The 2010 Clarion Writers Workshop is now open for applications, which will be accepted until March 1st. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

The instructors this year are names to be conjured with:

1. Delia Sherman
   
2. George R.R. Martin
   
3. Dale Bailey
   
4. Samuel R. Delaney
   
5. Jeff VanderMeer
   
6. Ann VanderMeer
   

Delia strikes me as an excellent person for the "Becoming A Tribe" process in Week One. Chip Delaney, in addition to being possibly the most famous literary SF writer and theorist alive, has been associated with Clarion forever; back in 1975 he taught both Stan Robinson and Bob Crais, who were my teachers at Clarion 2009. The Week 5-6 "Anchor Team" is often a couple or a pair of best friends (in honor of Damon & Kate), and it seems to me that you couldn't do better than the VanderMeers in that role.

If you've followed my reports on my own Clarion experience, you know that I found it an overwhelming, exhausting, exhilerating, life-changing time. I am confident that I'm a better writer now -- I came out of Clarion with four new stories, two of which were probably better first drafts than anything I've written before. It's the internal editor-voice, the one that comes from writing so many critiques (I logged more than 30,000 words of critique alone during Clarion) and listening to so much instructor-wisdom, that really makes the difference, I think. And I know that I've made seventeen friends for life who are also writers, and who make my life brighter every day.

And while we're at it, I've heard nothing but good things about Clarion West and Odyssey, too; some really hot writers have come out of them. CW 2010 has a line-up that includes Bishop, McHugh, Datlow and McDonald, while Odyssey's guest lecturers next year will include my beloved teacher lizhand, Greg Frost (a classmate of Stan and Bob's in '75), the wise David Hartwell and Alexander Jablokov (an author I worship).

So get to it! Apply!

For those who didn't already know, one more after-effect of Clarion:

I had great fun at Albacon, really my first con in decades. (I've attended a few specialty cons over the last few years, and I was at ComicCon, which is like visiting the Emerald City, but no straight SFF cons.) For me, the big deal was seeing five of my Clarion buddies, including enggirl, as well as both Paul Park and lizhand, both of whom were our teachers.

I've heard that Clarion grads have a reputation for being a bit cliquish, i.e., not talking to anyone else at cons but each other. In our case it was probably more true than it should have been. Observers probably put this phenomenon down to a misplaced sense of superiority, but it isn't that. We just miss each other. You spend six weeks living, working and suffering with someone, it's like they're family. So when we get back together, which (I gather) is mostly at cons, we're desperate to catch up, to stay up all night talking, to touch each other to make sure we're really there.

Having said that, I met a number of nifty new people at Albacon, including both parttimedriverand ianrandalstrock. If life at cons is anything like life at academic conferences (of which I have attended 'way too many), it will be joyous to meet these people again at other cons, and the circle of friends will grow...

Hooray! Shauna Roberts's new novel, Like Mayflies in the Stream, has just become available for pre-order on Amazon.

The first of the Clarion 2009 graduates to publish a novel has done herself proud. I've read it. I love it. Go out and get it.

Shauna's novel is part of a Hadley Rille Books series of "archeologically-accurate novels about the daily lives of ancient people living and coping with significant crises." This one is based on the tale of Gilgamesh.

A word of confession, here: I've never read the Epic of Gilgamesh, except in summary form, and I had to look up the summaries to get an idea of how much Roberts has deviated from the original. Not much, it turns out. Like Marion Zimmer Bradley in The Mists of Avalon and The Firebrand, or LeGuin in Lavinia, Roberts takes the essentials of the legend as a starting point, and goes from there. It's a wonderful question: what real events in the lives of real people could have inspired a story like this one? The result is stranger, sadder and sexier than the myth itself. I especially like how Roberts imagines Enkidu -- how he became who he is, why he behaves as he does.

Although we get glimpses into the minds of Gilgamesh and Enkidu themselves, the story is told primarily from the point of view of Shamhat, the woman sent to "tame" the wild man Enkidu. While various translations of the original suggest that Shamhat was a temple prostitute, Robert's archeological analysis suggests that that belief is an anachronism from the much later time when the Epic was composed. In Uruk at the time of the legend, Shamhat is more likely to have been a priestess of Inanna, and so she is in this novel.

It's fun to read stories told from alternative points of view. From Stoppard's Rozencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead to Bradley's two books mentioned above, we love to think that we're getting the "inside scoop," the part the party-line didn't tell us, and that's one of the joys of this book.

Another is the archeological project itself. The Mesopotamian world of this novel is so real you can taste it.

The characters are well-drawn and compelling, especially Shamhat, Gilgamesh, Enkidu and Zaidu, the hunter Shamhat meets on the way.

I knew that Shauna was a medical writer as well as an anthropologist before I read the novel, but it hadn't occurred to me how useful her medical knowledge would be in interpreting the Gilgamesh myth. I'll leave out explanations because they'd be spoilers, but suffice it to say that several things came into sharp focus because of physiological truths, never stated explicitly but clear as day.

All in all, this novel is a terrific read. I started it on the plane home from California, and couldn't put it down after I got home.

There are some people who think that the main advantage of Clarion is the networking. And, sure, it's neat to have seventeen new friends who are all great writers. But the theory is that doing 100+ critiques in six weeks (35,000+ words of crit, for me), plus listening to 80+ hours of 17 people doing 1,700+ three-minute crits of their own (not exaggerating; do the math) will create an "internal editor" for the student that will allow you to examine your own work with a more effective critical eye.

The theory is correct. Damn it.

The 2009 Clarionites have created an online crit group to continue to help each other with stories. I am slated to submit a story at the end of next week, and thought I would revise one I wrote in February-through-April. I liked it well enough before I left for Clarion, and I figured, hey, I'll do a quick revision and show it to 'em.

So I looked at it last night (after telling my classmates about it, of course), in preparation for that "quick revision."

WTF.

The characters are opaque and mostly cardboard, the narration utterly on-the-bloody-broken-nose, there's no sense of place, and the language is so wooden I could use it to build a gallows. I stared in disbelief, thinking "I really liked this?"

So I'm rewriting from scratch. I have no idea how much better the thing I submit will be, but at least I have some idea of the thing things battalion of things that is are wrong with it, and can take some aim at it them.

So thank you, Clarion, for this new critical eye -- a freaking raven on my goddam shoulder, croaking insults in my ear.

(...*sigh* Not really angry, just a little rueful and embarrassed...)

In an earlier post, I reported some of the good advice on writing I heard from the first three instructors at Clarion: Holly Black, Larissa Lai and Robert Crais.

Now I've had time to report some good things I learned from the instructors in the final three weeks. I have the sense that I didn't do as good a job with them, partly because I was so much more tired during the second half.

( Good Advice on Writing )

For anyone who wants to see all the posts I made about Clarion, here's an easy index:

• Announcement that I got into Clarion.
• Choosing first story to crit at Clarion.
• Week One Report (Holly Black)
• Week Two Report (Larissa Lai)
• Week Three Report (Robert Crias)
• Week Four Report (Kim Stanley Robinson)
• Weeks Five & Six Report (Elizabeth Hand & Paul Park)
• Some writing wisdom from the last three weeks
• @&#$! proof that the Clarion method works...

If I add any additional Clarion-related posts, I'll edit this index accordingly

My report from the Clarion Writers Workshop, Weeks Five and Six

( Under the Cut )

Here are my monthly stats for July.

• 24,000 new words of fiction written this month. ¹
  
  AND:
  
   
• 30,000 words of workshop critique written this month ²
   
• 19 first drafts currently in progress (some untouched for a long time)
   
• 3 first drafts currently "ripening" before second draft.
   
• 2 second drafts currently in progress
   
• 0 second draft currently in the hands of "trusted readers."
   
• 4 third drafts currently in progress.
   
• 0 third drafts currently awaiting polishing.
   
• 0 fourth drafts in currently in progress.
   
• 1 rewrite (at request of editor) currently in progress.
   
• 8 stories currently submitted to markets
   
• 1,400 words in shortest story currently submitted.
   
• 8,700 words in longest story currently submitted.
   
• 0 offers of publication received this month.
   
• Longest current wait without response: 437 days.
   

¹ Biggest month yet. Of course it's all due to the one-story-per-week pace of the Clarion Workshop.

² So, if you add the new fiction writing to the critique writing, I've actually produced 54,000 words this month -- excluding all of the in-class fiction writing exercises, of course.

My report from the Clarion Writers Workshop, Week 4

( Under the cut -- includes photos )

Clarion Report, Week Three

( Under the cut, because it's long )

My report from the Clarion Writers Workshop, Week Two.

( It's all under the cut )

I'm happy to announce that Odyssey Magazine has bought  my flash fiction story, "The First Day of Spring."

Odyssey: Adventures in Science is a magazine for "young adventurers" aged 10-16.  Each monthly issue has a theme.  My story, which concerns the beginnings of prehistoric agriculture, will appear in the October issue, whose theme is, "Our Story: A Cast of Humans."

Odyssey is an SFWA "paying market," and marks my second such sale (the first being "Calibration," which appeared in Nature Physics a year ago).

I got a lot of slaps on the back from my fellow Clarion students (although there have been plenty more impressive achievements by many of them).

This is long, so it's under the cut for those who aren't interested.

( Week One Clarion Report )

A quick post in the middle of crit-work at Clarion. Here are my monthly stats for June:

• 6,200 new words of fiction written this month. ¹
  
  BUT:
   
• 5,000 words of workshop critique written this month (in the last three days, actually)
   
• 19 first drafts currently in progress (some untouched for a long time)
   
• 1 first drafts currently "ripening" before second draft.
   
• 2 second drafts currently in progress
   
• 0 second draft currently in the hands of "trusted readers."
   
• 3 third drafts currently in progress.
   
• 0 third drafts currently awaiting polishing.
   
• 0 fourth drafts in currently in progress.
   
• 1 rewrite (at request of editor) currently in progress.
   
• 8 stories currently submitted to markets
   
• 1,400 words in shortest story currently submitted.
   
• 8,700 words in longest story currently submitted.
   
• 1 offer of publication received this month. ²
   
• Longest current wait without response: 406 days.
   

¹ Just like last month. But note the extra 5,000 words of crit I wrote for Clarion, starting on June 28.

² I haven't announced this one yet, because we're still negotiating contract terms. I'll let y'all know as soon as I'm sure it's being published!

With 1,500 - 2,000 words of crit writing per day, it's hard to find time for the stories themselves.  Still, I'm supposed to turn in one new story per week; so the July stats should be pretty impressive!

(Hopefully I'll post a first-week report of Clarion over the weekend...)

I hope to post periodic updates on my Clarion experience here, although not every day. What I'd most like to do is share the best writing advice that I hear from the instructors, and the insights that arise from the crit process.

I'll parallel-post on my other LJ, and if there's anything I consider to be sensitive, I'll probably friends-lock it there (all posts on this LJ are public). If you'd like to read those sensitive posts (if any) and you're not already on my flist at the other LJ, send me an e-mail and we'll talk.

I'll be arriving at La Jolla in nine days. blackholly, who's the Week One instructor, asked us to decide whether to use one of our submission stories for the Week One crit, or rather write a new one. This presented me with an opportunity. Of the two stories I submitted, one has had a lot of praise from editors, and there's one editor (you know who you are) who's been sitting on it for more than seven months, who says he might, might, just might publish it.

But the other story, which was singled out for praise by one of the Clarion judges (never mind how I know that), has been form-rejected from a handful of markets, and didn't even merit an Honorable Mention at WotF. That intrigues me -- Here's a story I know has merit, and which I also know has marked problems, but I don't know what they are. I can't imagine a better opportunity for a group-crit.

So I'm going into the Week One Crit genuinely hoping that my classmates will find flaws with my story -- and hoping especially that they'll all find the same flaws. Because then my job will be easy. :)

For some reason I'm fixating on the social aspect of Clarion, and worrying that I'll make an offensive nuisance of myself. Everyone says that the biggest benefit from these workshops is the strong community of loyal writer-friends you have when it's done, and I have repeated, unhappy fantasies of being so toxic that no one wants to know me when it's over. That's a very old fear of mine, and it's galling that it surfaces now, when I've got this once-in-a-lifetime, thrilling experience to anticipate. Grr.

I have this terrible habit of reading series in the wrong order.

It started with Robertson Davies. I picked up a copy of The Lyre of Orpheus and was halfway through it before I understood that there were earlier books. So I read the trilogy backwards, moving next to What's Bred in the Bone and finally to The Rebel Angels.

The interesting thing is that, with good series, you get just as much tension and anticipation reading backwards as you do reading forwards -- only it's tension/anticipation about what has already transpired, rather than what's going to transpire. Of course, anyone who's seen either Memento or Pinter's Betrayal won't really be surprised by this. (John Irving says that he writes his novels backwards.)

Anyway, it's happened again. In preparation for Clarion, I picked up Stan Robinson's Green Mars. Now, okay, it wasn't my intention to do the backwards-sideways thing again (it never is), I just wasn't paying proper attention, and Green Mars intrigued me more than Red or Blue. As a title. *shrugs* (Had I known what the "Red" in "Red Mars" stood for, I'd've probably been more attracted to it.)

I am delighted (and astonished) to announce that I will be attending the next Clarion Writers Workshop in San Diego this summer, from June 28 to August 8. I knew about this a while ago, but we weren't supposed to tell anyone until our names appeared on the Web site as the Class of 2009.

My seventeen fellow students are from as far away as Australia and Ireland, and I'm relieved to note that that at least two of them are near my own age (I was afraid I'd be "the old guy" in the group). Some of them are already professional writers of one sort or another, others are graduate students, teachers, etc.

This summer's instructors (in order of presentation) will be Holly Black, Larissa Lai, Robert Crais, Kim Stanley Robinson, Elizabeth Hand and Paul Park.   So you can imagine that I'm bouncing up and down in my chair as I write this.

Many thanks to my friends, especially tinaconnolly, for private advice about writers workshops.

Wheee!