Things I've learned about my Clarion classmates thus far: Many of them write far better than I do. This is not modesty. This is reality. Publication credits mean nothing when compared to the cold reality of skill and technique staring out from a page. Talent is not scarce. Neither is there a shortage of potential writers with talent willing to write daily and consistently and churn out wordage that can make you cry with its utter beauty. What is scarce is pure, dumb luck. I've had a bit of that and now I'm reading stuff that makes me feel very inferior and insignificant. These people can sculpture an entire universe so vividly that you can reach out and touch it. Amazing!

I quite honestly don't know what to say about some of these submissions because I can easily see them published as is.

What am I doing here with this group? I'm Billy Keller being introduced to about eighteen Michael Jordans. I'm way... way... out of my league here.