Something I’ve been wanting to do for some time: link to my Clarion blog posts so that anyone interested in applying has one perspective on the experience. (When I was thinking of applying, I read a LOT about it.) The fact that this was almost eight years ago makes me want to cry a little. Where has the time gone? Seriously.
Some caveats: This was in 2006, so some time ago, and also this was the last year of Clarion EAST in the East, in Michigan. I imagine the weather in CA is immeasurably better.
You can find my journals here, in reverse chronological order. (I do not really use Livejournal anymore.) I actually wrote a fair amount, because I was interested in documenting the experience. Here’s a few highlights…
Day 5: Critique circle went for five hours today, and I have no idea how five hours goes so frickin’ fast. Still, note for tomorrow: bring a snack.
Day 10: As Livia put it best this morning, “if it wasn’t in a story, I don’t know about it.” This includes anything happening in current events, such as Korea and tornados and the fourth of July, of which I have heard vague mumblings. I even DREAM about writing.
Day 19: An interesting point about conferences [with instructors]: It is definitely very cool to get multiple perspectives on individual stories, but it also means that for the things in your stories that don’t work… you get to hear just how much they don’t work multiple times. Nancy was pointing out the logic flaws in the hooker story from last week and I was thinking, oh no, there are three more people who are going to tell me the exact same thing…
Day 22: HALFWAY. And I’m really not sure whether it’s been going so slow that I feel I’ve been here my whole life, or so quickly that I feel I just arrived. Probably closer to the former, though that’s a good thing.
Day 30: If Nancy Kress is my Yoda, then Joe Haldeman is like the coach in those boxing movies–you know, the wise one who’s the real reason that the hero wins.
Day 32: It is a rare day when there isn’t a joke in critique circle involving A) bears discovering things, or B) Chekhov’s mantle (e.g. You know what Chekhov says… if there’s a cybernetic hand in Act 1, it’s got to be crushing someone’s head by Act 3).
Day 36: Okay, here it is, I’m having The Clarion Moment. Right now, this very minute. I think if I had to decide right this second, I would just throw in the towel and give up writing forever. I am tapped out, that’s it, I suck, I have nothing of value to offer to the world.
Day 37: I could have finished the zombie story and turned in something else that was funny that everyone would like and dislike the exact same way as they’ve liked and disliked my other stories. But I wouldn’t have learned anything from that. At least this way they’ll have entirely new ways to dislike it.
Day The Last: I know I was irritable at the beginning of the week because of stress, heat, etc. But I really do mean it when I say that this was one of the best experiences of my entire life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’LL MISS YOU, CLARION.
And now, a retrospective. You might pop over to my bibliography and note that I’ve produced very little by the way of short fiction publications since Clarion. Unfortunately, one week after I got back to Michigan, I started law school, and spent three years having every ounce of creativity sucked away. (This is only a little bit of an exaggeration.) Since then I’ve spent some time working on novels instead, and only in the past year or so have seriously gotten back into writing short fiction.
So the question is, was Clarion good/useful/helpful to me in my writing career? Considering how little writing I did immediately after, I think that unfortunately a great deal of the helpful momentum was lost. However, one thing that I value very, very much was the experience, which stays with me, and the people that I met there. I count Steve Berman among my best friends, and every time I see my Clarion classmates enjoying writing success I get all warm and fuzzy. Like, you guys, I’m just so proud! Go check out Will Ludwigsen, Bradley Beaulieu, and Rahul Kanakia, just to name a few.
In summary: I think that Clarion gave me a solid foundation at a very early stage in my writing life, and so though I doubt at this point I would directly attribute future success to it, it was certainly a contributing factor to who I am overall as a writer.
Casey Lynn Wright 