Notes from Clarion 1

All is well here at Clarion West. Our first week has been a success. Everyone has written an original story while here, some wrote more than one. Everyone has shown up to all the classes and done all the critiques (three or four short stories an evening), which of course, isn't all that hard before the longevity kicks in. But still we feel as if we've achieved something. The critiques have been rigorous, honest, and at times, biting, but we are moving forward as a group. Haven't split off into permanent factions. Though some are closer friends than others, we all go visiting to each other's rooms, eat, laugh and joke together. There's much more community than I expected to encounter. We're actually enjoying being together.

As we're critiquing, I've been noticing some patterns developing that you could say are patterns in critiquing or problematic writing patterns... chicken or egg? And I'm concerned that we're pushing to have a similar structure throughout all the stories. Which isn't problematic, but is. So the next level that we're going to be learning about, I assume, is the integration of critiques into your rewrites. Octavia told us this story about her first novel and the pages of rewrites requested before they would consider buying it. It sent her into a tailspin b/c were she to comply with all the suggestions she would have to, more or less, rewrite the novel, which she had no intention of doing. But she wanted to sell her first novel. In the end, she did all the changes that seemed reasonable and left all the rest alone. Sent the manuscript back to the publisher without comment, and they bought it.

It's dangerous in a way, I guess it's a fine line all writers have to tread. This critiquing vehicle is never ending, b/c there'll *never* be a shortage of opinions, but it's almost as if we're critiquing towards publication. And, well, of course you want to publish your work, but publication doesn't mean your piece achieved what it set out to achieve, and lack of publication doesn't mean it didn't. So it's difficult to have the bottom line on a piece be, well it was a very interesting concept, but I don't know where you'd sell it. And I guess I speak as an outsider, b/c I'm not a part of nor have I been publishing in speculative fiction markets. There are these magazines that set the tone for the genre, and they seem to have established all sorts of ideas of what is spec fic and how it should be presented. My experience has been, you write the stuff you want to write and then find somewhere to publish it... and you never know when or where that opportunity will come about.

We've also been having an interesting undercurrent of defining what is a story and what is a vignette. And I understand now that the first story I've written here, Pod Rendezvous, is a vignette. It's the snapshot of this woman's last day before she's forced to join a mother unit (and she *really* *really* doesn't want to become a mother). Because in the end, the character takes no action, does nothing to impact the conclusion, is always acted upon, there is no character development. But what I've been struggling with is that if *I* make my characters make choices and impact their futures, I'll probably make them choose something powerful and positive. So in this case, she'd basically save herself, thereby undercutting my message that there is no place for her in this particular society, b/c she will end up *making a place for herself*. I just spoke to one of my classmates about this, and she said just b/c you make the character make a choice towards a positive resolution, doesn't mean she has to be successful. She could try and fail. And that struck me as true. So I guess I'm going to learn how to make the characters make choices and still fail.

Octavia Butler has been good: succinct, regal, clear, powerful, and encouraging. It's been so amazing to have her, a literary god, commenting on our creations, talking about our characters as if they are people she knows, giving serious consideration to the tales we presented to her. She gave us three tasks: 1. When working on a story, write one sentence that contains the character, the conflict, and the resolution and keep that sentence near you as you write your story. It will keep you from veering off into left field. Most of us found we had great character and conflict but no resolution. 2. Write down point by point, an emotionally wrenching experience we had. Take that emotion (you can use the situation too if you want, but it's not necessary to), and use it to build a story around. 3. Submit, submit, submit.

We had a participant (24 yr old) who shares a bday w/Octavia and that was this Friday. So we celebrated them both w/vegan cake, gifts and cards.

I have some critiques to deal with and a story to work on, so I'll speak to you all later.

kis.