I'm still down with flu, and had to miss work today. I did find out that because I made so little last year financially, I won't be paying any taxes in Singapore, and don't even need to file. (I'm not paying anything to the US either, but they still wanted a tax return.) I also put the finishing touches on the preface for A Field Guide to Surreal Botany, as well as some fun little meta things in the copyright page. I alternated this productivity with deep sleeping; I still feel awful, but I may be well enough to go back to school tomorrow. I'll just have to see.

Closing tabs, so you get some links:

The Big Blog of Marvel, a new group blog for discussions of magical realism, run by Tamara Kaye Sellman. I've just joined as a new member, and my first entry, on Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, has just been posted.

Donate to Clarion. jimsinsd at clarionites writes that "there's a lot of need for scholarship support out there" for this year's workshop. At Clarion 2002, every one of us received some kind of financial assistance through scholarships and donations, and for me, it was incredibly helpful; going to Clarion ain't cheap, and the scholarship didn't cover all my expenses, but it took care of a fair bit, and knowing this meant that I could focus on writing and critiquing, rather than how much it was costing me. So if you'd like to help the next batch of Clarionites in the same way, please consider throwing a few bucks their way.

"Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear" by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele for Vanity Fair (via silk_noir). A lot of this info I knew already (thanks to The Future of Food, barthanderson's blog, and several books on the subject), but it's a really good introduction to the whole agribusiness issue for beginners.

"Could lead to goose-stepping" by Avram Grumer for Making Light. We've only got one side of the story here, so I'm not going to comment, except to say that if it did happen this way, it points to increasing aggression on the side of law enforcement.

"8-year-old girl asks for divorce in court" by Hamed Thabet for the Yemen Times (via haddayr). What a brave little girl. It's truly despicable what her father forced her to do, and what her "husband" forced on her as well, and it took tremendous strength and character to go to the courts and ask for justice. Good for her.

And some from Boing Boing:

For Love of Water: infuriating and incredible documentary about world's water-crisis

Edith Piaf, superspy

New South Park site debuts, with full episode streaming

Shepard Fairey's covers for Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984

In case you didn't know, Clarion Diego is now taking applications for the 2008 workshop. Instructors this year: Kelly Link, James Patrick Kelly, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Neil Gaiman (!), Nalo Hopkinson, and Geoff Ryman. A truly stellar lineup, and you're probably not likely to get this combination of authors again, so if you've been on the fence, send in that application today. Deadline is 1 March.

The Clarion Foundation is also trying to raise the $500,000 endowment needed to ensure Clarion's future viability as a UCSD program. So if you want to make sure Clarion is around for years to come, please donate today.

The new website for Clarion at San Diego is now online. Next year's faculty is up there: Greg Frost, Jeff VanderMeer, Karen Joy Fowler, Cory Doctorow, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. Another strong group of instructors; next year's attendees are in for a treat.

The site looks a lot like last year's Michigan website in format, and is incredibly easy to navigate (although having two sets of links, one along the left vertical for the workshop itself, and the other along the top horizontal for the Clarion Foundation, is a little confusing). I'm still not jazzed by the workshop being on the west coast, but it looks to be the best option for keeping Clarion alive and teaching new generations of skiffy writers, which is more important.

N.B. Although I dig the content and format of the new site, I think they made a horrible mistake in listing my name under Distinguished Alumni. Alumnus, yes. Distinguished, no.

The Clarion Foundation has produced a FAQ about Clarion's Move to UCSD, including answers to some of the questions I asked here. I'm still not happy about the move, but it does appear to have been the best option; still, it would have been cool to have at Lenoir Rhyne.

Won't this make the workshop more expensive, especially for students in the East and Midwest?

The cost to our students was our paramount concern. Initially it appeared that California housing costs would make the move unworkable. But a committee from the UC Literature Department negotiated competitive prices on our behalf. The workshop itself, including housing and food, will cost each student approximately what it would have under the proposed 2007 budgets at MSU Outreach or Lenoir Rhyne. As to travel -- airfare to San Diego appears to be reasonably comparable to airfare to Lansing. As of today, it's cheaper to get to Lansing from Boston or Raleigh, cheaper to get to San Diego from New York or Tallahassee. But in all cases the difference is modest. For those who would have driven, the cost of airfare may, of course, prove difficult. But with UC San Diego paying all expenses, the foundation can concentrate on raising money for scholarship support. We are confident that no one who could have afforded the program at MSU will find themselves priced out at San Diego.

Read the rest.

This morning, Liz Zernechel, who was director of the Clarion workshop this year, posted about Clarion moving to San Diego. Then I got an email from the Clarion Foundation announcing the same thing:

The Clarion Foundation is pleased to announce that the Clarion Workshop has a new home. It's difficult to leave MSU, having been there since 1972. However, the future looks very bright. Starting in the summer of 2007 the workshop will be held at the University of California, San Diego, with very strong administration, faculty, and financial support. Our acclaimed workshop, with its excellent teaching staff, will continue with no change in the structure of its operation. The faculty for 2007 will be Gregory Frost, Mary Ann Mohanraj, Jeff Vandermeer, Cory Doctorow, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. The workshop will run from June 25 through August 3.

And it's taken me this long to blog about it, since I've been doing heavy-duty preparation for classes tomorrow. In the intervening time, a whole mess of other people have mentioned the move in their own blogs.

I'm of two minds on the subject. Clarion always seemed to be a minor annoyance to Michigan State University, where the workshop has been hosted for more than 30 years. From what I heard, it was like pulling teeth to get any kind of funding from the university, and the workshop was in serious danger of being shut down a few times because of this. However, lzernechel mentions that "my staff and I negotiated a contract with MSU Outreach that ensured a balanced budget for as long as we stayed with any and all donations and/or extra funding achieved going straight to the coffers." So there was at least some sort of agreement about the finances of the workshop.

San Diego is a sexy city, and I'm sure it will attract some newbie writers who would have been completely bored in a small town in Michigan for six weeks. But I can't help thinking that Clarion West in Seattle already serves this function. (One of the dangers of Seattle, I've heard, is that there's so much to do that it's tempting to blow off working on your fiction there.)

So yes, they may get some folks interested in living in San Diego for six weeks, but what about the rest of the country? What about all the newbies living on the east coast, or in the midwest, or in the northeast, who frankly can't afford a plane ticket to California on top of all the other expenses associated with Clarion? To be completely honest, I never thought about applying to Clarion West; it was just too far away, and I could always pack up the car and drive to East Lansing. The tradition and history of Clarion was certainly a factor in my decision to apply there, but location was as well. And I can't help thinking about the writers whose fiction might have been improved by the writing boot camp that changed my life, who just can't afford to go now that both US Clarions are on the west coast.

And so I just can't understand this decision. It doesn't seem to be a question of finances, so what is it? nihilistic_kid thinks it may be because of the possible connection to the embryonic UCSD MFA program, "which scuttlebutt has as being based around hypertext, speculative fiction, and experimentation (plus a dash of the ethnic stuff)." Certainly seems plausible if it's the case. However, it's very unfortunate for those who will no longer be able to attend.

Update, 9/12 8 a.m.: Walter Jon Williams, who is on the board of the Clarion Foundation, has responded to the discussion:

This is jumping the gun a bit on the official press release, but as a member of the Clarion Board I would like to address some of the issues that have been raised here. So what I say here is not in any way official, but rather comments from an individual who has been a part of the ongoing discussion among the board members.

Ever since Clarion was kicked out of MSU in the last year, we have been trying to find Clarion a new home. Liz moved heaven and earth to procure a proposal from Outreach that would have allowed us to stay in Michigan. It was, quite frankly, a very good offer. There was nothing wrong with it, though by far the best part of the proposal was that a director with Liz's energy and determination came attached.

UCSD, however, came up with an offer that guaranteed five years free of financial worries, and allowed the Clarion Foundation to concentrate on raising money for scholarships. The Foundation is guaranteed full creative control. Tuition would be competetive. Public transport to and from campus is excellent. Students would be staying in air-conditioned suites, and the opportunities for interaction with San Diego's scientific community unparalleled. The Clarion Archives would have a free home in a library dedicated to their preservation.

As for the issue of accessibility to people living in the East, San Diego has inexpensive, direct flights from most parts of the country--- which is not true, by the way, for East Lansing. Once at UCSD, students will have access to shopping and other activities via public transport, and access to the university's recreational facilities, including the beach which is right there on campus. If you were planning on driving from Maine, the extra days would be a burden, but for most students this shouldn't be a problem.

I would like to end on a personal note. The Clarion Board is not some shadowy "Them" who make decisions based on arcane, incomprehensible formulae. We are your friends, teachers, and colleagues, and we based our decision on what we felt were the best interests of the workshop. We have been discussing all these issues for months. It was very difficult to leave Michigan after all these years, and after all the hard work that Liz and Mary and others put into the 2006 workshop, but if we hadn't taken all offers seriously and chosen the one that seemed the best, we wouldn't have been doing our duty to Clarion, its students, and alumni.

---Walter Jon Williams

Alex Wilson has posted his first Clarion My Wayward Son podcast at The Spoken Alexandria Project. He talks about his preparation, gives an introduction and overview of the program, reads mabfan's article "The Clarion Call," and includes some memories of Clarion from yours truly. He also plays an awesome theme song, called "Untitled Pretention Pontificated by a Passive Voice."

He leaves for Clarion tomorrow. Good luck, Alex, and all of this year's participants!

Alex Wilson reminds us that Clarion 2006 officially starts next Monday (the day Janet and I are leaving for Singapore). Go 2006ers! He's also posted an updated list of both attendees and instructors. It looks like a good number of this year's Clarionites have blogs, and I'm looking forward to reading about their experiences and bathing in a soup of my own nostalgia.

Once again, if anyone's interested, you can read about me own Clarion misadventures (warts and all) starting here.

As reported in the comments of yesterday's journal entry, Clarion will no longer be supported financially by Michigan State University, and they are looking at alternate funding methods, including moving the workshop or taking it independent. Here's the straight scoop from Coordinator Mary Sheridan:

Pardon the mass email, but [Director] Dr. Lister Matheson has received word from the Interim President and Provost that Michigan State University will be unable to support the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop. He has asked that this message be passed on to our friends. Suggestions and comments can be sent to Interim President and Provost, Dr. Lou Anna K. Simon, and the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, Dr. Wendy K. Wilkins. Please copy any messages to clarion@msu.edu.

You may also be interested in the story run by the MSU News Bulletin for Faculty and Staff of MSU on June 26.

I for one am extremely pissed off about this. It boggles my mind that MSU would fail to see that 36 years of workshops have turned out some of the finest writers in our field, who have in turn lauded the workshop to others, causing a constant interest from new writers every single year.

So I say let's flood the Provost's and Dean's offices with emails. Right now, I'm betting they're only looking at the short term money side of things. We need to show them how beneficial Clarion is to MSU, that each year hundreds of people from all over the world fight for the chance to be one of the lucky twenty participants to spend six weeks in East Lansing. We need to emphasize Clarion's prestige, and its importance within the specfic writing community. We need to make them see how bad a decision this would be.

Comrades unite!

Discuss

Right about now, exactly one year ago (though June 30 was a Sunday last year), I was skipping down the hallway of the fifth floor of Owen Hall at MSU, back to my room after kissing Janet for the first time. I think I even clicked my heels together. Inside my room, I jumped and bounced around, unable to keep still. I might have only gotten an hour of sleep that night because I was so excited.

It's weird to think that the relationship almost didn't happen.

It was the third week at Clarion, and I had made a comment about a fortune cookie I had gotten at this great Chinese/Vietnamese place that the group often frequented. A bunch of us were there that night, but I had maneuvered myself to sit next to Janet. The fortune I got was "Stop looking forever; true happiness is right next to you," and I about fell out of my chair. Janet definitely noticed the fortune as well. Brendan Day was on my left, so of course jokes were made that he was the source of my true happiness, but I knew better. I've gotten some eerie fortunes over the years, and I've learned to take them seriously.

A week went by. There was a blow-up during one of the critique sessions that was resolved thankfully by Leslie What, followed by a group hug. I made sure to hug Janet if no one else. Also during that week, while I was down at the Barnes & Noble on the main drag, I noticed two copies of Galveston by Sean Stewart. Janet had been telling me how interested she was in the book, but that she hadn't gotten it yet. I bought a copy for me, and one for her, then gave it to her one night after a Mafia session. Things were building, but I didn't want to move too fast and scare her off, like I had done with relationships in the past.

On Sunday, June 30, I was in my room critiquing stories for the next morning, when she knocked on my door. She asked about the comment I had made about the fortune I'd received, and nervously asked if it was about her. I was amazed by how brave she was, taking such a big risk like that. And of course I panicked. I said no, the comment wasn't about her. She exhaled and looked a little disappointed, though I could tell she was trying not to show it. She left the room.

For ten minutes I sat in my chair, shivering and breathing hard. I thought about Andy Duncan's Clarion advice, about taking chances. I thought about Janet's non-verbal cues while she had been talking, that it seemed she was wanting me to say, yes, I was talking about you with my fortune cookie comment. I tossed the manuscripts to the floor, and walked down the hall to her room quickly, before I lost my nerve. My heart pounded and my knees quivered. I reached her door, took a deep breath, and knocked.

She opened it, and I asked if she was disappointed at what I'd just told her, and she admitted that she was. I told her I'd been a coward, that of course I was talking about her, that she'd been so brave to go over there. She said I was brave to come back to her room. We admitted how attracted we were to each other. I kissed her, and her lips were the sweetest things I'd ever tasted.

I so wish we could be together today, so I could take her to a fancy restaurant, shower her with flowers, and make love until sunrise. I miss her all the time, but today has been especially hard. But I endure, because I know we'll soon be together again, and this time it'll be for the rest of our lives.

Discuss

Got an email from Tim Mullins last week saying how much to send him for postage. So I went to the bank Thursday, got a money order, and put it in the mail that day. When he receives it, he'll send the package containing 14 copies of The Dream Engine with my story "Shiny Diner Blues" in it (two contributor copies, and twelve for friends, family, and coworkers). I doubt I'll get it before I have to leave for ICFA Wednesday morning, which would have been a nice thing to bring to the conference, but I will be getting them soon. Yay!

Have four pieces of fiction to be sent out on Monday. I spent this morning doing organizational stuff with my filing, alphabetizing the stories in my filing cabinet, and doing the same with the log I use to keep track of where my stuff is and has been. Seems very boring, but it helps keep things more tidy.

Just found out that Terri Windling will also be at ICFA, so I'm bringing along The Wood Wife on the off chance that I'll be able to corner her and get her to sign it. I'm glad she's going to be concentrating more on her writing, as relayed in Greg's journal, though her absence from the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies will be sorely missed. But her replacements in the form of Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant will ensure that many wonderful fantasy stories still be picked for the antho.

For those of you interested in going to Clarion, the deadline, April 1, quickly approacheth. Andy Duncan sent me a really great letter after I announced I'd gotten in, which I tacked to the corkboard over my desk at the workshop. For those of you lucky enough to get accepted, they are sage words indeed. I'm posting it with Andy's permission:

Jason, congratulations on taking the Clarion plunge. Be gregarious and make friends with everybody. Eight years later, about half of us from Clarion West '94 are still in weekly e-mail contact with one another. It's a great bonding experience.

More unasked-for advice: Whenever someone invites you to do something extracurricular, do it. You can sleep when you get home. Assume that for six weeks, at least, you can do anything.

Flirt and see what happens. This works. {It sure does; tis how I met my Janet -JEL}

Make friends with the staff quickly, and offer to help them whenever you can. This pays off.

Don't be one of those people who delights in trashing other people's stories. This is a powerful temptation at Clarion, as the sessions drag on, more so than in the typical writing classroom. Resist it. Be the person, instead, who finds something to praise in every story, no matter how benighted, and help the author write the story he wants to write, rather than the story you would have hewn from the same material.

Are you taking story ideas, story notes and reference material with you? You should. Take more than you need. You'll need it.

Whenever anyone declares unequivocally in the workshop circle that a particular thing can't be written or shouldn't be written, try to write that thing and prove them wrong. (I wrote "Beluthahatchie" that way.)

If you haven't read something by every teacher you'll have this summer, rectify that before you leave.

Take copious notes in every session.

Amass a reading list from all the examples and allusions flying back and forth. Go to the used bookstores and buy some of the recommended things and read them while the workshop is going on. Try to find out whether there's any single book in the history of sf or fantasy that you and all your classmates have read going in -- that discussion was one of the most interesting, and enlightening, that we had in Seattle.

By all means play Mafia if it's being played, but beware of it, too, as it is the addictive time-suck from hell.

And most of all, revel in your six weeks as a Pure Artist. Even if you wind up winning Hugos, Nebulas, Oscars, Tonys and MacArthur grants, selling more books than Tom Clancy, and landing a tenured position at Harvard, you will more than likely Never Again have a six-week span of Pure Artistry, free of day jobs, mowing the lawn, sitting in traffic on Hwy 54, etc.

Make the most of it!

Good luck.

Have fun.

Don't forget to flirt.

Discuss

I just wrote some incredibly elegant words for this final journal entry, then somehow accidentally refreshed the page and lost the entire thing. So, I will attempt to reproduce it, but I apologize if it is not as mellifluous as originally intended. I'm telling you, it would have brought you to tears.

This weekend was a lot of fun. Since it was the 35th Anniversary Reunion, lots of Clarion alumni from all different years showed up to party with the new kids (some of the bigger names that came were Geoffrey A. Landis and Mary Turzillo). There were catered cookouts, frisbee-tossing, and many rounds of Exquisite Cadaver (a poetry round-robin game, where you write the title of the poem on sheet of paper, pass the paper to your right/left for the next person to write the first line then pass it to the next person who will write the second line, etc. This continues around the circle until you get your original poem back, which sometimes bares no resemblance to the title, and often includes a profundity of sexual innuendo).

Yesterday, Janet and I biked down to the library to look at the Clarion manuscripts in the Special Collections section, but the section was closed for the weekend. So we walked next door to the Beal Gardens, a six-acre exhibit area with plants like Honesty and Stinging Nettles and Coriander, and wandered around looking at the plants and watching a possessive pond frog puff itself up and croak at the fish which approached it.

But people started leaving yesterday, and continued leaving today, and will finish leaving tomorrow. It's been really sad to see people I've gotten to know really well over the last month and a half get in cars and drive away and not come back. Email will still connect us, but it just won't be the same.

Thank you all for riding shotgun on my journey through the writing process. It wasn't nearly as lonely knowing that friends were along for the ride. If you happen to be at a convention I'll be attending in the future (I'll be at Trinoc-con in Durham, NC at the beginning of October, and, if I can swing the finances, at World Fantasy Con in Minneapolis at the end of October), please come up and introduce yourself if I don't know you already.

Cheers, everyone. It's been interesting.

Today was the final critique day, and I was so exhausted this morning that I wanted to cry. I can't believe it's all over, but I'll need to sleep for a week straight now. I'm physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, and I'm so ready to go home. I'll be leaving Monday morning, and Janet will be coming with me, staying at my place in North Carolina for about a week or so.

The lovely program assistants made up a great spreadsheet of all the stories that came through the workshop, with number of pages, number of words, and date turned in. And I was happy to see that in six weeks I had written 15,300 words over 5 stories (the last of which, "Snake Charm", was bumped from today's critique since there were six stories to be done, and only time to critique four). The grand total for the whole class was 606,070 words over 162 stories.

This weekend is the wind-down, which corresponds with the 35th Anniversary Reunion. There's a barbeque tonight outside Van Hoosen for this year's Clarionites, and another tomorrow night for everyone. Tomorrow night in Ann Arbor, China Mieville is appearing at a bookstore, presumably for a reading or signing, and I may try to go. I plan on sleeping as much as possible this weekend so that I'm not a wreck when I drive back with Janet on Monday.

Today felt kind of strange. I got all the stories critiqued, and wrote a thousand words for "King of the Traffic Lights," but it felt like I hadn't actually done anything. Maybe it's because I didn't go out at all, to Grand River or the mall or anything. It felt like a lazy kind of Sunday. I took a nap for a bit, and got down to the caf every once in a while to eat. I determined that, depite my best attempts, "King of the Traffic Lights" just won't be written here in time to be critiqued. So instead I'm going to work on a really rough version of "Snake Charm," which I brought with me as a story idea. The basic idea is there, but I need to tweak it a bit before putting it in the box tomorrow.

We got the pictures back from the photographer who did our photos for Locus at The Archives a couple of weeks ago. And I came to the realization that I was standing on the wrong side of the room in the group photo. It looks like I have helmet hair. Guh. So when you buy your copy of Locus in a few months, please don't laugh too much. On the other hand, the photo where I'm accepting my certificate and shaking hands with Geoff Ryman turned out pretty well. I'll probably get a copy of each.

Janet reminded me today that we only have two days of Clarion critiquing left. Period. I can't believe it's almost over.

Today was a pretty good day. We had only three stories to critique, but somehow we actually went late. A box was waiting for us this morning from Small Beer Press: Gavin J. Grant, editor of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet sent us a bunch of complimentary copies of the latest issue, as well as sample copies of a bunch of small press zines. I've sent a few stories to Gavin over the last year, and was almost always sent a personal reply, including why he wasn't particularly interested in the story. This is invaluable advice for a writer. Gavin and his wife, the funny and continually grinning Kelly Link, both attended Clarion, and Kelly taught here last year. I emailed Gavin to thank him for the copies, since it was an extremely nice thing for him to do.

After lunch, Janet and I walked out to Lot 91 to get my car, then we drove up to the Meridian Mall. I walked into the Suncoast Video and nearly jumped up and down when I saw the DVD for Amelie (originally titled Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain), which just came out today. Janet had to restrain me from dancing around the store and squealing like a schoolgirl. This film is at the very top of my favorites list, and everyone reading this should at least rent a copy. It's phenomenally written, acted, directed, and cinemaphotographed. It's a beautiful movie, and I can't stop singing its praises. Of course, I ripped into it when we got back and watched it on my laptop. See this movie. You'll thank me.

Manuscripts are calling me now. Must go.

Today began the home stretch here at Clarion: the sixth and final week. Like I said before, I absolutely love this creatively-charged environment and the proximity to so many like minds, but I'm so tired I can barely think straight anymore. I'm finding it more difficult to make comments on stories, not because the stories are perfect, but because that critiquing part of my brain is squoze just about dry. I'm glad that I'm taking a week off after I get back to just rest and not do much.

I had my meeting with Tim and Karen yesterday, and they went over all seven of my stories, the four I've written here and the three submission stories. They gave me some good advice and a few ego boosts. Apparently, I do settings and realism very well. (The first part of "The Valley of the All-Father" is pure realism, and everyone seemed to like that part.) They said they'd like to see me heading toward the style in "One", which was much more surrealistic and weird. I need to pump up the weird so that it feels right when it's side by side with the real. And they both liked "Shiny Diner Blues" quite a bit, which surprised me, since it's not really one of my favorites. They recommended I read The Last Coin by James Blaylock, not because it would help my writing, but because they thought I would really enjoy it.

I just woke from a nice two-hour nap and must try to shake the cobwebs from my brain. I started a new story yesterday, called "King of the Traffic Lights", and will attempt to squeak it in this week.

People are starting to get sick here, with colds and such. I'm starting to sniff and sneeze more than usual, and am slightly unnerved at this.

Dammit. I missed another entry yesterday. Sorry, folks. But hey, I figure missing two entries in thirty-eight days ain't too shabby. As busy as I am here, I'm actually surprised I haven't missed more.

Yesterday was pretty fun. Janet and I walked down to the Krege Art Museum, which was pretty cool. There were a whole slew of Pueblo (Zuni and Hopi) statuettes there which symbolized the different archetypes in their religions, and it really made me want to do more research on them. The Marilyn Monroe piece that Andy Warhol did was in there. An original Salvador Dali painting was in there. But probably the coolest thing was a "sound piece": twenty or thirty vertical copper rods planted into a block, and which, when gathered together then released, gave off a sound like dozens of church bells ringing.

Last night was the final Clarionites reading, but I had to leave early near the end to drive down to Ann Arbor to meet my friend Coryanna. I was a half hour late (she almost left), but we went downtown and sat at an outdoor bar/restaurant and had a drink and caught up. Then at around 11:00 I headed back to East Lansing, and evidently missed an exit. But I looked at the map and found another way back, which was only slightly longer. When I got back, people were playing Thing in the lounge, then we just sat around and talked for a while.

After sleeping in this morning, I got up and got Janet and we drove over to return a couple of DVDs to Blockbuster (one of which we didn't get a chance to watch), then we grabbed some lunch and headed over to the library to look for the old Clarion manuscripts. After a half-hour of asking people and searching through computer systems, we came up nil. Nobody seemed to know where they were. So I'll have to ask Lister tomorrow exactly where they are.

My meeting with Tim and Karen is at 3:00 today, and I have laundry to do, so I'm going to scoot now.

Today we critiqued my fourth story, "In the Valley of the All-Father," in which I placed archetypes of the Norse Gods as residents in an apartment building, called Valhalla Apartments. Almost everyone enjoyed the first three-quarters of the story, then hated the last quarter, where, admittedly, it fell apart. Tim Powers gave me a huge ego boost by telling me that the first part was something that David Lynch would eat up. So what I'll probably do is ditch the whole Nordic thing and concentrate on the stuff that people liked. I was spending too much time trying to match the gods' behavior to the characters, and it just fell flat. But I still see this as my strongest work to date, and I'll definitely be revising it.

Afterward, Janet gave me a big hug, which really helped.

The rest of the day was pretty relaxing. Janet and I walked down Grand River, stopping occasionally in thrift stores and new age stores and book stores. We had dinner at the Five Star Deli, which was fantastic. I had one of the best gyros of my life there; the tzadziki sauce was particularly delicious. Then we walked back through campus and stopped at the waterfall in the Red Cedar River, where dozens of ducks were flapping and quacking and having a good time. We fed them with some of the leftover bread from Janet's dinner, and it took about eight seconds for the entire group of them to converge on our position. After we ran out, and the ducks wandered away, we gathered up a bunch of feathers from the ground. Then we walked back.

There's going to be a Cowboy Bebop marathon tonight in the lounge, the first disc of which will be provided by me. It's a really cool anime series, and you should watch it if you get the chance.

Tomorrow, Janet and I are going to check out the Krege Art Museum here on campus, and then go to the school's library, where all the manuscripts from Clarion alumni are stored. I'm interested to see how awful the stories are, since most folks who graduate from here go on to get published. It'll be funny to read the early attempts by James Patrick Kelly and John Shirley and Nalo Hopkinson.

Well, I finally did it. I finished "In the Valley of the All-Father" last night at around midnight, bringing the final total to 5000 words. I'm very happy with the way it turned out, since it went pretty much where I wanted it to go, and did pretty much everything I wanted it to do. It gets critiqued tomorrow.

I got another postcard from both my mother in North Carolina and my sister in Maine yesterday, and it brought a big smile to my face.

Tonight was the "reading" by Tim and Karen at The Archives (and yes, I took my allergy medicine, thank you for asking). Since Tim abhors readings, and Karen didn't want to be rude and do one just to do so, they both talked about plot, and how they come up with stories. Karen told a few stories I'd heard before, and one I hadn't, while Tim talked about his writing process and how we should stay humble even if we do get book deals and start winning awards, since karma can come back and humiliate you at any point.

I'm just so happy I have my story done. My goal at Clarion was to write six stories (one a week), but I was realistically expecting to do four, which I have now accomplished. Anything more is gravy.

And today, we passed the two-thousand-hit mark in this journal, which pleased me to no end. Again, my thanks for sticking around.

Another exhausting day today. I was up until 3:45 last night trying to finish up the Valhalla story, and only writing about 900 words, bringing the current total up to 3300. But I'm still at least a thousand words from the ending, and it's frustrating. I'm thinking a lot harder about character motivations and logical sequences and I'm doing this while I'm writing, which makes me slow way down. I got a nice two-hour nap after the session today, which helped quite a bit with keeping my sanity.

The plan tonight is to finish the story no matter what and dump it in the box tomorrow morning. And yes, I realize that this was my plan for the last two days as well, but dammit, I will finish it tonight. Up until now, I've been critiquing the other stories first, then writing afterward as a sort of reward for getting the critiques done. I got two done today while sitting with Janet on the bank of the Red Cedar River that runs through campus (it was a surprisingly nice day today), but I'm going to save the other two until after I finish. I just want to be done.

We now only have a week and a half left here, and as much as I love this experience and all the people I've gotten to meet, part of me is glad it will be over soon. I'm physically and mentally exhausted. My saving grace has been the lovely lady I've been spending a lot of time with; if not for her, this week would have been much worse, and I'm sure I would have been found in the corner of the Van Hoosen meeting room, curled up in the fetal position and crying uncontrollably. She gave me an unusual heart-shaped plum yesterday, and it just made the rest of my day.

Right. Onto writing. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. The end of the story is near. Wish me luck.

Today started off with a talk by Karen and Tim about setting and scenery. Since we only had three stories to critique, the talk went on for about an hour, which was good. Karen brought up the good point that it's almost impossible to skim through the story on a first draft, then go back and put in setting details later. The mind just doesn't work the same on the second go-around. I'm glad they talked about this, since there are some who need a little help in this area. (I'm not including myself, since setting is one of my strong points. In fact, when Geoff Ryman read my "Shiny Diner Blues," he really loved the setting and the atmosphere of the diner, even if there wasn't much of a story there.)

I stayed up until 3:30 AM last night/this morning to try and finish my Valhalla story, and I ended up only writing about 600 words before I collapsed from exhaustion. But I got a bunch written today, bringing the total up to 2400 words so far, and I hope to finish it tonight to toss in the box tomorrow.

Patrick gave another talk tonight, on anthologies and shared-world anthologies. Since the first week, the majority of us have been talking about trying to do a shared-world anthology, where we create the world and all its rules, and each story is confined to that. But after listening to Patrick tonight, that may be falling apart. The demand for shared-world stuff seems to have died out for the most part, with some very rare exceptions.

I rescheduled my meeting with Patrick for 8:20 tomorrow morning, and cranked the volume on my alarm clock to make sure I don't sleep through this one as well.