What if you can’t go to Clarion?
Acceptances and rejections for Clarion are going out about now, so the writer blogs and twitter feeds are full of excitement and dismay. Those who get to go to Clarion are in for a wonderful, magical...
View ArticleClarion at home: Planning
This is part 1 of a series on what to do if you can’t go to Clarion, which provides my thoughts on how you can capture part of the magic of Clarion—even if you can’t attend. This post is on planning...
View ArticleClarion at home: Writing
This is part 2 of a series on what to do if you can’t go to Clarion, which provides my thoughts on how you can capture part of the magic of Clarion—even if you can’t attend. This post is on the...
View ArticleClarion at home: Reading
This is part 3 of a series on what to do if you can’t go to Clarion, which provides my thoughts on how you can capture part of the magic of Clarion—even if you can’t attend. This post is on reading,...
View ArticleClarion at home: Critiquing
This is part 4 of a series on what to do if you can’t go to Clarion, which provides my thoughts on how you can capture part of the magic of Clarion—even if you can’t attend. This post is on critiquing....
View ArticleClarion at home: Expertise
This is part 5 of a series on what to do if you can’t go to Clarion, which provides my thoughts on how you can capture part of the magic of Clarion—even if you can’t attend. This post is on developing...
View ArticleClarion at home: Summation
This is part 6—the final post—of a series on what to do if you can’t go to Clarion. I’ve talked about my thoughts on how you can capture part of the magic of Clarion—even if you can’t attend. This post...
View ArticleCreated a “Clarion at home” page
To gather up the various posts that formed my “Clarion at home” series, I created a Clarion at home page with some introductory text and links to each of the posts. If you’re inclined to link to the...
View ArticleTen years since my Clarion
Ten years ago today was the first day of class at the 2001 Clarion. Steve Barnes talked about plot. (The stuff he talked about that day, together with some some ideas I got a few weeks later from Geoff...
View ArticleStrategies for writing and revising
One cluster of particularly good bits of advice that I got at Clarion came from James Patrick Kelly. (That link goes to my Clarion journal entry for the day I wrote about it.) Among other things, he...
View ArticleRace and the fictional character
One of my Clarion classmates, Nnedi Okorafor, tweeted today wondering why sometimes authors won’t just say what race a character is. I doubt if she was thinking about me, but I’m one of those writers...
View ArticleApplications open for Clarion 2013
Every year there’s a new Clarion class. Every year I’m a bit jealous of the new batch of students getting to study with the new batch of teachers. There’s a little overlap this year—one of the anchor...
View ArticleGenevieve Kierans
Genevieve at the Clarion Reunion in 2002. I just learned that Clarion classmate Genevieve Kierans died earlier this month. It was great to have her in the circle at Clarion. Nobody was nicer or happier...
View ArticleClarion 2001 poster
All the writers who taught at my Clarion did readings at the Archives Book Shop, a local bookstore in East Lansing. To advertise the readings, the Clarion office folks printed up a poster with the...
View ArticlePacking lists
When I was in boy scouts, one of the scoutmasters suggested creating a packing list for camping trips. His key suggestion was to update the list after a trip, adding anything you’d wished you’d had,...
View ArticleClarion Workshop for 2009
Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop Through March 1st, Clarion is taking applications for its 2009 workshop. If you’re working seriously on the craft of writing science fiction or...
View ArticleQuoted about Clarion
Mishell Baker has an article up at the new Fantasy Magazine website on looking ahead to attending Clarion this year while pregnant, Cautiously Expecting: On Creating Life and Fiction at Clarion–which...
View ArticleClarion open for applications
Clarion, the science fiction and fantasy writers workshop, is open for applications for 2010! As usual, it looks like they’ve got a great line-up of instructors. I attended Clarion in 2001 and found it...
View ArticleClarion journals findable again
Since the demise of Hilary Moon Murphy’s Clarion Ex Machina site, there hasn’t been a good collection of links to all the various Clarion journals. Now Liz Argall has fixed that with her page of...
View ArticleThinking about Clarion
It’s hot today. Writing when it’s hot always reminds me of Clarion—of the many sweaty hours sitting at my desk in Owen Hall, writing fiction. And I was already thinking of Clarion. In 2001, Clarion...
View ArticleFirst meeting of the incognito writers group
A few of us here in Champaign-Urbana are trying to get a local writers group going again. Caleb Wilson, Kelly Searsmith, Charlie Petit, and I got together last night at the Urbana Library for the new...
View ArticleApplications open for Clarion
If you’re a writer of speculative fiction, you’ve probably already heard of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop—and probably already spent some time wishing you could go. At...
View ArticleOn (not) playing to your strengths
During week two at Clarion, I wrote a story that played to my strengths—one where the story was strengthened by being told from the viewpoint of a character who was almost affectless, so the story...
View ArticleRejoice: The sun returns!
The solstice snuck up on me this year. The calendar shows it as being today, which it is if you live east of the United States. But it was actually a few minutes before midnight on the east coast and...
View ArticleBusy writing
Because it was so precisely in my wheelhouse, I simply had to submit a story for the Universal Basic Income short story contest Into the Black. I plugged away at a story most of October. In particular,...
View ArticleApplications open for Clarion 2018
I have written a lot about Clarion, the science fiction and fantasy writing workshop I took back in 2001—in particular my Clarion journal and my six-post series on what to do if you can’t go to...
View ArticleRunning my own server again
A year and a half ago, my brother gave me a Raspberry Pi 3 as a birthday present, suggesting that I should use it to run my own server. I used to run my own server. A friend who liked to build such...
View ArticleFixed my Clarion journal
Some time ago (trying to fix something else) I switched my web host to run PHP version 7.2, and didn’t notice that doing so had broken the glue code that made my Clarion Journal entries work. When I...
View ArticleRecommended reading: Deep Work by Cal Newport
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. At some level, I’ve always understood deep work—the sort of work where you sit down and focus on your task for 20 or 60 or 90...
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