Author Archives: DMZ

The weekly Clarion cycle of anxiety

Day 1: Freedom from the tyranny of stories! Woo-hoo! Sure my story sucked, but I got one in!
Day 2: Ah, that was nice. Those were insightful critiques, too. I should think about all of that stuff when I pick my next idea. What do I have in the idea hopper? A couple of things, that’s good.
Day 3: Which of those ideas looks like it might a substantive story, one that requires me to stretch and look at things I’ve learned? None of them? Uh oh. Why does my stomach hurt all the time?
Day 4: I gotta get going. That sucks. And this sucks. Well, how far did I get? -100 words? How is that even possible?
Day 5: I better pick something and pound it out, and if it sucks, well, I’ll go down with the ship.
Day 6: Shit shit shit shit shit, this is terrible. How can I sleep when this story sucks so badly?
Day 7: shitshitshitshitshitshit fuckitall, polish this, turn it in, make the deadline. I hate this story! Why did I pick this idea in the first place? I need a drink.

… and repeat.

The time demand of Clarion

For all the warnings about how hard this would be, how sleep-depriving, I didn’t really grasp it until I was talking to Gary this week, and we figured out that even if you skip breakfast, your day runs

9-1: Critiques, lectures, lunch. Often this runs to 2.

Then at some point, to do a really good job on the critiques, you need to spend three serious hours on them. If you do them right after lunch, then, it’s time for dinner, which takes an hour.

So every day, assuming that you want to get eight hours of sleep and showering/etc takes an hour a day, you have six hours a day to research and write your next story for the week. Tuesdays you lose a couple of hours to the reading, and Fridays you lose an evening to a social event. And this ignores the ever-ratcheting pressure to write something that measures up to the increasingly good efforts of everyone else.

I brought some books with me for reading material. I’ve barely read a page.

Aaaaaand now, a beer, or three

I turned in my second Clarion piece today, my second in three days. It’s — I don’t know, I went to my book thing this morning and then wrote for six hours. I’m too close to predict how it’ll go over.

If I was smart, I’d get to work on the next one, but I just can’t do it.

I met Ted Chiang last night! And he was cool. It’s so weird – Nancy Kress is one of my favorite authors ever, and I got to hang out with her for a week, and then I got to talk a little to Chiang, who likely is constantly approached by random people and Clarion students at these vents.

Hate sticker on active.com for spamming

Cascade Bicycle Club uses active.com to do their online registrations, and active charges a lot, is generally annoying, and then spams you even if you said you didn’t want to be spammed. I haaaaaaaaaaate this kind of thing, even more than random dictionary attacks or whatever, because it’s a personal betrayal:

“Hey, do you trust us to handle this transaction?”
“Sure. Here’s some money.”
“Great, do you mind if we bother you with promotional emails?”
“Please don’t.”
“Whoops! Ha ha ha, turns out we don’t care about the second question.”
“Why should we trust you with money if you can’t be trusted with my email?”
“Doesn’t matter! Too late! Suckerrrr!”

The ultimate insult is the disclaimer:

You are currently subscribed to active-offers as: ####. When you registered online with Active.com you requested a free subscription to our weekly email newsletter and promotions. If you would like to unsubscribe from future newsletter mailings send a blank email to: leave-6505228-66413975.39fbc094bfb884879077a3807305d294@news1-active.com or mail to The Active Network, 10182 Telesis Ct, Ste. 300, San Diego, CA 92121.

No, I did not. I never, ever request a free subscription to weekly email newsletters and promotions, you jerks. Way to run a business.

Unexpected development at Clarion West concerning my possible demise

While sitting in the living room working on critiques, Nancy Kress strongly implied she needed “a paperclip and a rifle” so she could shoot me tomorrow in group, and said it with a tone that indicated a certain glee of expectation. There were four witnesses besides me.

Things I’ve learned from being across from a fraternity at Clarion West

This conversation gets repeated throughout the day:

Guy: “Hey, what’s going on?”
Girl: “Nothing.”
Guy: “You going to come by the party later?”
Girl: “There’s a party?”
Guy: “Oh yeah.”
Girl: “When?”
Guy: “Should get going about eight.”
Girl: “Okay, cool.”

Here’s what actually happens: if sufficient people show up by magic, it’s a rocking party, and people are sent out to purchase additional beer. If not enough people show up, it peters out and everyone leaves. But every day they’re fishing, which means that if you’re a girl, the claim that there’s a party actually carries almost no value at all, and since the frat boys are drinking every night, there’s no cost to claiming that there’s a party later.

The rejection code

I heard this morning that one of the scifi mags I apply to has a kind of step-ladder in their rejection language:
– “doesn’t grab” = didn’t read more than a paragraph or two
– “didn’t hold” = didn’t read more than a couple paragraphs
– “didn’t work” = read the whole thing, more or less

Having received all of these, I felt kind of stabbed to hear this, because now I realize that a bunch of them, despite getting nice rejections, didn’t even get read all the way through. Probably.

Clarion West, Day One

I don’t know how much I’ll want to say as I go on, especially about people and related issues, but some random thoughts as end the drought caused in large part by my prep…

– I got to hang out a little with Nancy Kress today, and had a total fanboy moment, and she’s awesome. It’s funny, I’ve done a bunch of book events for Prospectus and now on my own, and I still go “wheeeee!” when I meet Kay Kenyon.

– We’re in an empty sorority house, I’m not supposed to disclose which one, but it’s a strange and weirdly depressing environment. But then, according to the poster, their cumulative GPA sure beats mine.

– I’d forgotten what a shithole the University District is. I lived here for years, I know its charms, but holy crap, between the pan handling, the littering, the general crappy attitude (there are twelve of us! let’s walk four by three! whee!) it makes me long to go hang out on Queen Anne, or Capitol Hill, or… downtown Bellevue, hell.

– The people here rock. So far.