Clarion Week Three

Brad, Tobias, Nancy, and Liz
It's late Saturday night at the end of week 3. Tonight everyone--minus those with prior engagements/visits from loved ones--hung out in Van Hoosen and sang and goofed around with Nancy Kress and Tobias Buckell. We played Apples vs. Apples (I think) where the stupidest draw must've been: Leeches, A Flat Tire, and Humphrey Bogart for the category 'Chewy'. Also the Quartet of myself, Livia, Aimee, and Casey sang Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Then something got spilled and the evening ended.

Faultlines are beginning to appear. But this is to be expected. The experience of Clarion is fucking awesome (to coin a phrase), but the relentless focus on writing is stressful. I would like to be able to spend more time with people individually since cliques have developed, but time pressures make that difficult. Instead there's a lot of group hanging-out with extroverts holding court while the less extroverted types listen on. It's fun, but not a real relationship in many ways. Everyone's in the same boat regarding writing. Weekends are chances to do a lot of writing, but this means they're not the relaxing time they could be.

Drama before exposition! Omigod!
Weekends I'm managing around 3500 words which sets me up for a 5-6000 word story handed in by Wednesday. Unfortunately, the majority of the class is on this schedule so we tend to have a glut of stories late in the week. I haven't really out a freak-out time yet and I feel like it's not going to happen. I have a vague story idea mapped out for Week 5 and my Week 4 story is well on the way. What's going to happen in Week 6 I don't know.

Writing wise, I feel like I'm improving. Concentrating on dramatic scenes, and waiting for an understanding of the story before penning a word, seem to be helping. Plus I think I'm learning a lot of editing skills which I'll apply to a lot of stories I've already written. The stories from other writers are getting better too. This week I read a number of stories that with a little more loving will sell. One in particular blew me away and made me want to read a whole new genre. The whole Clarion experience, more than any technical improvements, is motivating me to keep at this, make it the focal point of my life, and for that I'm very grateful. I can't think of anything more enriching, challenging, and entertaining than writing fiction.

Brad and Nancy
Nancy Kress is a real experienced hand. Aside from their advice, all the instructors have been examples of how passion is such an essential component of a succesful career. The obstacles that Nancy overcame to get to where she is, is an inspiration. She combines a no-nonsense approach with a sardonic detachment. I've learnt a great deal from her methodical analyses. Her reading on Wednesday night was the literary highlight of the week. After listening to her story and thinking about the crits of my own story I felt like I had an epihany about writing. Stories are like houses of cards. They are far more fragile and delicate than I realised. Everything is an illusion. (Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie). Stacks can be conveyed with minimal prompting. The skill of the writer is to evoke structures (emotional, physical, metaphorical) in the reader's mind with minimal effort. Research, detail, and choice phrases are the heart of the accomplished writer. In some ways I feel like I'm losing my style, but I think I need to strip down to essentials before I rebuild. Also, I've realised every reader wants to categorise a story within three sentences. If you mess with a reader's expectations be prepared for failure unless you pull off something amazing. A lot of stories fail because they sit uneasily between established genres. It seems a short story has less license to combine tropes than longer fiction.

Already feeling melancholy about the inevitable end. The silver lining is the twenty-one plus people scattered over the States I will know. I plan to road-trip across the country someday, and although I haven't asked yet, I'm hoping for a place to bed down and write....

Of course, everyone's welcome to come to England and stay with me where we have gas lamps and boiled vegetables...

Quotes of the Week:

Hisako Tsukade: "I come for vengeance! Helloooo Ice Hailstorm Attack!"

Jemma EveryHope: "I want to feel people dying."

Anonymous: "I thought that was a smooth read."

Sean Eyeballs Every Word