I arrived home late last night after reaching a point where I could simply no longer remain at Clarion. My car window was shattered and so were my nerves. The workshop was over except for the barbecue, so I bailed out.
Clarion began for me with the Headache From Hell wherein I spent most of the day vomitting and totally incoherent. It ended with a shattered car window as well as my hopes and the theft of my shoes, the loss of my dream.
In between, many good things happened and I can see some pockets of improvement in my writing. I didn't have the major breakthrough that I saw some other people make in their craft, but I do believe I moved forward.
This is not a great surprise. I was a social outcast in school and while I've had pockets of time where I was active members of social and volunteer organizations and had close friends, this hasn't been the case lately. I've gone back to my isolet roots and I seem to be stuck there. I am shy by nature and my hearing loss means I have trouble following conversations in groups. I grow uncomfortable and so does everyone around me. It frustrating for me and it's frustrating for everyone else. I back off and withdraw into my shell and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
I did make a few friends at Clarion... but that was in one-on-one or small number situations. I'm just not cut out for group activities. I failed in that respect... but it's a failure I can recognize and work around. The real objective was to improve my writing. I had a break-in rather than a break through, but not everyone achieves a breakout story at Clarion and sometimes it takes time for things learned to start showing up in your writing.
I did discover I could crank out decent first drafts very fast. I would rather, however, write great stories slowly.
The Clarion journey is at an end. I have moved the Clarion files to avoid accidently deleting them and will be putting up a main Clarion page that summarizes my Clarion experience and put pointers to all the dates. Additionally, I'm going to add a Next and Previous pointer on the pages.