I still haven't quite got the art of critiquing but I'm working on it.

One thing that worries me is the pressure cooker effect of Clarion. Although we're all trying to concentrate upon what works for us, those of us who are super-productive make those who are not a little uncomfortable and those who are receiving glowing critiques are making those of us who are not feel a little uncomfortable. Fortunately, no one has adopted the blame the victim! attitude but I still dislike it when I catch myself comparing my work to someone else's, etc. Maybe it's just me and I'm just projecting my own uncertainities onto my classmates who are filled with self-confidence and never compare themselves to others. I don't know. I just know that I'm tired and I only got about three hours of sleep last night.

The casteration story is proving far more challenging than anything I've attempted yet at Clarion. Writing a coming-of-age castration story of itself is not that difficult. Reaching out to the reader to extract the emotional responses that I want... now THAT is my real challenge. I remember Mike Resnick talking at a convention about how to tell a good story and it boils down to recognizing how you want the reader to respond and giving him what it takes to produce that response. I've not accomplished that and I want to do it.

For me, Clarion is about reaching and stretching and experimenting. My high number of stories are simply the result of that effort and arriving with several things I wanted to say.

I came back to my room after the critiques were finished and wrote a 1,000 word story about toilets that don't flush. It took all of about fifteen minutes to key it in and I wrote it strictly as a stress releaser. I can never get the Owen Hall toilet to flush properly for me. I walk in, I sit down, it's flushes. I finish and wave my hands, walk back and forth, say acrabadabra and the thing just sits there looking sadly unhygenic. I feel so awful leaving that for the next person and there's no handle on the thing. So much for technological progress!

I took off to buy gasoline and two tacos and look for a map. Tomorrow, I'm driving Jennifer to the airport because she's flying home for a weekend. After I returned from paying exhorbitent prices for gasoline, I laid down and fell asleep until I heard Jennifer knocking at my door. I was absolutely dead exhausted and thus declined going to dinner with the group and then Due's booksigning. I went on Tuesday and really, really needed to finish my critiques and make progress on the castration story.

I know I should have done the critiques first, but I felt a little muddle-headed from just waking up syndrome and I can write better than I can critique under those circumstances. I had to outline this short story and that's unusual for me. One thing I like best about short stories is that I can hold them in my mind from start to finish and I just cannot do that with a novel. It's the same case for this story because I'm building a world from the ground up. It's part Oneida tribe, part African, part South Pacific subculture studied in Psychology long ago, part bits and pieces from numerous after-the-holocaust stories read years ago. In the end, I chose the pieces needed to communicate the story I need to tell and at least 99% of the research done falls by the wayside. That's frustrating but I like to convince myself that it will translate into the author having a clearer vision of the story to communicate to the reader.

As of 1930 hours, I have read two of the stories I need to critique and I have written the castration story up to 2,400 words and see hope that I might finish by morning if I pull another all-nighter. First, however, I must finish my critiques because... well... I just have this built-in guilt meter that would go TILT if I scrimped on the critiques. When I finish those, I will print out what I have thus far on the story and start over again at the beginning to smooth out the voice, insert appropriate descriptions where needed, and make a few more notes.

I have finally realized that this is a short story that wants to be a novel or at least a novelette and when I finish, it will read unfortunately like chapter one of a YA that no publisher would ever touch because what idiot editor would attempt to buy a YA story that deals with MALE CASTRATION as a ritual part of its culture? Besides, I don't want to go there. I've built one of those worlds that can best be described as an interesting place to go but you couldn't pay me enough money to live there.

As of 2000 hours, I've read all the stories I need to critique, made a few notations, and I'm ready to start writing the cover sheets that I use for the critiques. I generally put my second reading comments on this and then, in the morning, I go through one more time and add anything I've noticed on the third read that I didn't catch the first two times. Sometimes, during sessions I'll add notes like, Agreed with X. Disagreed with Y I don't know how helpful this is... but it keeps me organized. Without those cover sheets, I'd forget to put my name on the critique.