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 This Clarion Journal is a sub-blog of Alex Wilson's Journal, chronicling Alex's journey through the 2006 Clarion writing workshop, the last one held at MSU. December 6, 2005The Clarion Conundrum 2006Looks like I might actually be able to attend (or at least for the first time apply to) a workshop next year. I just got the dates for Clarion West from Neile Graham, so I can start weighing my options, seeing whose weddings I'll be missing. But the side by side comparision for 2006... Continue reading "The Clarion Conundrum 2006" Posted by alex at 11:05 AM
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January 28, 2006The Clarion ApplicationThe application for the Clarion writing workshop asks for two stories, representing what I feel are my best stories to date. Each story should be between ten and twenty-five pages long. So here's the thing: It's been three years since I've written anything even close to that range. My stuff of recent years (and the stuff I'm most proud of) tends to run either way longer or way shorter than that. I've been unsuccessfully working this month to try to produce new stories in that range, but I've got to either pad the hell out of the flash fiction or cut far too much stuff out of the novelettes. No amount of font-fiddling and margin trimming is going to change that. I've already decided that my big focus between now and Clarion (if I get in--a bigger if with this weakness in my application) will be to get my stories finished with less time and smaller wordcounts. I imagine I won't be too popular with the classmates if I produce nothing but 10,000 word stories for them to critique, and I probably won't get as much out of attending if during my time there I only produce one or two stories to get feedback on. But for now, do I submit the older stories and hope for the best? Or do I delay my application until the last minute, hoping that I can produce something better (and in the right range) within the next two months? Until now I've always thought of my obstacles to Clarion being time and money. Now that those are smaller obstacles this year, am I just now realizing my biggest obstacle: that after seven years of making a go of this I'm just not ready yet? Posted by alex at 12:23 PM
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February 15, 2006Clarion Training ScheduleIf I can train for a marathon, I can train for the Clarion Writer's Workshop, right? Okay I've got just over four months (if accepted) to get my writing habits in shape. I figure I've got three big changes I need to make between now and then to be truly effective as a writer away from home and, most importantly, to get the most out of this workshop.
February 16 - March 15
I also have an extensive reading list (this is the first year that I've already read stuff by all the author-teachers at a Clarion, but a few of the books and stories were a long time ago. Plus there are plenty of SF classics I'm embarassed to admit I haven't picked up yet), and I would like to get at least six weeks ahead with Telltale so there's no downtime there. And notes and such aren't the only part of our place that I need to unclutter. Phew. This is already looking harder than the marathon. Posted by alex at 6:32 PM
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March 24, 2006Clarion Training Month 1 of 4So here's my training log to help me feel more ready and worthy of going to the Clarion Writing Workshop this summer. If my sentences fail to make sense it's because I've been spending too much time on a computer to think straight. Another month before I'm likely to find out whether I'm accepted to Clarion. I note Orson Scott Card's Boot Camp for Writers is also in June and since I'm no longer running a marathon on the 11th, this would be a nice alternative if I don't get in. However, at the end of last year I applied to an eight-week online workshop taught by James Gunn, which filled up early (before they got my application), making me among first in line for the next one, starting on Monday. I think that'll be plenty of writing class for the year, even if I don't make Clarion. I did all right this first month. Addressed some concerns and validated others. I may have to adapt the "training program" for the James Gunn class, and I'll certainly have more flexibility if I don't get in, but I think these are all worthwhile goals no matter what happens in the next few months. Continue reading "Clarion Training Month 1 of 4" Posted by alex at 4:01 PM
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April 8, 2006Acceptance 60 - CLARION!Via email yesterday: I'm going to Clarion. Money's a bit tighter than I thought it would be, but we're going to make it work. Posted by alex at 10:14 AM
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April 30, 2006Clarion 2006 RosterSo we got the Clarion Roster this week:
7/21/06 update: I'm trying to gather a list of 2006 Clarion West Journals as well. Largely thanks to Livia's pre-announcement detetective work, I've been able to meet and/or read about (all online) a good quarter of the students prior to the announcement. I'll add more websites as I find and/or get to them, and probably put up a Clarion sidebar on this journal. So I'm now aware of the experience of this group, and I find myself almost as equally intimidated by my fellow students as I am of my instructors. Speaking of instructors, though, Samuel R Delany is speaking over at Duke today. I should try to get over there, even if that would make three trips to Duke's campus in three days (yesterday I went to hear David Gordon Green and Brad Land and on Friday a student film I helped write premiered). Posted by alex at 12:05 PM
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May 6, 2006Paying for Clarion"The Clarion writing workshop isn't cheap, Alex," I hear you saying. " And don't you still have undergraduate debt? How can I help?" 
Well, first off, what amazing memory, generosity, and timing you have!It just so happens I've assembled some of my best Telltale work: Five Edgar Allan Poe narrations for $5 (MP3), now through the end of July. And I pledge to match whatever I raise with this as a donation to The Clarion Foundation next year (thus paying your kindness forward to future students). I'm also not above accepting straight donations:
I'm unloading a big chunk of my comics collection (eBay auctions end Sunday night). A number of these are comics I eventually repurchased after selling off the bulk of my collection as an undergrad almost ten years ago (those who don't learn from history...). Complete auction listings after the jump. And, finally, using this Amazon.com link when you shop for books and such isn't a bad thing. Drag the link to your toolbar and use it as your bookmark. Thanks! Continue reading "Paying for Clarion" Posted by alex at 5:52 PM
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May 11, 2006Narcissism and the Wannabe ClarioniteSo a few days ago I posted the Clarion student list and made some joke about how "I find myself almost as equally intimidated by my fellow students as I am of my instructors." What I didn't know was how insecure my instructors were. Apparently HALF of them were so insulted by this that last week they had to go out and win Nebula Awards just, I don't know, to feel better about themselves? To put me in my place? I can't think of any other reason anyone would want to win a major industry award. So congrats to Clarion instructors Holly Black, Joe Haldeman, and Kelly Link (Bookends, Ms. Link?), and, okay, you win. My instructors are more intimidating than any of my fellow students. Now, was it worth it? Was it worth writing great stories, getting them published to great peer and audience acclaim, and winning Nebula Awards, if all you wanted was to see me sweat? Because I don't see how those statues are going to fill the dead place you call... Okay, it was a two-paragraph joke at best and I got greedy. Sorry. Lesson learned. In other Clarion news: I met (very briefly) Delany when he spoke at nearby Duke for The Festival of the Book. He was just as intelligent as I expected from his writing, but much more friendly and approachable (it was that intimidation-worry again). And it turns out a college theatre buddy of mine, Kirk Domer, is a faculty member at MSU and works with Clarion Director Liz Zernechel in their theatre department. I don't think I've seen Kirk since my wedding. Finally: I got a great, semi-related phone call today. I'm going to wait and see what happens before I say anything else about it. But if this morning I wasn't yet fully out of that funk I've had since March, then I think I am now. Stay tuned. Posted by alex at 8:10 PM
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May 12, 2006Acceptance 63 - ASIMOV'S!Just sold my novelette "Outgoing" to Asimov's. This is my first SFWA-qualifying sale after seven and a half years of making a go of this. That phone call that surprised me yesterday was from Editor Sheila Williams asking for a few clarifications to my revision sent April 26th. I finished them up last night, and after a few more nerve-wracking tweaks over email today (boy, do I suck, but thankfully Ms Williams has a lot of patience), she said she'll take it. Interestingly enough, this does nothing to assuage my Clarion Intimidation. Posted by alex at 4:58 PM
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May 20, 2006Clarion Training Months 2&3 of 4So these last two months didn't exactly go as planned. But at least coming off a rocky March (both personally and professionally), I was able to keep working through a longer-than-expected funk. So Clarion is now about a month away, and, yes, I was accepted. Now for the icky parts: my pre-Clarion goal progression of the last two months... Continue reading "Clarion Training Months 2&3 of 4" Posted by alex at 1:20 PM
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May 22, 2006Clarion Auctions Take 2A few more comics auctions are up (helping to pay for Clarion), including two of my favorite current series: Conan (Dark Horse) and Ex Machina. This means I'm pretty much trades-only from this point on. Complete auction listing after the jump. Continue reading "Clarion Auctions Take 2" Posted by alex at 8:26 AM
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May 31, 2006Final Clarion AuctionWhy would you bid an eBay auction up to over $200 and then string along the seller for three weeks before canceling your eBay account? How does anyone have that much free time? Relisted with a finish on Sunday night: Uncanny X-Men 207-349 Complete, Full Run. Probably won't get around to listing anymore auctions until after Clarion. You can find other ways to help out here. Posted by alex at 12:00 AM
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June 10, 2006Submission 274My first fiction sub to Strange Horizons (or my fourth sub overall, after three poems). I hope to get four more out the door before Clarion starts (two weeks from tomorrow) for a total of 24 for the first half of 2006. I don't expect to submit anything from Clarion, but that should keep me on track to send out 22-24 more and hit my 300th submission by the end of the year. Back to work. Posted by alex at 12:14 PM
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June 18, 2006Locus Awards - Clarion Represent!The 2006 Locus Awards came out and our Clarion instructor Kelly Link won for best novella, "Magic for Beginners," which is the title story of her collection Magic for Beginners, which won for best collection. She also coedited the best anthology winner. And even more apropos for Clarion: Kate Wilhelm won for her SF-related nonfiction book: Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. As someone who preordered the book last year (from Kelly Link's press, and I think I accidentally received it before the official release date, so I might have been among the first to read it) and gets to attend Clarion this year, I find myself very happy about this news the week before Clarion begins. Posted by alex at 9:39 PM
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June 19, 2006Submissions 277 and 278Fiction subs to McSweeney's (my 2nd or 3rd) and Writers of the Future (my 11th). Unless I can round up a batch of poetry before Friday, these should be my final submissions before Clarion. Posted by alex at 1:11 PM
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June 20, 2006Clarion Training - Month 4 of 4Point the First: Clarion Roster ... is here and updated and now includes the instructors. A link is on the sidebar of the journal page and Clarion journal page. If there are changes or corrections, let me know via email or a comment. Point the Second: Speed and Length I got this quarter's Writers of the Future story done. I'm very glad I was able to finish revising a week before leaving for Clarion, but unfortunately the result is another damned novelette that started out in my head as an extremely short story. I should clarify that I don't think I'm incapable of writing short. I can and do write occasional flash fiction. But at their best, those stories are clever. Not insightful, not interesting, not surprising, not deep. Just clever. Continue reading "Clarion Training - Month 4 of 4" Posted by alex at 4:50 PM
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June 21, 2006Clarion West JournalsClarion West started this week. Casey found two CW journals, and someone else made a comment in one of my earlier journal entries. Caroline clarion_mint Ben Burgis Anyone else? Posted by alex at 4:54 PM
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June 22, 2006My Luck is Back in BalanceTwo firsts, two days before I leave for Clarion. 1. External hard drive failure. I probably have backups of the important stuff, but I gotta figure out what was on there before it died. I was moving a lot of stuff around, trying to limit it to what I needed at Clarion. This was a long process that now must practically start over. 2. I recorded for 4+ hours this week, mostly for the Clarion podcast, and it's all unusable. I accidentally hit a reverb/echo effect button meant for guitars and there's no way to remove it from the spoken word audio. I didn't discover it until I was all done, and was about to start editing. In 2.5 years of using this machine, that's never happened to me before. Crap. Crap. Crap. And I was just starting to feel like I was getting ahead, too. Posted by alex at 9:44 AM
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alexwilson_untitledpretention.mp3
More formats to come. Strange Horizons has an even more comprehensive list of tropes writers might avoid. Posted by alex at 8:15 PM
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June 23, 2006Clarion My Wayward Son 1
Featuring Clarion alumni Michael A. Burstein and Jason Erik Lundberg. Theme song available separately here. Links/shownotes after the jump. Continue reading "Clarion My Wayward Son 1" Posted by alex at 10:14 AM
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June 26, 2006Clarion Week 1: Getting There is Half the SomethingI figured out I could save about a hundred dollars by renting a car (for a week!) instead of flying the last leg of my trip to take me from Detroit to Lansing. I rented a Chevy version of a PT Cruiser. You start with a small submarine's blind spots, and then you take away the radar. Tennessee plates, no cover for the luggage. I might as well have just gotten the extra insurance they sell you and then leave the keys in the ignition. And is it because of the higher gas prices that now minivans and SUVs are suddenly the cheapest option? This has happened to me before. Glad it's not a minivan this time. Stopped at a Panera and worked out a story idea I had in Pittsburgh. Going three days without writing makes me something other than a friend-maker, so this should have been good and smart. Still should have made it 45 minutes before I expected to, but... Continue reading "Clarion Week 1: Getting There is Half the Something" Posted by alex at 1:55 PM
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June 27, 2006Clarion Week 1: My First Clarion StoryJust finished and submitted my first Clarion story. I was close to the deadline, so I don't know whether the class will receive it today for critique for tomorrow, but I'm in no hurry. I just wanted so submit something quick so Samuel R Delany (he wants us to call him Chip, but it's Samuel R Delany!) doesn't choose one of my application stories for the class to critique. To prove what very different species my novelettes and flash fiction stories are (the only two prose lengths I've been able to write in the last three years): If I underestimate the final wordcount of my novelettes by 5,000 words or more, I overestimate the wordcount of flash fiction by half. What'd I say yesterday: 1,200 words? Yeah, it ended up at 650 words and it's still not as tight as it could be. I don't think it needs to be any longer. I'm tempted to talk about its weaknesses--the ones I know about--but for crying out loud: I just threw my classmates a softball at 650 words, which even I can read in a few minutes. How much easier do I need to make it? Heh. At least until I get the critiques, I'm going to assume that early morning writing works for me. Missed a phone call from Jen last night. Hope it's the exception, not the first of a pattern. internet went down again this morning a few minutes after I sent my story, so I'll post this later I guess. (came back up just before 8AM). Posted by alex at 7:59 AM
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June 28, 2006Clarion Week 1: Pre-Critique ThoughtsMy first Clarion story will be critiqued today. Is it strange that I feel more anxiety about the critiques I give than I do about the ones I'll be receiving? Next story's coming along surprisingly well, very different than this first one and much more a traditional, linear science fiction story than I think any of my previous work. Not flash fiction and I hope not a novelette. I kicked my butt into gear last night and this morning because I've found that the only way to feel that judgments about my work are not judgments about me personally, is to be well into my next work by the time I receive said judgments. With submissions and rejection, this means I usually have a month or more to invest myself in a new project. The biggest hurry would probably be F&SF's 8-10 day return time. At Clarion I get a day. Hope that's enough perspective for me to think: "It sucked? Yeah, maybe, but I wrote that, like, 24 hours ago. You should see the cool shit I'm working on today. I'm such a better writer today than the guy was who wrote that piece you just eviscerated." We do what we have to, to get through the day. Posted by alex at 7:58 AM
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June 29, 2006Clarion Week 1: Chip and MeHad my private meeting with Samuel R Delany yesterday afternoon. It was probably one of the most inspiring conversations I've ever had. I'm still on an emotional high about it. By minute five or so, I was able to at least manage the star-struckedness I get around him. And we didn't talk about my application stories or about my story we critiqued early in the day. Instead we talked about comics. We talked about the career aspects of writing both inside and outside 
of the genre, and the difficulties of practically starting the career over once you move from one to the other (or doing both simultaneously). There was a lot of validation and laughing. You know the theory I posited yesterday about how to best deal with rejection? He thinks that's the best way, so I guess I'm now capable of dispensing exactly one piece of writing advice knowing that Chip's there to back me up. But overall it was just plain fun.I kept wishing there were two of me: One of them engaging Chip in conversation as he talked about working with Howard Chaykin or dealing with first-book-caliber advances as you publish your first book outside of genre. The other me trying to take careful notes but forgetting about it and instead just jumping up and down yelling "I'm talking comics with Samuel Delany!" So yeah, even if there were two of me I still would have completely forgotten to take notes. Speaking of comics, when I got back to my room I received Warren Ellis's "Bad Signal" mailing list message about his arriving in Charlotte. He's in North Carolina right now for Heroescon, and I've been a little bummed that I'm missing my chance to to meet one of my favorite comics writers. But I think I got enough comics/science fiction geekboy satisfaction today to last me the next six weeks. I don't think Warren's name even came up, sorry. Got some great critiques (positive and negative, but almost all very helpful, and I think I know what I need to do to make the piece work) yesterday morning from my classmates on my first story (the flash piece). It's a great group both inside and outside the critique circle, and even an introvert like me would rather be with one or a handful of any them rather than alone, more often than I expected. Photo above taken at Chip's reading at a local library. He read from his non-genre novel Dark Reflections, which he recently sold (and I don't think is available yet). This is about the highest resolution that looks okay with my camera phone and even then only after some color correction in Photoshop. Laptop sustained some damage in transit, but so far nothing that inhibits my ability to write. I'll be doing more frequent backups though, though that became a little harder with this problem. If I can get this computer to last me through September, I'll be very happy. A bit overwhelmed with critiquing. Back to work. Posted by alex at 3:02 PM
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June 30, 2006Clarion Week 1: TGIFFFFFFFReally glad it's Friday. I know I'm not young anymore. I know sleep loss is cumulative. I've been going to bed usually between 1-2AM to get my critiques done, and then waking up 5-6AM to get my writing done before breakfast. I might have been okay, but this last night might have been the deal-breaker. I can't remember the last time I was so tired. On the bright side, my second story's done. I considered turning it in now (for a Monday critique I think), but I think I'm too tired to judge it properly. And I figure it would go to the back of the queue behind those who haven't turned in their first story yet anyway. Might as well take the time to reread it when I have more time. It's about 3,000 words, which is an odd wordcount for me. It's been about three years since I wrote anything longer than 1,500 words and shorter than 7,000. 3-6,000 words has been my target wordcount for stories over the last four months, and iit looks like I'm finally getting there. Either that or this story is missing a lot of important stuff. I'll figure it out this weekend. Either way, I know I won't be able to keep up this schedule. I'm digging the morning writing, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get faster with the critiques. It's just that the the stories are long and numerous (we've got a big classs) and i'm still such a slow reader. I'm not doing as much hanging out as the rest of the group seems to, but I don't think timewise I can afford much more. We'll see. Really hoping I don't read my story (as well as this journal post!) tomorrow and think: "Are these even sentences?" Posted by alex at 7:13 AM
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July 1, 2006Clarion Week 1: Superman Returns Mini-ReviewWorst Bryan Singer film ever. Still one of the best movies I've seen this year. Posted by alex at 9:10 AM
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July 2, 2006Clarion Week 2: My Second Clarion StoryI think in the 24 hours or so between Michael Swanwick arriving (Saturday) and Chip Delany leaving (Sunday) that the average IQ on this side of campus rose to nigh-singularity levels. Finished polishing my second Clarion story, final tally at 3500 words. That's a length I've been trying to hit over the last four months and it's only now that I finally succeeded. And the story works, I think. But I won't know for sure until Tuesday or Wednesday (I turned it in around 3PM, but a lot of other students are planning on turning in stories tonight too, I think) and I still don't have enough perspective to know its merits, or whether I'll want to turn it into a novelette by the end of the year. But I do know this one's the opposite of my first: Serious instead of humorous, poignant (hopefully) instead of cute/clever. However... What I really want to go for is is a balance of both cuteness and depth in the same story, which I think was the strength of my Asimov's sale. Most of my other stories (including all that I've written since) swing the pendulum more widely into one camp or the other, to varying degrees of success. I'm not looking for the formula that will teach me how to write a story like that every time, but I would like to give it another shot and figure out whether that's as close to my actual "voice" as an SF writer as I'm going to get at this early stage of my career, or whether it was just the appropriate voice for that particular story. I think I've finished a story outline that has that kind of potential--but that also pushes me in a new direction--and, because my second story's now done at the beginning of Week 2, I have at least ten days to work it out and still have a story done for critique during Nancy Kress's Week 3. It's breathing space, but I'm a slow writer. There are no guarantees. Back to work. Posted by alex at 8:35 PM
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July 3, 2006Clarion Week 2: Monday morning jibberishNot remembering the exact quote, but I believe David Mamet said that you should only take criticism from people who have a vested interest in your future. I'd thought one of the first challenges at Clarion would be to figure out who among us critiquers came to the table with no interest in seeing the stories succeed, however insightful their critiques are. Then I could just compartmentalize and think: "So-and-so" just likes to crap on stories. "So-and-so" would rather compliment than help. Etc. But either I've failed to identify these culprits in our midst, or so far the entire class is all coming from good (but still unique) places. There's no one here whose opinions I can dismiss. There's no one here from which I shouldn't take criticism. I hope the others view my attempts to help in the same light. But what's the old addage: If you can't figure out which person at the table is the mark... Third story is not doing much for me yet. I might have set my expectations a bit too high on this one. We have two Wills and two Steves at Clarion. One of our Wills (the very same one who generously drove me back from the airport after I dropped my car off) has posted a column at Horror World about what he's learned so far about giving and recieving critiques. And One of our Steves has posted a few photographs from the Delany reading on Wednesday. I'm the thorn on the left. Posted by alex at 7:48 AM
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July 4, 2006Clarion Week 2: This Round to SwanwickI hurt a bit. This week's instructor, Michael Swanwick, is so generous with his time that he's already gone through our submission stories, our current stories, and last week's stories. He seemingly spent almost as much time evaluating them as some of us spent writing them. In tearing them apart practically line by line, he talks about what he feels works and what doesn't. He talks about ways to fix non-working stories, and ways to make good stories great. Today we spent 5.5 hours on 5 stories, which I believe is our longest session to date. Today Swanwick publicly critiqued my second Clarion story during the critique circle session and both my application stories during a one-on-one session. It's probably the most generous thing any professional author has ever done for me. And now I feel like I'm incapable of writing competent SF. Continue reading "Clarion Week 2: This Round to Swanwick" Posted by alex at 9:17 PM
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July 5, 2006Clarion Week 2: Writer in MorningOne other, important thing that contributed to the general malaise yesterday: I didn't write in the morning, which I think might be the first time at Clarion that I failed to do so. I've been using my cell phone as my alarm clock every morning, but it was set to vibrate. It took me two hours to hear it (this week I'm trying for 6AM instead of 5AM) and I woke just in time to gather my stuff and go to breakfast. The getting up is always difficult, but it's also always at least minutely energizing. I wonder if I could have handled yesterday better if I'd been able to start it right. This morning's writing was crap. I have a very loose first draft of the story I started last weekend (including such bracketed vagueness as "Description goes here. Then he betrays her trust somehow."), but I'm not loving it. I think what I have is barely enough of a finish-what-you-start accomplishment that I can set it aside for now and see what else is out there. I've got another story that's been brewing in outline format since December. I think I even tried to write it once, but nothing ever came of it. Some things seem to be working now. We'll see. Also this week: I need to get contributor payments for Telltale out. I'm about half-way finished with preparing those. And Jen has just forwarded me the proofs to my Asimov's story. I don't think I'll be capable of putting that aside when it arrives. Posted by alex at 7:41 AM
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July 6, 2006Clarion Week 2: Clarion CuisineOn our walk to Michael Swanwick's reading at the Archives bookshop in Lansing, a few of us stopped for dinner at Beggar's Banquet. What we expected to be a half hour meal ended up closer to 1.5 hours and we consequently missed the reading. Very unfortunate, but it's hard to regret having a non-Owen-Hall meal. The vegetables were fresh and everything had taste without requiring help from Mrs. Dash. The cafeteria food hasn't been agreeing with my stomach. I guess our within-walking-distance food co-op back home has been spoiling me and I'm used to too much organic in my diet. Or maybe I'm just getting old. The Owen Hall salad bar is almost entirely iceberg lettuce. I've taken to skipping the lettuce entirely and making myself cucumber-broccoli-tomato salads and that's my standby. I got some pseudo-natural peanut butter and put that on fruit at least once per day. We've made infrequent runs to the local health food store and I'm getting some good food to supplement my Owen Hall base, but my fridge is too small and wallet too thin to fulfill my entire diet that way. But I have Odwalla bars, Stretch Island fruit leather, the occasional fresh fruit, organic pop-tarts, Stacy's Pita Chips, and some hummus. I have dried blueberries and dates to put on cereal with non-organic milk (oh, how I miss Maple View Farm--a local dairy farm in NC that doesn't use BGH). Tastewise, I'm coping. I have a bottle of Mrs. Dash Garlic and Herb seasoning, which is the exact substance that allowed me to tolerate the rather bland Ashland University food as an undergrad. I'd just be happy if I can find a few bland things from the Owen Hall cafeteria that don't bother my stomach. Posted by alex at 7:15 AM
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July 7, 2006Clarion Week 2: Clarion Theme Song at ISBWMy "Clarion Journey" theme song got some additional airplay on writer Mur Lafferty's I Should Be Writing podcast. Thanks, Mur! Posted by alex at 6:10 PM
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July 8, 2006Clarion Week 2: The Cyclotron
Yesterday a bunch of us (including our author-of-the-week Michael Swanwick) got a tour of MSU's Cyclotron. Our fearless director Liz talked about it in her LJ a bit, and I'll let Wikipedia explain the rest. It was Friday afternoon and my brain was fried after a six hour critique session, but it was still interestering, what little I was able to absorb. And I took my camera out for the first time at Clarion.Complete pictures. I also posted lower-res versions to Flickr, but I'm new to this service and it didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. And Steve G. posted more pics as well. Posted by alex at 10:23 AM
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July 9, 2006Clarion Week 3: Proof of Asimov'sThe galleys/proofs for my novelette "Outgoing" arrived yesterday (Jen forwarded them to me, along with some organic fruit leather). After a week of dissecting stories with Michael Swanwick, I was worried that I would use that recently acquired perspective to hate every word, that I would actually be embarassed at what I wrote about nine months ago (and revised more recently) even as it neared publication. I was very pleased to read it over again and find that overall I'm still happy with it. I had a few tiny changes ("replace poetry with poems," etc.). But I probably would have been okay if it went to press as is/was. And the most exciting news with the proof: on the top of every other page it says "February 2007." Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a publication date. Also got Telltale contributor payments figured out, statements sent. I went on a walk yesterday to find a local Kinko's-type place to print some related PDFs and get an extra photocopy of my proof, but all the locally owned shops were closed. So Kinko's it was. Also stopped at a local comic shop to pick up the Sergio Aragones issue of Solo. Not his best work, but still one of my favorite single issues of the year. I realized this weekend that I've now made a post every day since I got to Clarion. That was never my intention, even though I do get some processing benefit out of it. But I bring this up now because I'm not going to post just to post. If I miss a day it's not necessarily because I'm blog-slacking or overworked in other areas; it's just because I didn't think I had something particularly interesting to say just then. Oh and the general malaise I felt last Wednesday lasted about a day. I'm not loving my current story, but I'm not very down about it. Thanks, all, for asking, for caring. This week: Nancy Kress. Posted by alex at 4:01 PM
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July 10, 2006Clarion Week 3: My Third Clarion StoryKind of went into a panic mode to finish my third story by this morning. Last week we had 22 stories (essentially everyone turned in something) which led to six hour critique sessions and one night with as many as 6 stories to critique. Two people have stories for today, and we realized yesterday that only two people were planning on handing in stories tomorrow (and everyone was planning on handing in stories during the week). Which means toward the end of the week we have a chance of critiquing at least five a night. I didn't want to contribute to the bottleneck, and I thought it would be an interesting challenge to see exactly how quickly I could push myself to get to a serviceable draft. I could have stood to wait another day before submitting, but I'm not too embarassed at what I'm turning in. On the sentence level, I'm having trouble with the flow of this piece, but most of the beats I want are in there. Still this is probably the roughest draft I'm comfortable with showing anyone, and it's only 4,100 words. Guess all that training paid off after all. I should find out tomorrow whether the story makes any sense at this stage. On to the next one. Posted by alex at 8:03 AM
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July 12, 2006Clarion Week 3: Chess with Kress
This week's author-in-residence Nancy Kress is a chess nut (as opposed to a chestnut), and she expressed interest in playing a game yesterday. I was the only volunteer. We were pretty evenly matched. I think she's a recent learner and it's been years since I played. I'd forgotten how fun it was.
Tonight she gave a reading of her new story "Endgame" (sold to Asimov's, but not yet scheduled) at the Archives Book Store in East Lansing. In her introduction she explained the story's genesis as a byproduct of learning the game of chess. She said she wasn't very good "as Alex can tell you" because I (barely) beat her in our first game yesterday.
Nancy and I have a rematch tomorrow. In lieu of my fourth story, I should work on my to-be-famous last words tonight.
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July 13, 2006Clarion Week 3: Nancy Kress and the Me of 2003My third story survived a critiquing on Tuesday. I'm a little disappointed, because the serious threads in a mostly-humorous story got completely lost, but overall the class seemed to enjoy it. Livia described Nancy Kress's teaching/critiquing approach as an iron fist in a velvet glove (I didn't actually hear Livia say this. Aimee mentioned it in her blog. Now if you quote Livia via me, via Aimee, make sure you add something small to the legend, like Livia was on a white horse when she said it.) That sounds about right. For those interested in what she covered in her lecture on Monday, Rahul took better notes than I did. In our one-on-one conference, Kress was able to identify (I think accurately) patterns in my fiction, even though I wrote the application stories more than three years ago. The big one is that the SF element (whatever makes the story a speculative/science fiction/fantasy story) is often the weakest point. I've been working on this and structure over the past few years, and, while I'm getting a pretty good grasp of the latter, I have to admit that the SF element is often the least interesting part of great SF stories I read. Continue reading "Clarion Week 3: Nancy Kress and the Me of 2003" Posted by alex at 7:44 AM
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July 16, 2006Clarion Week 3: Chess with Kress REMATCH!
After Tuesday's chess game with Beggars in Spain author Nancy Kress, she requested, nay, demanded a rematch. After some delays that neither of us will admit were due to cowardice, we finally met again in Owen Hall to settle some scores. (more after the jump) Continue reading "Clarion Week 3: Chess with Kress REMATCH!" Posted by alex at 8:15 AM
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July 18, 2006Clarion Week 4: Hell Week BeginsI want to talk about Tobias Buckell's visit, and the last two days with Joe and Gay Haldeman. But it seems our Clarion Week-4 Crash has for the most part taken the form of lethargy and lost momentum. I hear it's usually high-stress levels and getting on eachother's nerves, so maybe this is a good thing. It's been almost a full week now since I got this current story to its first draft. Since then I've worked at least two hours a day, slowly turning it into a story that might work. And I'm still not sure it's at a place where I'm not embarrassed to show it to anyone. When the story's finished and out of my hands, I'll talk about the fun stuff. Posted by alex at 11:04 PM
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July 19, 2006Clarion Week 4: Tobias Buckell Visit
Author and Clarion alumn Tobias S. Buckell came to visit Clarion this weekend. We workshopped in the Cleveland-based Cajun Sushi Hamsters critique group together, and I haven't seen him in about six years. His visit overlapped our last few days of Nancy Kress. A handful of photos after the jump. Continue reading "Clarion Week 4: Tobias Buckell Visit" Posted by alex at 10:29 PM
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July 20, 2006Clarion Week 4: My Fourth Clarion Story & The Clarion TreeFinished my fourth story (about 5,000 words) yesterday morning. I'm not at all happy with it, but I'm finding there's enough in my hastily-put-together Clarion fiction that my fellow students are able to teach me things by critiquing it, even if the stories themselves are undercooked. And the parts that are there I'm unsure enough about that I'd like to see if they're working at all. I'm uncomfortable writing this much sex-related stuff, too much teenage angst, and this unlikeable protagonist, but maybe that's all going to add some interesting tension to the piece. We're here to try new things, right?
Tonight's a poetry slam/party thing. Joe and Gay Haldeman randomly served us a topic and poetry form on Sunday and we'll read the poems tonight. I got cloning for topic and a limerick series for form. I usually hate limericks because they're so easy and unpublishable, but this morning after feeling so drained I was glad it wasn't something that required more thought. Gay says Joe brought his guitar as well, a Martin Backpacker, which I think is the nylon string version just like mine. I hope we'll have time to jam tonight, but I know we've got at least five stories to critique and at least two of them are in the 9,000+ word range.  Too fried to come up with a story for the tree-hugging pics of classmates Felice Kuan and Shveta Thakrar. But they turned out well, and it'll beef up another short post. Click for a larger version of this last photo. Posted by alex at 8:15 AM
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My fourth Clarion story will be critiqued in the circle tomorrow and I just got a chance to see it on paper vs the computer screen. How can anyone miss this many typos just from not printing it out before submitting it? Sorry, all. Posted by alex at 5:54 PM
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July 21, 2006Clarion Week 4: Jamming with Joe Haldeman
Tonight was poetry and music night courtesy of Joe and Gay Haldeman. Tough that it came on a night with five stories to critique, a few of them pretty long, but it was a good stress reliever (or exacerbator, depending on how difficult it was to squeeze in writing a poem this week). And I got to jam with Joe, so I'm a happy man. (more after the jump) Continue reading "Clarion Week 4: Jamming with Joe Haldeman" Posted by alex at 7:59 AM
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July 23, 2006Clarion Week 4: Misc Photos One final photo dump to close out last week. Enjoy or ignore. Continue reading "Clarion Week 4: Misc Photos" Posted by alex at 6:31 PM
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July 24, 2006Clarion Interlude: Saugatuck
Jen came up for a visit and we celebrated our five year wedding anniversary in Saugatuck and Butler, right near Lake Michigan. We found out too late to go that it's got one of the best freshwater beaches in the States, but we still had fun. Our four-year-old camera broke on the way out there, so we actually replaced it Saturday, which means I'm more likely to be able to take photos that will look okay at better-than-web resolutions. (more photos, etc. after the jump) Continue reading "Clarion Interlude: Saugatuck" Posted by alex at 8:01 AM
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July 25, 2006Clarion Week 5: Jim C Hines and the Picnic
Because I was a bit distracted during his visit (Jen was around), I'll point you to the man himself for the blog post about his visit: here. And about half of what he talked about, he also covered in his essay on landing anthology invites. We finished the day with a few volleyball games. As with chess and pool (where I proved able to consistently sink the 8 ball before I was required to do so), it's been years since I played, and Clarion has reawakened my interest in the game. Not that I'll do anything about it. At least I hope I won't. The last thing I need is another hobby. I know, I know. It's Tuesday and I still haven't said a word about Kelly Link and Holly Black. They're both here for two whole weeks, though. I'm pacing myself.
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 *Pictured above with birthday flowers sent from her boyfriend. Yes, due to a dormitory clerical error, I'm rooming with someone much prettier than I expected Posted by alex at 9:46 PM
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July 26, 2006Clarion Week 5: Higher-Res PhotodumpWill Ludwigsen wins for posting the best shot of my legs on
And I've published a higher-resolution photodump of my non-Cyclotron Clarion photos so far (along with some fun new stuff) here. Posted by alex at 6:51 AM
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July 27, 2006Clarion Week 5: My Fifth Clarion StoryFinished today at 7AM. Another attempt to be funny. The initial idea for this (pseudo-outlined a few years ago; it wasn't working then, but I figured out a way to make it work now, maybe) came from a half-serious place, so maybe some of my crappy attempts to stuff poignance into a humor piece will actually show up in the draft this time. I hope Nancy Kress would forgive me for starting with exposition; if she ever reads it, I'll try to convince her that I did it ironically. Still not very comfortable with torturing my peers with such rough drafts, but it's all I can do to keep up with the faster writers here. And it really crystalized with me, hearing critiques of my Week 4 story, how many issues my classmates caught that I wouldn't have ever caught, even if I had another six weeks on the story to polish it and get it to pass my own high-but-still-imperfect standards of quality. Rahul just realized a pattern in his wordcounts, where his fiction submissions to the Clarion workshop have been consistently getting shorter, starting at 7,700 words and dropping to 2750 by week 5. For me, my wordcounts had the opposite pattern: Week 1: 700 words Week 2: 3500 words Week 3: 4100 words Week 4: 5000 words Week 5: 5100 words Granted, the flash fiction of Week 1 could be a fluke. I just wanted to turn something in quickly so I wouldn't have to inflict any of my 3+ year old application stories on the workshop (and my story ended up being the first non-application story workshopped here, though that was luck. Steve B. also turned in new story for that day, but Chip happened to choose to start with my shorter one). I wonder if this means I'm just getting more used to working at Clarion, since novelette is my natural length, and, on a long enough timeline, I might actually be able to produce one of those stories while I'm here. Or it's possible that once I finish revising the above stories, they'll all top 10,000+ words or more, and I just need the time to flesh them out. My Week six story is going to be an experiment and challenge in a couple of ways, but I'm almost positive I'll top this week's wordcount with it, assuming it works out. Posted by alex at 7:33 AM
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 I've become such a sap in my old age. Posted by alex at 9:28 PM
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July 29, 2006Clarion Week 5: A Laugh Observed and The Happy DanceMy fifth story went over much better than I expected. In fact, I think even the people who didn't like it, still liked it better than I did. I had worried that the story was too heavy-handed with the theme, but most people didn't even see it. Kelly Link and Holly Black both had very positive things to say about the story, which surprised me as well. I think they both gave this story the shortest critiques they've given all week. I'm not so sure this is a good thing as I'm almost afraid to show them any more of my writing now.
At Clarion so far, I've done two "serious" stories. This is my third "humorous" story.
I'll have to crosscheck my notes to make sure I'm right about this, but I think it's interesting that those who enjoyed the humor in my first piece (the flash fiction I turned in after only a few days at Clarion) have not enjoyed my subsequent humor pieces at all. Which means I'm either really stagnant or really inconsistent in my humor style. After a long week, a handful of us tried to go to a karaoke bar (Fridays at Crunchy's, across from Archives) last night. As Brad put it, they were using a toy karaoke machine that you might give to your child. We couldn't find a table where we could see or hear the "stage," and five feet away from the singer, you couldn't hear the music (and her/his voice only sporadically). So we bailed and went to Harper's, and got some dancing in before bedtime. It's too bad. I'm a better singer than I am a dancer, and it's been about a decade since I've done karaoke. Decide amongst yourselves whether these photos were taken in the critique circle or at Harper's.
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July 30, 2006Clarion Week 5: Fancy Dress Party
So most of my photos of Saturday night's Fancy Dress Party didn't turn out so well, but here's what I got. Luckily Livia and Vince have already posted their Flickr sets with plenty of manskirt goodness. And I know Robert caught a kickass action-shot of me with Kelly Link, so there should be more coming.
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July 31, 2006Submission 279Took a break tonight from my sixth Clarion story to write a plant submission for A Field Guide to Surreal Botany from Jason and Janet's Two Cranes Press. Got it off an hour before the deadline, but no promises as far as coherence goes. Have to admit it's great to write a non-story for the first time in 5+ weeks. Blogging doesn't count so much. More about the sixth Clarion story forthcoming. It's not just my sixth... Posted by alex at 11:06 PM
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August 2, 2006Clarion Week 6: Our Final Clarion StoryWhen Clarion Director Liz Zernechel said five weeks ago how she and a fellow student did a collaboration when she was a Clarion student, I thought: well, bully for you, but it'll be a cold day in hell... and then I forgot all about it because Superman Returns was starting. Little did I know... Last week my suitemate Felice (as opposed to my sweetmate Jen) and I decided to give it a shot for a jointly final, Clarion Week 6 story. When it comes to habits, I can't imagine a more opposite set of writing partners:
So you can see why we thought this was a good idea. The only way we could be have more opposite writing habits would be if one of us never actually finished a story. But we both do, and both of our routines produce stories at about the same intervals (while we're in East Lansing, at least). It's obvious that we had a collaboration learning curve when our compromise on when-to-write was: morning, afternoon, and night. We came up with a piece with a very different scope from anything we've seen at Clarion so far (but within the SF tradition), and it's something well outside both of our comfort ranges. Yay for week 6 experimentation? Very fried, very tired, with a very early draft turned in right as the class started this morning. We have at least one scene each where the other person has barely skimmed it. Butit was a fun trip and we accomplished our main goal with the story: we're still friends. Or we will be after we've both taken some naps. Posted by alex at 4:37 PM
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August 3, 2006Clarion Week 6: Kelly Link's The Cannon
Kelly suggested a few of her pieces, and, time-wise, the only one I'd be able to read in its entirety was "The Cannon" from Magic for Beginners. I read it for the first time an hour or so before the reading, and, because the piece is structured as a series of questions and answers, I asked fellow thespian-turned-Clarionite Will Alexander to read the questions. (more after the jump) Continue reading "Clarion Week 6: Kelly Link's The Cannon" Posted by alex at 8:01 PM
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August 4, 2006Clarion Week 6: Week Six Ain't Over ButA bit sick, and conserving all my energy to get through these last few days. I've got more stories and photos to post, so I'll continue talking about this final week of Clarion well into next week. More Sunday or Monday. Posted by alex at 8:26 PM
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August 6, 2006Clarion Week 6: Impromptu Twelfth Night Reading
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August 7, 2006Clarion Week 6: Kelly Link and Holly Black Bring the Pain. On Friday night, the last night of Clarion 2006, Kelly Link and Holly Black brought the pain. And by pain I mean squirt guns.  Complete photo set here. Posted by alex at 1:00 PM
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August 8, 2006Submission 280It's the first post-Clarion Tuesday and my first Clarion story is revised and in the mail as my 11th fiction submission to MF&SF. Not too bad, but I'm finding it very difficult to get my momentum back now that I'm home. Posted by alex at 12:29 PM
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August 9, 2006Clarion Week 6: Always Bet on Black (in Mafia)!Long entry, but if you want to skip the boring parts there are more, higher-res Clarion Mafia photos here. The last Friday of Clarion was a pretty good day. I made some radical eating changes (giving up cough drops completely, giving up eating almost nothing but toast even though my stomach had trouble handling anything else, switching to bottled water exclusively for the last 36-hours) and by the afternoon I was feeling better than I had in weeks. More about health in a later entry, but the important thing is that in spite of health issues, I never missed a critique session and I read and critiqued every story at Clarion, even the ones I could have taken a free "pass" on. I don't have the sheet handy, but I believe that's 120 stories critiqued or 20 per week.  Continue reading "Clarion Week 6: Always Bet on Black (in Mafia)!" Posted by alex at 2:12 PM
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August 10, 2006Clarion Week 6: Graduation 2006 I'm back tracking a bit to Wednesday night, but I wanted to end talking about Week 6 with the Clarion graduation photos (view the complete set). Thanks to Will Alexander for snapping the above picture of whatever muppet got through the Clarion screening process. Man, I'm missing these people already.  For a more complete set of graduation day photographs, see Livia's Flickr set, though my set's got one advantage: I grabbed the above photo of Livia while she was preoccupied being in it. To those I owe phone calls to: I apologize. Just when I thought my five-week cough was finally gone, it returned with a sore swollen throat. I'll know more tomorrow. Posted by alex at 9:39 PM
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August 11, 2006Clarion Epilogue: They Remember Me
We rescued Thor and Loki from the shelter in November, when they were three months old. That puts their birthdate in mid-August, so we decided that the three of us (Alex, Thor, Loki) should all just share a birthday. They'll be one year old when I turn 30 next week.
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August 15, 2006Clarion Epilogue: Health and MotivationFirst off, a hearty congrats to Livia for being the first Oh-Sixer to make a pro sale with a Clarion-workshopped story (and just ten days out from Clarion no less)! That's one down, 119 left to go? Finally getting over my sore throat and cough, but I'm still struggling to get my momentum back post-Clarion. At the workshop I was never satisfied with either the amount of work I got done or the quality of the very rough drafts I was producing. Now I'm not satisfied with anything. Still a few days away from being able to talk normally without coughing, but I'm feeling well enough to pretend that this is behind me already. Though Clarion was a great experience and I'm glad I went, it's rather frustrating that I interrupted a moderately successful workflow, ostensibly to improve it. And ten days later I'm still producing at Clarion-levels (at best) rather than where I was in early June. Yes, I know I have unreasonable expectations for myself. That's my charm. Continue reading "Clarion Epilogue: Health and Motivation" Posted by alex at 5:33 PM
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August 17, 2006ThirtySo I'm thirty years old. And the cats are one. They're too old for kitten food and Cosmo says I'm too old to wear mini-skirts. I think that's bullshit.
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August 22, 2006Clarion Epilogue: The Business of WritingUpdate: I still have at least three more of these I want to write (Craft, Critiquing Process, People, plus the Final Photo Dump), and then I'll get started on the podcast. Feeling much better (though my cough still lingers enough that spoken word narration for Telltale is impossible), and my new writing seems to suck slightly less than it did over the last eight weeks, though it's a painful process to create anything. Soldiering through. Saying that I'm self-taught in anything is one of those backhanded brags. I'm certainly proud of the things I picked up on my own, and the cheapskate in me is almost proud that I could spend 100 hours in trial-and-error situations to avoid spending five dollars for instant access to the same knowledge.
But the more significant problems with being self-taught in anything are that (a) it might have taken me half a decade to figure out what I could have picked up in an afternoon lecture, and (b) there are always holes in my knowledge or skillset, sporadically marring what should be an expertise after so long a practice. And filling in those holes requires better listening skills than I've ever had. Continue reading "Clarion Epilogue: The Business of Writing" Posted by alex at 3:06 PM
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August 23, 2006Submission 281My fourth comic script and synopsis to 2000 AD. I sent my first sub to them a year ago this coming Saturday. Bothering them every quarter sounds like a good rate of output, I think. Took twice as long as I expected to write this. Hope it's because the story is a stretch for me (closer to what 2000 AD tends to publish) rather than because Clarion has broken me as a writer. Very glad to finally walk this one to the post office. Posted by alex at 1:45 PM
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August 24, 2006Clarion Epilogue: Imagine What They'll Do With My Crossdressing PhotosMy Chapel Hill buddy Ted Hobgood has determined that Chris's Clarion-volleyball photo was actually Photoshopped. And now Ted has found the original.  Click for a larger version. Posted by alex at 6:14 PM
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August 25, 2006New York Times Hearts Telltale AgainEDIT: Article and Sidebar reprinted in full at the N&O (no login required). Thanks to Craig Silverman of The New York Times for including me and my audiobook project Telltale Weekly (and sister site "Spoken Alexandria") as part of his Public Domain Books, Ready for Your iPod article (onine with free NYT registration, or page B29 in the today's print version. Sidebar here). The article also offers positive mentions of other great audiobook projects for spoken word connoisseurs: Librivox and LiteralSystems. And fie on my spam filter for earlier this week not understanding that sometimes "Interview Request" in a subject line actually means interview request. Posted by alex at 12:54 PM
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August 30, 2006Kelly Link's "The Girl Detective"
Just released a free narration of Kelly Link's story "The Girl Detective" over at Spoken Alexandria. It's the first recording I've done post-Clarion, and my second favorite story in Link's first story collection. Last week my narration of my favorite Link story ("Most of My Friends Are Two Thirds Water") got a mention in The New York Times as "worth downloading" and I guess I felt emboldened.
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September 1, 2006Clarion Epilogue: Revisionist His StoryOn a generous day, Swanwick might say the above title is a "nice try." So I'm doing an overhaulish revision on another one of my Clarion stories. It's one of the pieces Michael Swanwick had major issues with, and he was kind enough to do line edits on it anyway. Since my target market for the story is probably Analog, Swanwick's critique was proabably the single-most-valuable marked-up manuscript I would take home with me. So why I sent it home via UPS rather than tape it to my chest for the flight home is a mystery. Okay, it's because I'm hairy and because it would hurt and because today I'm prone to hyperbole, but still. Continue reading "Clarion Epilogue: Revisionist His Story" Posted by alex at 6:43 PM
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September 5, 2006Rejection 184On Sub 279, a July 31 sub to A Field Guide to Surreal Botany from Two Cranes Press. This was the only submission I sent out while at Clarion, and it's no surprise that I couldn't write coherently enough at the workshop to come up with a publishable submission. Ah well. Designing a plant was a fun exercise and a needed break from the typical Clarion fictioneering-and-critiquing, so no regrets except I won't get a Janet Chui illustration of something I wrote. (But huge congrats to my fellow Clarionite Shveta for making her first writing sale to this book.) Posted by alex at 6:49 PM
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September 6, 2006Submissions 282 and 283Genre fiction subs to Analog (my 7th) and Clarkesworld (my 1st). Two newer stories, including my second revised Clarion story to hit the slush piles. Four more revisions to go. Posted by alex at 3:28 PM
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September 9, 2006Clarion Epilogue: Final Photodump
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