aithne | Entries tagged with clarion west 2009

So, I’m back.

I’m getting caught up on sleep, helped by the blessed run of cool days we’ve had, getting my life back on track, doing things that I’ve not done for six weeks. Yesterday it was dealing with mail, today it was getting my hair dyed and dealing with the finances I’ve been putting off for a bit. I’ve been spending time with my sweeties and my animals, and more or less trying to integrate back into my life and picking up my household responsibilities.

The six weeks of Clarion West was completely awesome. By the time it was over, I was so ready for it to end…and yet I miss all of my classmates. That focus, where everything was about writing, I miss that as well at the same time that I’m glad to be home. The last week was rough, made rougher by the heat wave that happened during it, and compounded by the brain burn I was feeling by Thursday or so. I stayed up late on Friday, and got up early on Saturday to take someone to the airport. I came back, packed, took another load of people to SeaTac, came back and helped pack the house. We went out to sushi and then it was time to go, and I was driving south with the echoes of eighteen voices of fellow students, six teachers, the lovely Leslie and Neile, and what seem like hundreds of other people who had useful things to say bouncing around my head.

I haven’t really finished processing yet. Did I have some insights into the craft and the business? Yep, but I can’t articulate them quite yet. Each instructor brought something different to us, and I learned stuff from each of them. I learned at least as much from critiquing other people’s work as I did from writing and being critiqued. It was an experience I am so very glad that I was fortunate enough to have.

And now, it is time to sing a verse of “Tentacle Longing” and go forth and rock it!

As of about noon today, i am officially a graduate of Clarion West 2009.

Wrap-up will be written and posted later, when I am not quite so sleep-deprived. This has been an awesome experience, something truly wonderful. but for right now, i have to go pare down a large stack of crits to a much smaller stack of crits, and start packing, and take some folks to the UPS store.

I'll be home tomorrow afternoon!

Week Five kind of ate me. I think I'd finally realized that I'd been away from home for over a month and there were weeks left to go and waaaaah *throw toys*.

Then I went and got bubble tea and everything was okay again for a little bit. I am doing okay with the social, though I'm starting to get into the zone where I'm really pushing myself; my hearing comprehension is spending more time on the fritz than it has been. My Week Five story kind of fell on its face, I fear. It's a creepy little story that starts out with a body and a one-person spaceship and a sculptor; I mistakenly didn't mention where the body came from, because I honestly didn't care. If I learned anything from that story, it is that people are really interested in how random bodies came to be when and where they are. That interest completely overshadowed the arc of the story. It was another experiment in extremely tight third-person POV, and I still absolutely love it, but i will rewrite and revise. A really interesting species of alien showed up in the middle of the story, at least in reference, and so I am now gestating in the back of my mind aliens who deal with causality different than humans do and whose communication is completely nonverbal.

(This is the problem when someone with a linguistics degree tries to write about aliens. The awareness that the human capacity for language is exquisitely dependent on our brain structure makes, say, universal translators a completely laughable concept. See also the Native Tongue series by Suzette Hadin Elgin.)

Anyway, I wrote a story with a spaceship in it. I learned from it why I don't write stories with spaceships in them, and it largely has to do with my allergy to putting into a story any more technical information than absolutely necessary to move it along. I do think I should try some more SF; what I really would like to accomplish is hard SF without technical infodumps, as an exercise. It's likely going to be easier for me to accomplish if I stick to my sciences (biology, botany, linguistics, etc) rather than try to play in the realm of physics. I was attempting to explain to someone the other day why it is extremely important why we not confuse the measurement of time for time itself. I pretty much failed, as I can only manage that explanation when I am well-rested.

Anyway. Week Six is upon us; my last stories will be critiqued tomorrow. I have a revision of "The Isthmus Variations" and an ill-conceived transreal story on the docket, the latter of which I kind of hope nobody reads.

I have in the back of my head a post about why i tend to write fantasy, which I will at some point write out, but the meat of it is this: fantasy is the literature of the human soul. It is what comforts us around campfires and what we will take with us to the stars. Fantasy shines a light into all the primodorial places and asks, "what distinguishes us from the monsters both within and without?" Fantasy is the literature of our blood.

I'm good with writing that.

We're at the point where I have two simultaneous feelings about Clarion West: (We only have two weeks left! Yay!) and (OMG we only have two weeks left noooooo!). I'm sad to see Nalo Hopkinson go--she was an awesome teacher, and she had some very good insights. We have successfully made it through the dreaded Week Four without breakdowns, I think in part because forwarned is forearmed, and we have all pretty much been trying to get enough sleep in our own styles. The Friday party was awesome as always, though I did not manage to prevent myself from gushing fangirl-style at some of my favorite authors in the world. I think I managed to not completely embarrass myself.

This afternoon is another party, this one a potluck in Lynnwood, which should be very cool. My story for this week, "A Word Shaped Like Bones" is done as much as it's going to get before the critique, and I'm busy revising "The Isthmus Variations. Tomorrow is critiques.

rcloenen_ruiz is in the classroom playing the piano (she is awesome!), and there are three of us hanging and working with The Iron Giant on. I went to the farmer's market this morning, it's warm but there's a cool breeze blowing, and this is about as good as it gets right now, I think.

I am sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, and I miss my sweeties. This is okay. This is part of it all.

Bring it on, Weeks Five and Six.

Nalo Hopkinson's week! My story this week "The Isthmus Variation" was recieved far more positively than i'd expected, and i am just really blown away by the quality of what my fellow students have been turning in. I really enjoyed my conference yesterday with Nalo; how awesome is it that this community is one in which you can be out in so many different ways. One of the things that's really been brought home to me that that, you know, i actually know what i'm doing here. I think part of what I was missing was a sense of confidence about my writing, and this is really something that the workshop is helping give me.

I'm really enjoying the work we're doing and the sense of camraderie we've developed. We're all very busy, but we're also all very happy to be here, i think. There are in-jokes and catchphrases, sometimes we hang out and work together and sometimes we hide in our rooms and throw ourselves at the keyboards. I am glad I got to go home last weekend, though; I'm sort of homesick in little ways.

I am holding up very well, all things considered. Sleeping is still a bit of a struggle, but i'm doing all right. Two and a half weeks left--seriously, where has the time gone? Didn't I arrive here just yesterday, a frazzled bundle of nerves?

i wrote a story to be turned in on Sunday that has a spaceship in it. I am proud of myself. :)

I poke my head above the transom, wobbling on a mound of work I have not done, and greet LJ, which I have generally not beiing paying attention to.

This week's instructor was Elizabeth Bear, aka

matociquala, and she was an absolutely amazing teacher. We had no idea that this was her first Claron West teaching run until she mentioned it mid-week. By the end of the week, I just wanted to put Bear in my pocket and take her home with me; alas, we all have lives waiting for us at home, and she has a dog and a cat who missed her. I seriously cannot say enough good things about her teaching style (I'm largely a kinesthenic learner, so I got a lot of the things she was saying right off) and about her drawings of different plot shapes. My story for last week, "Sybilla" was a story in the shape of a Greek tragedy, and it was nifty to have a picture in my head of how it's different than plot shape that's currently popular. We wrote an awesome movie synopsis together about a post-apocolyptic landscape and the dogcatchers that roam it, did some exercises on plot ideas, and at the end Bear gave us all our very own copy-marking pencils.

So much fun!

Yesterday, several of us went to Snoqualamie Falls and hiked to the bottom, then climbed down to the pool itself and rockhopped around for a while. I was a very good time, and I realized I've been missing recharging on nature. Must remember to start doing that. Today, should I get critiques done in time and my story turned in, I am going to go south to spend a few hours with my family at their Harry Potter marathon. So, you know, should get working. This week's story is ttled "The Isthmus Variation" and I sort of hate it, i was trying to do some stunt writing and I completely fell on my face. That's okay, this is where we do that. The story for next week that I will be writing this week is hard SF about a spaceship. Hard SF and me don't usually get along, but i'd like to do something fun with the genre.

Over and out. Time to write up my third out of four crits for tomorrow.

Still here. Still critiquing and writing like mad. Still drinking lots and lots of coffee.

(A little voice pipes up, "Not dead yet!")

Right now, I'm sitting in the dining room, where there are three of us absorbed in coffee and/or finishing critiques. I'm sleeping well, which is awesome. Karen Fowler is delightful, and yesterday Ted Chiang came and talked to us in the afternoon.

More later, I think, but I will be at the familth 4th of July celebration to see everyone, and I'm mostly following LJ and Twitter though not posting much.

Week One of Clarion West: exhausting, but wonderful. I'm starting to get to know my fellow students, John Kessel is an excellent teacher, and though I am now in the "I hate this" phase of not one but two stories (argh!) we're starting to do our first real crits tomorrow. I am even starting to be able to sleep. I've gotten to see

catrambo a couple of times, which has been really nice. We've been doing writing exercises in the meantime, and discussing stuff with Dr. Kessel at luches and dinners.

What a day is like here for the next few weeks:

I wake up about 7ish and drag myself into the shower, and about 8 I check to make sure i'm fully dressed and go downstairs and have breakfast. Usually there are five or six other people who have beat me downstairs, and we hang out and I join in the conversation after i've had enough coffee that I can be an intelligent participant. About 9 we adjourn to the classroom on the first floor of the house for lecture and discussion and starting tomorrow, critique. We'll critique three or four stories in class per day. At noon we adjourn for lunch and pick up copies of the next day's stories.

Afternoons, so far, have been spent writing and critiquing--I went outside to read and write notes on tomorrow's stories. Dinner's at 5, and in the evening I usually turn up downstairs to see if anyone's doing anything for a bit--tonight we went to see The Sleep Dealer, for instance, and there have been spontaneous runs for drinks and candy as well. And the talking, oh, the talking is nonstop. We are all bursting with ideas and it's really wonderful.

Late night, I settle in for writing and try to get to bed by 11ish. Then I wake up, and do it all again. ( My first Clarion West story is due Sunday night, and I have zero idea what I'm turning in right now. ARGH.)

I've had a few moments of "awkward dork", but I am totally used to being an awkward dork at this point.

A few comments that have been made have made me aware of how extremely lucky I am in my family. These folks, in a lot of ways, are much like my chosen family--geeky in various ways, smart, witty, with tremendous personalities. It's been striking to me how isolated i *don't* feel in my everyday life. I've been very fortunate to have the family i do, and I love each and every one of you, though I don't tell you that very often.

I miss my sweeties, and my dogs and cats, and my family, and my shower. (Okay, i miss my shower a *lot*.)

Must run and figure out if putting a narrative frame around a story i'm working on is going to break it. (Razzlefrazzle experiments in voice when we're supposed to be working on plot GRAH.)