The following table provides links to each day's journal as well as a link to information about the instructors.
Week One:   Suzy McKee Charnas |
Week Two:     Sean Stewart |
Week Three:   Tananarive Due |
Week Four:   Samuel Delany |
Week Five   Beth Meacham Gregory Frost and   Maureen McHugh |
Week Six:   Gregory Frost and   Maureen McHugh |
Day
Twenty-Nine |
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Day Twenty-One (accidently deleted) |
Saturday, July 22, 2000
I arrived home late last night after reaching a point where I could simply no longer reamain 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 will be moving 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.
|
Stories Written At Clarion |
Start/Finish |
Submitted |
Critiqued |
It's Christmas at Ground Zero |
6-12/6-13 |
3,700 |
Thumbs Up/Sold to Analog |
The Day Julianne Utterback Left Her Job At Aero-Tech |
6-12/6-/14 |
3,800 |
Thumbs Down |
My Father's Last Gift |
6-14/6-15 |
3,100 |
Thumbs Down - revised & sold |
The Willow Tree, The Pagoda, and The Bridge |
6-12/6-18 |
1,600 |
No |
Shanghai Sherri and the Navigator |
6-12/6-19 |
No |
No |
Paraterraforming Mercury |
6-18/6-18 |
1,600 |
Thumbs Down |
Fifteen Minutes |
6-20/6-21 |
4,000 |
|
Throwaway Children |
6/22-24 |
2,800 |
Mixed, later sold |
Your Daughter Grows Up |
6/24-6/24 |
700 -No |
|
Poisoning Bob |
6/25-6/25 |
1,300 - No |
Sold to Planet Relish |
Dream The Moon |
6/27-6/28 |
2,500 |
revised and sold to Strange Horizons |
Naming Day |
6/28-6/29 |
|
|
The Ungifted One |
7/1-7/1 |
1,000 |
Sold to Fables |
High Tech Toilets |
6/29-7/1 |
1,000 |
|
The Confession of Ann Foster Melton |
7/2-7/2 |
3,800 |
Mixed |
The Simplest Invention |
7/2-7/4 |
1,500 |
|
Populus Ambulatio |
6/30-7/7 |
2,000 |
revised and later sold |
Debts Owed, Payments Collected |
7/3-7/9 |
5,600 |
Mostly up |
Salamanders, Mushrooms, Black Cherry Twigs, and Feathers |
7/12-7/14 |
4,200 |
Thumbs Down |
One is False; Nothing is True |
7/20-7/20 |
2,500 |
later sold |