Unsettling Futures - When Clarion is not an option
The premiere science fiction and fantasy writers workshop is out of reach for many. So what do we do?
'Tis the season, when folks are filling out their applications for Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop again.
Clarion, its sibling Clarion West, and the similarly structured Odyssey Writing Workshop, are the premiere six-week bootcamps for new and aspiring speculative fiction writers. Entry is highly sought after, and a glance at the instructor lists shows why.
Every year, guest teachers and lecturers include a murderers row of legendary SF talent. Recent instructors range from N.K. Jemisin to Sam J. Miller, Brandon Sanderson to P. Djeli Clark. In addition to writers, you may meet editors of the bigger short fiction markets.
Graduates wear their Clarion/Odyssey status proudly in their Twitter bios and in their "about the authors" when they sell short stories.
So of course, every year, there are exhortations on social media to young/new writers – go to Clarion! Scrape together the money, gas up your car or buy a plane ticket, and submit your application!
This is quickly followed by the reassurance that, of course, you can succeed without going to Clarion! Why, look at all the people who made successful careers without setting foot in Clarion or any of its kin!
Well, someone would have to. After all, most people will never, can never, attend Clarion.
(You there, in the back? Yes, the one opening his mouth to say "You can do anything if you put your mind to it!" Yeah, you. Sit down. Shut up.)
To attend one of these programs, you need around US$5,000 for the actual workshop costs, plus hundreds more for related expenses. Scholarships may defray part, but not all, of the costs. You need the money and ability to travel to the workshop locations. You need to be able to take six weeks off from your life, just to write and study writing. (If it sounds like I'm jealous, and I am, it's that last element that really gets to me. Six weeks of just writing and thinking about writing!)
A list of those who cannot attend includes, but is not limited to, those with insufficient funds, those with disabilities or medical needs that make the six-week term and/or the travel impossible, primary caregivers for young children/elderly relatives, and people for whom that amount of time off work is not going to happen.
I think Clarion would have been a huge benefit to me a decade ago (heck, it wouldn't hurt now!) but by then I was already in my early thirties, I had a very full time job and other family-related responsibilities. The finances would have been tight, but I might have been able to make it work – but there was no way I could have taken the time.
In my early twenties, I could have taken the time, but it would have been financially catastrophic. And I probably wouldn't have been a good enough writer to get in in the first place.
To attend an elite SFF writing workshop, you need to have enough skill to get in, plus enough time, and enough money, all at the same moment. The stars just don't align that often.
So what do you do if you can't go to Clarion? What can someone cobble together on their own, in their spare time?
I have been joking on and off for years about "Hedge Clarion," some kind of alternative that's cheap, independent, and can be done from home.
There are loads of resources out there, including books. I'm currently reading Pocket Workshop, a series of short writing essays by previous Clarion West instructors, including Nancy Kress, Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel Delany, and Ian McDonald.
When I broached this topic on Twitter, other books that were frequently suggested, particularly for SFF writers, were Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook and Craft in the Real World, by Matthew Salesses.
And if you need more guidance, there are all kinds of sub-Clarion-level workshops, both virtual and real. Cat Rambo has carved out quite a niche with her online classes. There are critique groups, live (well, before the Plague Years) and via Zoom. There's the Codex forums, for folks who have a pro sale or two under their belts. There are local writers conferences that take place over a day, a long weekend, a week, that are maybe within reach. Heck, Clarion and Odyssey run quite a few virtual or distance programs themselves now! Odyssey's short podcasts featuring snippets of their lectures are pretty great.
But if you go to a virtual course, or listen to every Odyssey podcast, or read a stack of craft books as tall as you are, that's just not the same as going to the main event.
The difference is the purity of "real Clarion," the monkish devotion to craft.
When I was grousing about this on Twitter, writer Suzan Palumbo summed up a lot of things better than I could, so I'm just going to quote her a bit here, with her permission.
"Workshops are about the time to discover your particular weaknesses, and honing in on that," she said.
There are, she noted, a number of advantages to being a Clarion grad, including opportunities to get your work seen and considered that are not given to others. But we kept circling back to time and focus.
"We have to acknowledge uninterrupted time to write is huge," Palumbo said. "Workshops provide room and board and you show up and focus on your words."
And on improving as a writer:
"So in my opinion you need make time to be reflective/honest about your work. What are your weaknesses, what are your strengths, and pinpoint that and work on those. Reading craft articles generally is always good, but you need insight, and that's what workshops give."
This is what has focused my mind on what I can try to do. Not just acquire craft books or listen to podcasts or consider online workshops, but put aside time.
I can't take six weeks off. I may never be able to carve six weeks out of my life, not this side of retirement, if ever. But I can scavenge a little time every week. An hour or two on Sunday mornings. Time set aside to try a few writing exercises, to delve into a craft book, to not just write or revise, but to attempt to find that insight that lets you improve your craft.
It's not Clarion, it's not even some ideal of a personal, low-rent Clarion, to be honest. But it's achievable.
Speaking of social media…
I'm taking a hiatus from Twitter. I'd been aware for some time that it was bad for my attention span (already not great) and when there was some all-consuming SFF controversy, it was bad for my mood in general. I finally just decided to take a break for at least a week.
It's gone pretty well. I can actually feel my brain re-orienting itself away from always wondering what's happening on the Hellbird Site. I'm reaching for books instead of my phone when I'm bored.
I may or may not return. It's possible I'll start checking in once a week to see what some folks I follow are up to, but I think I'm going to seriously limit my use going forward, probably to re-tweeting posts from this newsletter and making announcements on the rare occasion I have something worth announcing.
(Apologies for not loudly proclaiming my more-or-less-departure from Twitter, y'know, on Twitter, with great dramatics. I know a grand flounce is expected, but I just don't have the knees for it anymore.)
Obligatory Self-Promotion Corner!
I may have mentioned, in my last newsletter, that I sold a story?
Yeah, I'm sorry, but I'm going to keep bleating on about this for a bit. Look, it doesn't happen that often!
It looks like "Payday Weather" will appear quite early in 2022 on Escape Pod! Final edits are done, and I owe many thanks to editors S.B. Divya and Mur Lafferty for sharpening up the tale before it goes live.
So if you like stories about working class folks trying to scrape up a few dollars during the Pyrocene by working for "Uber, but for fighting wildfires," you can subscribe to Escape Pod now, and it'll turn up in your feed pretty darn soon!
Remember, you can always subscribe, or tell your friends about this newsletter, but should you?
Maybe you should keep that knowledge secret, and let it fester like the splinter that buried itself in the meat of your thumb when you ran your hand up the banister in the old abandoned Johnson place. You can still feel that splinter there, can see it under moonlight, when your hand looks a little too pale, like smoke clinging to bones. You ought to tell someone, you know you ought to, but something in the Johnson place is singing to you every night, and it says you oughtn't. It says you should come back, and find the key under the broken brick in the greenhouse, and open the locked room in the garret.
Anyway, like, subscribe, tell your friends, whatever. It's just the internet.