their feedback is very kind.

Here’s a parting moment with Bob:

B: D’oh!
Me: Do you need my help?
B: I put the cap to my butt creme on wrong
Me: I love being married to an old guy.
B: It’s only going to get funnier.

This was a gnarly week. It reminded me of being at home. Every time I thought I’d have a couple of hours to write, something else ended up taking longer than expected or something unexpected ate up the time. I’m frazzled about getting my story done for next week (due: Mon 9pm). The story I’m working is not coming together very well and my protagonist is still foggy. I wish I had more time to sort it out.

I still love my classmates and being here but I’m still not sleeping more than 5 or 6 hours a night. I find it hard to believe that I am still functioning and reasonably good humored for me. As I write this I’m with Bob and sleeping at a motel, here’s hoping for a good night.

Cory did lectures every day that were for the most part short and everything he said was totally useful. I’ve picked out a few highlights.

He said almost the same thing that Mary said which basically is: you can’t judge the quality of your work by the way you feel about it when you’re doing it. If you develop a habit of writing every day, no matter how you feel, you will find when you look back that you can’t really tell which days were good and which were bad.

I think this is something that I’ve sensed on my own but it would have been nice to learn this 20 years ago.

Cory recommended getting rid of any ceremonial writing habits you need: e.g. the perfect music, a clean house, smoking or drinking connected to writing. You need to be able to do your work anywhere, anytime.

He also talked about ideas and how it’s all stuff you pull out of everyday life and how often the idea that you start with is nothing like what you end up with. The idea is what gets you started. This was true for the story I turned in this week. I had a vision of what I wanted to do and I reset a couple of times but the story I ended up with had very few of the elements that I had envisioned with the original idea. The story involves time travel and Indian bingo, if you’re wondering.

Someone asked him what to do if you’re halfway through your story and you hate it. Here’s another one to embroider on a pillow: “In my experience there is no story that you don’t hate halfway through.”

Here are a couple of hacks:

When you end for the day, finish mid-sentence knowing exactly where you want to go. Those several words you need to finish will help lead you to the next. It’s called leaving yourself a hint.

The first few paragraphs of a story are generally throat clearing and there’s no problem with that but you need to find the real spot where the story begins. This is exactly what happened to me last week. I was testing out a couple of ideas for next week’s story and I wrote about 800 words of each and thought they were both doodoo. But later I realized that the next scene in one of the ideas, was where the story should start and I’m ready to dive back in.

We’ve had some good advice from Cory and other sources about not getting bogged down in research. They suggest making a notation to check on something later and keep writing so you sustain the energy of the story. This is good for me because I let myself get distracted by research.

I had a spectacular adventure last weekend. Someone organized a night out for sushi last weekend and I don’t dislike sushi but the idea wasn’t singing to me. I found out that only one of my classmates had also opted out of sushi and I suggested we go find a steak. He thought that was a fantastic idea.

After some research I decided we should go to El Gaucho which is a steakhouse for rich people or people with expense accounts (as if those two aren’t the same). I thought we should have an adventure and we did. Mink Lined Booth. I am not kidding you. I rubbed against it for the entire meal. I had a filet mignon and I ate every bit and didn’t wuss out at my normal half portion. (Some might laugh at this because it was the smallest steak on the menu but whatever.) The entire evening was a highlight but I’ll mention one other part which was when I was looking for the restroom and this hot waiter guy came over and offered me his arm and escorted me to the ladies’ room. Alas, the special service ended there.

***

Here’s a tidbit about the thefts. Shortly after we discovered that laptops, and Pritpaul lost a bag of clothes, were missing a police officer came and nothing like a room full of writers to explain what happened. “There’s a chair in my room, a big one, beige and there’s a bureau next to it and some of my clothes were on the chair and papers and books on the bureau.” It went on like this, lots of concrete details that might be splendid in story writing but completely irrelevant to how the criminal got into the house and stole people’s stuff.

Two final items

1 – I am using a word processing program called Pages by Apple and I think it sucks ass. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m unfamiliar with it so if I just want to write a footnote I have to spend 10 minutes cycling through menus or that it genuinely sucks ass but I emailed myself some back up files to my gmail account and then later downloaded one to see how it looked and I couldn’t open it. I guess I have to export it into a file format that I can later open? I’m no rocket scientist and bad at things like software but if this understanding of how it works is correct, I’d like to say to Apple: Frack you.

2 – I did a quick vanity check of my stats and one of the phrases in a search engine that found me is: “Pam’s Butt Stinks.”

***

Quotes:

“That last [bit] is just mustache twirling.”

“Proof of God, great. What about my problems?”

“I needed the bingo to do something else.”

I already miss not being here. Maybe in another two weeks I’ll be writing here that I want to kill these people but at this point, I never want to leave.

I never would have guessed that I’d feel this way.

This week our instructor was Mary Rosenblum who was completely awesome — a great teacher and really encouraging and fun to hang out with.

Then something bad happened to bring a sour end to our time with her. The house was broken into while we were in class yesterday and four student laptops were stolen. There is more information here and here.

(Update on thefts: BoingBoing knows more than I do. Looks like they’ve already raised enough money for new laptops. What a great community.)

That put a weird spin on the rest of the day and now everyone is walking around with their laptop bag slung around their neck. As you can imagine, the object of the laptop isn’t as traumatizing as what was inside. Especially at a writer’s workshop.

I am settling in a lot better although my sleep is still not the same as at home. I had assumed any sleep deprivation would be from stress of too many things to do. And although there is an element of that, mostly my body doesn’t sleep for 8 hours. No matter how late I stay up (my bedtime is between 11 and midnight) I wake up between 5a and 6a. I did take a couple very quick of naps this week. But mostly I feel fine with that much sleep. It seems like lots of people are having trouble sleeping.

I like the process of getting to know a new place. Even though I’ve been to Seattle a bunch of times it’s always for a specific purpose like Bumbershoot or soccer game. And Bob does all the driving so I don’t feel like I really know Seattle.

But since we’ve been here I’ve walked around the University district and I’ve been driving around to parties (there’s a party every week associated with the workshop) so I’m feeling a bit less anxiety about getting around here. As soon as I finish this I’m going to Target to buy a bunch of random stuff but most importantly, I’m buying a cheap electric tea kettle.

There’s a hot water spigot on the coffee machine that pumps out water that wouldn’t pass for hot in any jurisdiction. It’s one of those things that at first I barely noticed and then became mildly annoying and at this point is ruining my morning. I want my tea hot.

Also my eyeballs feel like they’re on fire after a day on the keyboard so I’m going to get some eye drops. I brought some but the first time I used them I was squeezing bubbles out of the tiny bottle which did nothing to relieve the burning.

I didn’t say anything about writing and I don’t feel like going over my notes right now. The emphasis this week was characterization and working on characterizing using dialogue and actions. For me part of it is skill and part of it is laziness. It’s so much easier to tell what your character is about. Especially when you’re cranking out a first draft.

I’m kind of surprised how fast I can write if I want to. Week #1 we had an assignment to turn in an outline and a lot of people did their first story from that. But after we’d discussed my outline I hated the idea and ditched it so I had to come up with a completely new idea and write it in only a couple of days. At first I was panicked and flopped over my notebook weeping. I brough a huge idea folder and I flipped through that until something looked interesting.

Now I’ve had more time to think about my outline idea and that’s what I’m writing today.

I love that moment when you have no idea what you’re doing and then all the little gears and alarms synch up and you think: “Oh, this is what’s going on here” and you starting cranking it out.

This week Christopher convinced a few of us to check out the library on campus which is like a giant cathedral and a very cool space to be in. He was referring to it as Hogwarts. I worked over there one afternoon and think I’ll put it into my rotation.

The weekdays are so busy there’s barely enough time to do everything. I had a bottle of wine and I kept thinking I’d open it as a reward for all my hard work. But then my hard work would go until midnight and it would seem pointless to open it at that point. Yes world: there is a reality in which I can find it too busy for an adult beverage. I’m having all sorts of personal insights here. I made up for it last night.

Updated:
Here’s a few quotes from the week:

Mary: “The stuff that your write when you feel like crap is almost as good as the stuff that you write when you feel good. Keep writing when you feel like crap.”

Not Mary:

“That would go over like a pregnant pole vaulter.”

“If I was a character on Lost it would have only lasted 3 episodes because I would have sat that guy Ben down and said ‘what the fuck is going on here?'”

“Maybe the centaur was a size queen.”

“River was way hotter than Inara.”

“I hated the main character. I wouldn’t let this guy clean the city’s latrines.”

Just a quick note to say:

(a) Bummer! on the EuroCup final. Yeah, sure. Spain is really cute but I wanted my German boys to win.

(b) My bedtime at science fiction camp is getting later by the minute. Me, the 9pm sharp girl is now thinking, 11p is my bedtime except tonight I’m staying up until 12.

Is there an award for this?

(6 hours of sleep last night and an honest-to-goodness catnap this afternoon after soccer. Yay, me.)