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Chapter 7: Clarion Writers' Workshop, and a fimfiction scholarship
Previous Chapter Next ChapterI know you guys are all stolid, respectable members of society. But I thought there might be one or two crazy people out there who are into ... dare I say it ... writing fantasy.
If you want to write fantasy or science fiction professionally, you should apply to Clarion. Clarion is to science fiction & fantasy what Harvard is to high-powered law firms and Wall Street sharks, but (sadly) without the evil. Like Harvard, it's a great learning experience, but that's not why you need to go. You need to go because if you send a story or book into a science fiction or fantasy editor, and you write on your cover letter "I went to Clarion", they will read it, or at least some of it. I spent years writing stories and getting dozens of photocopied rejection letters. After Clarion, I sold the first two stories I sent out to the first places I sent them out to. (One of the checks bounced, but that wasn't Clarion's fault.) I haven't seen a rejection letter since. Mostly because I haven't written anything but fan-fiction since. But that's not important. What's important is that if you want to become a professional F&SF writer, you should apply to Clarion.
When I went to Clarion, they put us all up in tiny 2-person dorm rooms with window air conditioners that roared like jet engines, so that you couldn't write, let alone sleep, with them on (because of the noise) or with them off (because of the heat). So Lister Matheson, who ran Clarion at the time, gathered about a dozen standing fans of all different types from the pocket dimension where he always managed to find at the last minute whatever Clarion needed, and distributed them to our rooms. I remember typing stories on a word processor—literally, a machine that was not a computer and did nothing but word processing, with a four-line LED screen—but I have no idea whose it was. Now they tell you to bring your own laptop. They provided a printer.
Once a week, you write a story, print up 18 copies, and hand them out. Each morning you all sit in a big circle and spend 3 hours critiquing about 4 stories, every person giving their opinion in turn. We had the official Clarion Black Stetson Bad-Guy Hat to put on if you thought the story stunk. (I was heavily black-hatted the week that I had no story and instead put my name on the first four pages of the Eye of Argon and handed it out. Don't do this unless you can handle an entire week of covert, frightened glances from your classmates.) Then the instructor gives their opinion, and everyone hands their marked-up copies of the story back to its author and moves on to the next story. Then you have lunch, and return to the dorm to read other people's stories, mark them up with red pen, and work on your own story for next week.
What did I learn? Well, you're getting critiques from other students, so mostly you'll get line edits (grammar, word usage, awkward sentences, wordiness, repetition) and story content reactions (I didn't care about this person, this threat wasn't threatening, this contradicts that, I didn't understand what happened). Seeing critiques of other stories is as valuable as reading critiques of your own stories.
I wouldn't go back to Clarion now, because my problems now are mostly things I do over and over that I'm already aware of, or that require a theoretical understanding of story to fix (bad dramatic structure, unclear theme, competing themes, subtext that contradicts theme, scenes whose relation to the story problem are not immediately clear). Nor could I; you may go to Clarion only once. But my writing post-Clarion was noticeably better than before Clarion.
Perhaps more importantly, I spent six weeks getting to know people who care about the same crazy kind of stories that I do, who can write pretty well (even if most of them scorn my fan-fiction), and whom I'm still in contact with today.
Applications for the 2013 Clarion Workshop will remain open until March 1, 2013. On February 15th, the application fee will increase from $50 to $65. The 2013 faculty will be Andy Duncan, Nalo Hopkinson, Cory Doctorow, Robert Crais, Karen Joy Fowler, and Kelly Link. You must include two complete short stories, each between 2,500 words and 6,000 words in length. No novels, poetry, essays, or screenplays. No word back yet from Karen on whether you can submit fan-fiction.
The workshop fee is, yikes, $5000 (including room & board). It was cheaper when I went. Most people get a scholarship, but the size of the scholarships hasn't increased with the price of tuition; most are still about $1000. Don't bother asking exactly how much; they're a lot of different individual scholarships--little independent bookstores will fund one student, or a regional science fiction convention will fund one person from its state. There are special grants for students of color (I don't which colors count; yellow usually doesn't), students age 40 and older, students who are affiliated with Michigan State University, and students who are affiliated with UCSD.
These are some of the people who went to Clarion before starting their writing careers:
Tim Pratt
Other SF&F Writing Workshops
There is also Clarion West, in Washington State, which is modelled on Clarion. This year, their instructors are Elizabeth Hand, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Justina Robson, Ellen Datlow, and Samuel R. Delany. Application fee is $30 thru Feb. 10, then $40 until midnight of March 10. The workshop costs $3600 (including room & board). Writing sample 20 to 30 pages of manuscript (that's about 5000-7500 words).
Can you submit fan-fiction for your writing sample to Clarion West? Neile Graham says: "They can, but I strongly recommend against it. It's riskier than submitting original fiction, because the tendency of most fan fiction is to rely on the original source for much of the characterization and world-building issues, leaving fiction that isn't as strong out of context, especially for readers not familiar (or not sympathetic) with the source."
Odyssey is also modelled on Clarion. Application fee is $35. Tuition is $1920, textbook $100, optional college credit $550, housing $790, food about $500; total without college credit (not offered at Clarion): $3410. Writing sample maximum 4000 words. Applications must arrive there by April 8. No electronic applications.
Jeanne Cavelos says, "We don't prohibit applicants from submitting fan fiction as their writing sample. But if someone asked my advice, I would advise them to submit something else, since fan fiction probably won't showcase their skills in characterization and world-building."
Both these other workshops also have good reputations. I promise not to think much less of you if you go to a lesser, Johnny-come-lately knock-off of Clarion.
Regarding $$$: A FimFiction Scholarship
Most of the people I'd like to go to Clarion, can't afford to. I'd like us, fimfiction as a whole, to sponsor somebody to attend one of these workshops. Ideally there would be a non-profit escrow fund, like for the Wollheim Memorial Scholarship (which is split among people from the NYC area who are admitted to Clarion, Clarion West, or Odyssey), but for now, making pledges on this blog post would suffice.
I don't want to collect money myself, because I know screaming and accusations would inevitably follow on our lovely little community here. So here's my plan:
- A writer qualifies for the fimfiction scholarship if they were registered for fimfiction as of January 1, and they have at least 2 stories published on fimfiction totaling at least 5,000 words, or 1 story on Equestria Daily, by March 1.
- To donate, post a comment on this blog saying "I will give $X by paypal to fund fimfiction writers to attend these writing workshops if one is accepted," where X >= 5.
- If you are a qualifying writer and you're accepted into a workshop, PM me as soon as you find out, tell me your real name, the workshop you'll be attending, and a made-up secret word, and I'll get in touch with their organizers and verify that you were accepted and you are who you say you are (using the secret word).
- I will get the participating workshops each to set up a paypal account or other method to receive fimfiction donations and list it on their websites (to prove they control those accounts). Neile Graham of Clarion West says that a Paypal account is complicated for non-profits (they have extra paperwork to set one up), but they can arrange something similar.
- I will then post a blog saying who was admitted, where they're going, and how to contribute to their fund. This is not tax-deductible in the US, because you're donating to a specific person rather than to the workshop.
- I, Bad Horse, will match all received contributions up to $250 if we have someone accepted to any of the workshops.
(You can't use a kickstarter campaign to fund a scholarship. I checked.)
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