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Saturday 30 August 2003
I was just getting out of the car, dog in one hand, bag in the
other when the mobile rang: Robert to tell me I got in to Clarion. I
wasn’t sure I heard him right and made him repeat it, which he thought was
amusing.
Very proud of myself – restrained my reaction to "Oh
cool!"
He laughed at that as well. Am I really that funny? Or, horrible
thought, that obvious?
Oh who am I kidding. As soon as he hung up, which I wanted him to
do asap so I could emote properly, I jumped up and down on the pavement
shouting "Yee har!", which made my dog bark and everyone in sight look at
me strangely, including my husband who had miraculously appeared just then
coming back from having a haircut, and who was standing at the top of the
street looking puzzled.
Valiantly he said yay, and hugged me, but (I hope) he was crying
inside… six weeks is a long time.
Then I made him sit there in the café sipping a latte while I rang
Cat.
Me: Hi it’s Alinta.
Cat: Hi. How are you? (In nervous voice)
Me: Good. (Suddenly thinking, what if she didn’t get in?) Did you
hear from Clarion?
Cat: Yeah. You?
Me: Yeah. Did you get in?
Cat: Yeah. Did you?
Me: (With great relief) Yeah.
Both: Yee har!
We talk about whether Zara got in. We decide since she hasn’t rung
that she may not have, though we both think she should have.
I decided to call tomorrow, so that in case she didn’t she’s had a
day to get used to it.
I spent the rest of today thinking how pathetic that is, but I
didn’t call. I kept thinking, what if Cat hadn't got in, that phone call
would have been horrible for her. How thoughtless! I didn't want to do
that to Zara.
I called my family and friends. Every five minutes I do a little
jump and a weird, "I’m going to Clarion" dance. I can hardly believe my
luck. I mean, I did think I had a chance, especially after Grace told me I
had gotten a very high mark (but not quite high enough to get a first
round offer). But you never know how these things go, and then there were
all those last minute applications.
Before I found out I kept thinking, maybe I should have sent two
stories instead of one, to show range. I thought I should have waited
until the last minute and sent something better. Then I thought, oh hell,
it’s a pretty good story. I followed Howard Waldrop's advice and sent one
story I'm proud of. Seems to have worked okay.
Gotta get there
I have already booked my flights on frequent flyers, even though I
will probably have to change them and it'll cost me points... I have to. I
just have to! I don't quite know which dates to arrive or leave, so I
guessed.
Had to go business, it's either that or 6am, and that's just not an
option for me, as a reasonably extreme night owl. It's not likely I'd get
to use any points for the next bazillion years anyway, since I'm using all
my holidays forever to do this, some in advance plus leave without pay. Ah
well.
Sunday 31 August 2003
I called Zara, but she wasn’t in. Damn. Still haven’t heard from
her, so I guess she isn’t in. Unless she's tactfully not calling as well?
Damn. I really want her to – she’s so cool! - and I think she deserves to
get in as much as Cat and I do, even though she has only just had her
first story accepted, her writing is good. She just hasn’t been submitting
until recently.
Got on the Clarion list and the Eidolist, both are utterly silent
today, though that doesn’t surprise me. No one is officially allowed to
talk yet, plus it’s still winter and it’s 25 degrees Celsius outside. Who
wants to chat online?
I went to Collins bookshop to get books by instructors I haven’t
read anything of: Kim Wilkins, Lucy Sussex and Nalo Hopkinson. I didn’t
get anything by Lucy Sussex, damn it. I did get $200 worth of books
though, distracted by all that I forgot to look for hers. I'll get it next
time. I like Collins, mainly because Leigh Blackmore works there and he
really knows how to stock the SF and Fantasy sections.
Monday 1 September 2003
Today I was back at work after a week’s break, the first thing out
of my mouth was hi you guys, I got into Clarion.
A measure of how much I’ve been obsessing about it is that everyone
at work was going "How great!" as enthusiastically as my friends.
Except my boss, who said, oh, so that’s six weeks off work. We’ll
sort something out, don’t worry. I love my company. It’s soo
cool.
While I was talking to Susan (the MD) about work stuff I realised
that in the back of my mind, I'd been weighing up whether or not I should
take a torch to Clarion. For the whole conversation. And that I’d been
packing mentally for two days!
So, just now I visited David Levine’s Clarion page and used his packing list
to create one for me, just to stop my brain from constantly creating one.
I don’t think I’ll go as far as he does. He seemed to think you can’t buy
anything in Seattle, he took his own post-it notes for crying out loud.
Instead I’ll go to an office supplies shop when I get there and buy
stuff.
I am now obsessing about whether the rooms have comfortable
mattresses and air conditioning. That really shows my age. I last slept in
a dorm room in 1979 and I didn’t much like it then. I’m such a wuss. Also
thinking about the chair in the room, my bum gets sore even on my nice
soft one. I tend to sit and sit and sit, I get in the zone and don’t move
for hours. Maybe I’ll buy a second hand one when I get there.
Cat and I have worked out ten of the people who got in. Oh who am I
kidding, Cat did most of it, I found out one from the Vision list which
she’s also on. She knows everyone!
Zara is the first reserve, so I’m sure she’ll be coming. Someone is
bound to drop out. I hope someone does, I want both my buds there and she
deserves it.
With all of this I haven’t written much all weekend, after doing
8000 words last week.
I started a flash story yesterday, hoping to get it ready for Magic
Casements in two weeks because I think it’d be fun to read one
to an audience. I slashed an old story to bits to see if it fits into
500 words, but I’m not sure it works. No, I'm sure it doesn't work.
Now I’ve been mooching around with Clarion for over an hour, and
haven’t written anything. Gotta stop this.
Tuesday 2 September 2003
Had dinner with Anne (my best bud) to celebrate, we had champagne
and a nice dinner. She said Cat spent the best part of the afternoon
trying to worm the last 5 names of Clarion attendees out of people, and
finally succeeded. One person said, for once I know something you don’t,
so I’m not going to tell! (Anne and Cat work together 1 day a
week).
Anyway at least we know the lucky 17 list. I hope one of them will
pull out so Zara can go. Surely they will. (Not Cat!)
Last night I wrote a 500-word story for Magic
Casements, a workshop that happens in two weeks at the Writer’s
Centre. It’s a cut down version of a much longer story and I don’t
really think it works.
Perhaps I’ll enter Narelle Gets Her Nails Done instead. It’s
a good story, if having it published doesn’t disqualify it. Or maybe I’ll
think of something new. Cat and Rob are on the panel and they've both seen
Narelle before.
Thursday 4 September 2003
I booked my flights too soon, they are one day too early and one
day too late respectively, and it’ll cost me 2500 points to change. I knew
that when I booked them, but I just couldn’t help myself.
Ah well.
Had lunch with Nathan and Cat today, the idea was to meet Chris
Barnes, who’s in Nathan’s other group Calliope, but he couldn’t make in
the end so it was just the three of us, nattering and celebrating. We met
in Martin Place, heart of the financial district. Nathan in a serious
suit, me in jeans (a non-client day), and Cat her glamorous self.
Jumping for joy
We met right outside the weird space stationy thing that I found
out is a salesmen's hotel near the MLC Centre, and jumped up and down in a
circle with arms across each others shoulders, singing we're going to
Clarion! It's rare to get that excited about something.
Nathan is jealous and kept demanding vicarious particpation via
reports. He couldn’t possibly go, his wife is having a baby in February,
it’s out of the question, but he would have liked to come in other
circumstances.
Cat is obsessing about the fact that she has no inspiration at the
moment ("My muse has deserted me", she said in all seriousness). It’s only
because she’s doing a much more responsible job at the moment.
Universe balancing act
I had bad news this morning, though, it looks as though I’ll have
to go to Canberra for work, for six weeks. It’s life’s little joke. Six
weeks of yuck to pay for six weeks of fun? A bit hard on our marriage
though, two separations in such a short space of time. At least I get to
come home on weekends, and stay in a four star hotel, so it’s not all
bad.
Saturday 5 September 2003
Teaching creativity
I have not written even one word this week since Monday. Last night
I went to a work party at Ilana’s house. Her 7-year-old daughter Gabriel
has been fascinated that I am a writer, ever since Ilana took home one of
my stories to read. Apparently she wants to write too and often writes
little stories.
I got talking to her on the couch, and she cuddled up to me, and I
asked her what kind of stories she likes to write. She said she writes the
plots of things she’s already read, and never writes ones of her own. I
said I write ones of my own, and she asked how long they are. I said the
one I’m writing now is 150 pages long, and showed her how high the stack
of pages is. She was wide eyed! "How do you get all that paper?" she
asked. How gorgeous. I told her I buy it at the stationery
shop!
Then I asked her if she’d like to write stories of her own, and she
said yes she would. "Would you like to know how?" She said yes. So I said,
you just invent stuff, it’s really easy. "Where do you start?" she asked.
So I led her through it by asking questions. Is your main character
a boy or a girl? Girl. How old is she? 7. What colour hair? Blue and
spiky. What’s her name? Sarah. What kind of nose? Little. What kind of
clothes? Old ones, that she likes. Where is she? In the country. Who with?
Her parents. What are they like? The specialest people in the world. Get
her in trouble now. The dog scratches her. No, that’s not enough trouble.
Much worse trouble. OK, she loses her parents. Great, that’s enough
trouble!
And so on, until she had a lovely story about a girl who gets
separated from her parents in the country at night, takes refuge in a cave
and with the help of some talking bats, who form a platform for her to sit
on, gets flown home (via China!).
There you go, I said, that’s how easy it is. Or, take a real
situation you’ve been in, say you went to the zoo. I have! So you went to
the zoo, but make it a different character, say it’s Sarah again. What
happens to her there? All the animals get let out. Why? It was her fault,
because she turned into a tiger and went into the cage and then everyone
wanted to keep her there because she was a tiger.
A bunch of bats
Wow, I said, you really are good at this. Why don’t you go and
write one of those down now? She did, and came back with a somewhat
expurgated version about a "bunch of bats", with the addition of a nice
detail: she got lost because she went home to "wea"!! "The bat said they’d
try their hardest to get her home…" It was delightful.
She read it out to me and then to nearly everyone else there, and
was generally delighted with it. Ilana said her face was glowing as she
was writing, and that she’d never written anything as long as
that.
If only everyone got help like that. You get told how to make
sentences, but not how the creative process works.
Saturday 13 September 2003
Magic
Casements workshop today. I met Chris Barnes, who’s going. He
gave up his job to focus on full time writing, the brave fellow. Seems
like a very serious chap, although he took gleeful part in a longwinded
joke up at his end of the table at the after-conference dinner.
Where's Greg?
The merriment revolved around the fact that no one knows what Greg
Egan looks like. Does he
exist? Is he a pseudonym for someone we actually know? Is he a recluse,
agoraphobic, autistic… the speculation is endless. Anyway they decided
that since no one knows what he looks like, any of them could be him, and
they all called each other Greg. It looked like lot of fun, so maybe he’s
not as serious as he seems.
James Cain was there, editor of Dark Animus, who’s also going, Cat
and Zara of course, and Robert Hoges who’s on the organising team for
Clarion flew down for the day. One girl whose name I’ve forgotten looked
enviously at Zara, who’d just said she was first reserve. "I’m fifth
reserve," she said. Was she planning to eliminate us?
Terry Dowling was there as well in a multicoloured fantasy coat,
holding court as he does, kissing all the girls who’ll let him. He asked
Cat if it was okay for him to be teaching her at Clarion, and she asked
him if he minded her going. They both said no, it was fine. Did he really
sniff her neck, or is that just what it seemed like? Rob's face when he
did it won't leave me for a long time! (Rob is her partner).
Flash competition
I had a great time reading out a short story for the flash
competition, "Mandy in the Colour Lane", and got an honourable mention.
Ian Triffit, from our Thorbies writing group, came first, and Zara Baxter
came third. How suspicious does that look? Cat asked, since she and Rob
were two of the three judges and both are in my Thorbies Writing
Group.
I rewrote the story to 800 words for Agog. It was fine at
500 when reading it out, because you can inject enough meaning through
tone, but written it was too terse.
Wednesday 17 September 2003
Writing a difficult scene
I’m having trouble with the pivotal scene in Apulder Sweet. I have
to get Han to kill off the entire village (most of it), and I want Milla
to survive.
I’ve decided she’s going to wake up under a pile of her friends’
dead bodies for maximum impact. What’s that like? How does Han feel as he
does it? How does he justify it?
I solved Han’s part, but Milla’s is proving difficult, I’ve
rewritten that chapter 10 times. I looked on the net for survivor stories
but they just say, "I woke under a pile of bodies", they never describe
what that was like.
I said this to Mike, (a friend at work), and he said, what does
that tell you?
Yeah, I know, I said, it’s undescribable. But that’s why I’m a
writer, right? I make stuff up.
Hmm, he said, not convinced. But he doesn’t like things to be too
dark, and (I hope) my readers will. The cover art will keep people like
him away, - off you go, it’ll say. Go and read something by Connie Willis,
or Terry Pratchett.
Sunday 21 September 2003
I rewrote the death scene again. After reading all those survivor
stories, from Holocaust and Rwanda and Serbia (man was that a bad evening)
I realised the ones that had the most impact focussed on one detail and
magnified it.
So I chose to focus on the weight of the bodies, the feeling of
being suffocated, and the panic and shock Milla would be
feeling.
I think it works. I think. Rewrite 11. I haven't done this many
rewrites on anything except Chapter 1.
Monday 22 September 2003
Oh my God, I'm really going
I put in my leave for Clarion today. It’s 30 days’ leave, 5 days unpaid and 5
in advance, so I can’t take any leave until June. It was a scary feeling.
Committed now. Going. Really going. Really have to produce short stories
as performance. In front of an audience I care about. Shit. I walked
around all day going, "I did it. I really am going."
In a way I liked the idea of going more than the idea of really
going, if that makes sense. Though I’m sure when I do go it’ll be
fantastic. It’d better be.
Wednesday 24 September 2003
Nightmares
Tony (my husband) had an "Alinta goes to Clarion" nightmare, in
which I move into a share house and they hook me on evil drugs, and I
start going foaming at the mouth crazy. Darling, I said, I’m past
university you know. He laughed, and said yes he knew, but
nervously.
Zara has had her first Clarion nightmare as well. Join the
gang.
Sunday 28 September 2003
Thorbies writing group
Thorbies reckon the death scene in Apulder Sweet works too, hooray.
We spent a lot of time chatting about Clarion. Zara got in – she
found out on Friday and emailed me at work, but I was working from home
and didn’t get the message. Damn, I would have liked to go Yay with her on
Friday.
She’s already booked her flights and mentally packed, worried about
whether her drafts will measure up to David Hartwell, the whole deal. How
cool. It’s amazing how similar peoples’ reactions can be.
We joked that we’d all become Clarion snobs, and not talk to any
non-Clarion people afterwards. Apparently that’s what some people do in
the US… we’re too small a group here for that to work though.
Zara stayed for dinner and we talked Clarion for hours, boring the
pants off of Tony.
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by Alinta Thornton
