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Clarion Week 2: This Round to Swanwick July 4, 2006 I 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. I went in with my own ideas of my second story's flaws. If anyone else saw these particular problems, they didn't think them important enough to mention. Instead Swanwick and my fellow Clarionites found problems I never considered. And, although Swanwick seemed to like a good deal about the story, he felt the SF conceit behind it was fundamentally flawed and probably unfixable. This wouldn't be so bad if (a) it wasn't on the heels of the detailed Analog rejection Jen read to me on Saturday, and (b) if I didn't have the suspicion that this critique applied to just about every hard science fiction story I've ever written. About my application stories (written 3+ years ago each) I have no particular love. Remember I went out of my way to make sure they didn't get critiqued in the circle last week. And I know that--no matter how brilliant Swanwick is--this is still just one person's opinion. But it was so humbling to see him shorten paragraphs to their essentials and have them read so much better without any loss of information. And then: to see him slash pages at a time as being unnecessary to the story, and then highlight just two lines in an entire novelette and say: "This is good. This is your real voice, isn't it?" It was. He nailed me. This feeling will pass. I'm going to be able to look back at these last few days as a big leap forward. Detailed, crushing comments in Saturday's Analog rejection is a milestone. That Swanwick found any merit in a story I wrote in five days in a strange dorm room is a good thing. Even if the story I'm currently working on has currently lost all the promise I saw in it a few days ago, I know I haven't written my last piece of prose or my last piece of SF. I debated whether to write this entry, and then--having written it just for my own mental process--whether to post it. I do so in the hope that it could help other new writers deal with the same kind of love-hate relationship I have: with hearing critiques we need--but don't necessarily want--to hear. Filed under Clarion, Journal  
Comments: Discuss this entry at LiveJournalI think we're all going through this, in varying degrees. Yes, it's painful. But it's kind of like someone ripping off not just the bandage, but the wound itself. What we thought was being healed was really infection. I think once Clarion is over, and we've had time to recover, we'll really start to heal, and to produce some fucking great stories. Ok, that was just about the grossest analogy I've ever made. Bleh. I'm way more tired and loopy than I thought. :D Posted by: Livia Llewellyn at July 4, 2006 10:19 PM 
The problem isn't that this is reality check time or that you should hide that you've just seen your work shredded and digested to blood and pus pulp... it's that you so rarely get an opportunity in this biz to get that kind of feedback. From anyone. At least in the beginnings of an SF writing career. Your mom loves anything you write. Your friends say, "Hey, I've paid real money to buy crap worse than yours -- it must be good enough to publish." You send things out to editors... and don't hear much. Then you get to Clarion and... WHAM! Did anyone think to get the license plate from that truck? Meanwhile, the carefully trained North Korean Clarion instructors keep the lights on all night and every time you think you want sleep, they'll scream at you to get writing or read another 5000 word story to crit. And trolling the aisles of Meijers to get another bag of Hershey's miniatures 2am IS a holiday. Ah, such fun... wish I was there again... Dr. Phil Posted by: Dr. Phil at July 4, 2006 11:03 PM
Hi, Alex: Hang in there. An Asimov's sale is proof of talent. You'll survive this and be far better for the experience, as you've indicated. Set aside some time to sleep asap. It'll help in many ways, I promise. ;) Laird Posted by: Laird at July 4, 2006 11:15 PM
*hug* Thanks for the pep talk. Posted by: Shveta at July 5, 2006 1:17 AM
Thanks, all. Posted by: Alex at July 5, 2006 7:51 AM
We're definitely experiencing the "rip you down, build you up" method of teaching this week. Although I felt that last week as well. Hey, wait a minute... Posted by: Robert at July 5, 2006 1:54 PM
Alex, remember, there are some of us who would kill for a detailed rejection. Some of us are still floundering in the "you rejected it? Form letter? how the hell am I going to get better with a FORM LETTER???" pits. Hang in there. My podcast listeners loved your song, BTW. Posted by: Mur at July 6, 2006 5:35 PM
Thanks, Robert, Mur. Posted by: Alex at July 11, 2006 7:58 AM
by Alex Wilson. This is from an online journal/blog I kept from 1998-2009. Back to alexwilson.com. |