Clarion Call

So, today, as I was trying to find something to do to take my mind off of a sick cat, I ended up applying to Clarion and Clarion West. This is the kind of thing that, if I hadn't done it kind of impulsively and mostly thinking about other things, I could have come up with a thousand reasons why it was a waste of the application fee. Clarion has been The Dream for many would-be fantasy and science fiction writers for over forty years now. There's a bit of legend about it. For those who haven't heard of it and are too lazy to click links - it's a six-week live-in workshop for writers of speculative fiction that is considered by many to be the "golden key" into the world of published authordom, though the people in charge of Clarion of course vehemently deny that!

I suspect that, rather than Clarion itself having any particularly magical quality, the caliber of writing and the level of sheer dedication you have to have to get in, give up 6 weeks of your life, and pay the stunning tuition cost pretty much means you'd have made it as a writer anyway. The connections you make during the workshop couldn't hurt though, and "Clarion graduate" certainly spices up a query letter.

I won't get in, if for no other reason than the samples I sent are not my best work (for various reasons). But I think it means something that I applied. It means I'm finally ready to stop clutching my precious stories to my chest and growling when people approach. I'm becoming more open to failure, criticism, and wasted application/postage fees.

Next deadline: Nicholl Fellowship. Yup, trying again this year with a quirky romantic comedy/fantasy. Might toss KoD at them again, too. Also still working on the novel, but due to various factors, I have changed my schedule from 5 chapters a week to 2. This will give me more time to work on my Nicholl screenplay, and also to do some badly-needed research that I am only now realizing I should have done already for the novel.

33.

What I got for my birthday this year:

1) Pizza.
2) A break from writing.
3) A new kitten.
3.4) An earthquake.

Getting it written.

Chapters 8 and 9 have come to me a little easier than 3-7 did. But that's not what I find most heartening. What buoys me the most is the realization that I am STILL DOING THIS. That I got through 4 horrible days in a row and am still stubbornly writing around 5,000 words a day (average chapter length). I'm just one day away from another weekend writing break, and I know I'm going to make it there without ruining my record. Who cares if what I'm writing is crap? For once I'm actually writing it, delivering on the promises I made to myself.

The second half, though, I've always known would be harder than the first, because it's where things get complicated and require actual, you know, skill. So, pray to 'em if you got 'em.

These are the good old days.

One day I'll be telling someone about this part of my life, giving it the romantic spin that we often do our past struggles. But right now it doesn't seem particularly romantic. I thought the words would just fly onto the page, as much preparation as I've done over the past several months on index cards. Or I thought perhaps the first day would be the hardest, and that habit would make it come easier and faster. But it seems to be the reverse. It's an hour til I'm supposed to be asleep and I have 1400 words or so left for the day. And I'm blogging instead of writing because it's going that badly.

I wish I could see this part the way I will see it someday, all misty-eyed while people around me toast my success.

"I remember that first draft," I will say. "It was so awful. I mean, it was really terrible, one of the worst things I've ever written. I don't know why I kept going, but I did. I sank my teeth into it like a bulldog and just refused to let go. I've never been that stubbornly dedicated to a project before or since. Maybe I knew somehow that it would all be worthwhile. Maybe not. But I sat down every day at that computer and cranked out five thousand words. Day in and day out. Five thousand terrible, awkward, nonsensical words that somehow eventually got polished into a novel.

"I was a woman on fire! I was driven, inspired, desperate maybe! It's hard to imagine. It's so easy for me now, I forget the visceral need that was driving me in those days. The roller coaster. I no longer feel the danger, the wild amorphous hope, the gutwrenching awareness of the possibility of failure. It's no longer a highwire act - it's just a job. I miss those days. I really do."

Putting the "rough" back in "rough draft."

I am now 25% finished with the first draft of a novel that will likely be about the length of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. However, unless something drastically changes in future drafts, that is the only thing that my novel will have in common with that or any other even vaguely successful piece of fiction.

(Edited to add: Sentences like the last one above are just one of the many reasons why.)

Fastest novel-writing ever?

Tomorrow I begin a rigorous writing schedule in which I will write a novel in 4 weeks! Well, really more like 4 months and 4 weeks if you count all the plotting, research, brainstorming, laying it out scene by scene meticulously on index cards, etc. that I've been doing since my last post.

Well, technically 20 years and 4 weeks, if you count the fact that I first came up with the underlying mythology of this particular fantasy world on a camping trip with my friend Meg when I was 13 years old.

Yyyyyyeah. Mkay.

If anyone wants to read it when I'm done, let me know. I'd classify it as a um, gritty sword-and-sorcery tale in a setting that is based on predynastic Egypt circa 3200 B.C., with a dash of the Serengeti thrown in since Egypt was a savanna back then and not a desert. Um, also, since it's kind of pre- or very early Bronze Age, there weren't really swords. So um, spear-and-sorcery.

Yeah.