Time Flies
Ten years ago I was lucky enough to be able to participate in what was then called the Clarion East Writer’s workshop sponsored by MSU in East Lansing Michigan. Me and around 15 other aspiring writers holed up in a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house and wrote like crazy while visiting writers and editors attempted to dispense wisdom that most of us were to tense and clueless to understand until weeks—or even years—later.
For those of you who don’t know Clarion is a six-week intensive short story writing workshop focusing on science fiction and fantasy writing. It has been rightly compared to boot camp. Basically you write all night and critique all day. Occasionally you take time off to drink gin and tonics or try to eat things. (This was especially difficult in our sorority house, since the management had put “do not enter” tape all over the kitchen in an effort to stop us from using any of the appliances. They’d also padlocked most of the refrigerators in order to keep us from impuring their virgin spaces with our dirty cases of diet coke and fritos. I lost 15 pounds from sheer lack of interest in microwave burritos alone.)
It’s not hyperbole to say that I wouldn’t really have a writing career right now had I not done my time in the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house. I started writing my Lambda-winning novel, “Turnskin” there. Encouraged by Gordon Van Gelder’s statement that I had “good editorial instincts” I first tried my hand at editing.
I made friends and business connections who to this day continue to help Blind Eye Books keep hurtling toward our own ten year anniversary. (2017 or Bust!)
Clarion East packed up and moved to San Diego a couple of years after I attended. The students there get to attend Comic Con and are probably even allowed to use the kitchen but to me every July I’ll be thinking of those halcyon evenings I spent hanging around on the roof with my Clarion peeps watching the fireflies rise up from the weird little ditches of East Lansing. I will recall with fondness getting drenched—drenched, I tell you!—in frequent afternoon downpours. And I will sigh a happy little sigh whenever I see a movie about killers invading sorority houses.
Oh, fellow 2004 classmates, I wish you luck and joy for the next 10 years as well.
