Tag: clarion

Story at Fantasy Magazine!

My story, “Tending the Mori Birds,” is now online at Fantasy Magazine.

Excerpt:

A Mori bird waited for him on the railing, its claws wrapped around the wood. The dying light accentuated the patch of red feathers at the base of its slender neck, the only color on an otherwise black bird. A bloody-throated Mori bird, harbinger of death.

I wrote this story while attending the Clarion West Writers Workshop back in 2006, and it is the very first story I ever sold. Due to an assortment of unforseen circumstances the story is not …

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Assorted Writing-Related Tidbits

I’ve had a couple bits of good news on the writing front — back in April I sold my story “Stone Wall Truth” to Asimov’s, and this morning I got an acceptance from Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD) for my story “What Happens in Vegas.” The latter story was originally written while I was at Clarion West, which reminds me…

It’s write-a-thon season at Clarion West. There are many wonderful writers looking for sponsors, and the money goes to support Clarion West (about which I really cannot say enough good things). I don’t have time to participate as a writer …

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Same blog, new username

When I was thinking about applying to Clarion, I read several blogs about the workshop, and I found it helpful in making my decision to apply. So, when I got notification that I’d been accepted to Clarion West, I started a blog so that future potential applicants could look at it, the way I had looked at other people’s blogs. I thought I’d only blog for the workshop, and then stop blogging, so I named the blog ‘cmy_clarion.’ As it happens, blogging is a rather addictive thing, and a good way to keep in touch with people who are scattered …

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Clarion West write-a-thon

Want to help promising new writers develop their gift? Dying to make a tax-deductible charitable donation? Always wanted a signed/personalized copy of one of my stories?

Well, now you’re in luck. I will be participating in a write-a-thon this summer, to raise money for Clarion West. What does that mean, exactly? Glad you asked!

The details:

Between June 17th and July 27th, I will write the first SIX chapters of my new SF novel. That’s one chapter per week.*

Before I do all that writing, I need to collect pledges. To sweeten the deal, I’ll throw in a signed copy …

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Clarion Wrap-up

Final word count:

Week 1 (exercises on setting, character, and plot) : 2,000 words
Week 2 story: 1,900 words
Week 3 story: 2,700 words
Week 4 story: 5,000 words
Week 5 story: 3,500 words
Week 6 story: 5,700 words

Total: 20,800 words

I was far from being the most prolific writer of our group, but over 20k words in six weeks is not too shabby :)

Having been through the workshop, what advice can I give to future students?

* Bring ideas with you to the workshop, but don’t feel obligated to use them. I …

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Week 5. Ellen Datlow gave us an editor’s perspective, including: information about markets, the importance of the first read (you can only read a story for the first time once), and insights into working with an editor on revisions. Ellen was great both for her perspective on writing and for being a wonderfully fun person to hang out with. Writing-wise, this week was a particularly stressful week for me, I didn’t get the idea for what I wanted to write until mid-week (which wasn’t entirely unusual for me), AND the idea was pretty complicated so it took me a couple …

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Where did weeks 3 and 4 go? Time is accelerating at an alarming rate and I have no idea where it is going. I’m already dreading leaving, I’ll miss being with everyone so much (I hate it when I start missing people before they’re gone, it’s a bad habit of mine, but the end of the six weeks is rushing ever closer so I can’t help it).

Week 3 – Ian MacLeod was great. The poor man was both sick and jetlagged when we met him on Sunday, but he perked up as the week went on. He reinforced for …

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Well, two weekends have come and gone without a single post from me, which shows how busy they are keeping us here :)

Paul Park’s week flew by. Instead of writing a full story for him to critique, we did a setting sketch, a character sketch, and a plot outline. He would read some of the sketches to us in class and we talked about them. It was lovely to deconstruct a story into these elements and really focus in on what does and doesn’t work. The other nice thing about the exercises is it got us into the habit …

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We met Paul Park yesterday, and I’m very excited about this week. We already had homework! His writing is a very different style from mine, so I’m hoping to learn from his strengths (but I suspect that this week will be challenging for me, because Paul is wonderful with setting, and it’s one of my weakest points).

I’m going to try to update my journal on the weekends, but already I get the sense that we will be very busy, so I may not keep up on my flist, and I won’t answer my comments (though I will read them).

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