Into the Science Fiction Snake Pit

Greetings from Seattle, Washington.

I've been at the Clarion West science fiction writer's workshop for three weeks. This weekend, Little Miss is visiting me, so I'm feeling more relaxed and in the mood to write something for my own amusement. Possibly the amusement of my millions of readers, too.

I and my 17 fellow students write a story every week. We read each other's work and critique it. That's a lot of words.

Of course, we ourselves get critiqued on our work. My colleagues (despite the title of this post) are a bunch of talented people, with great good will. However, even with the best will in the world, no one likes to hear the suggestion that the children of one's mind are anything less than perfect, right?

So we all sit around writing our heads off, trying to produce something comprehensible without any revision time. Then we read three or four stories every day and prepare comments that are useful to the author without devastating anyone's ego.


And we're all adults, and we take what we're given and try to improve. And deep inside we wonder if we have any future as writers at all.

Thanks to our instructors from the past weeks - Nancy Kress, Larissa Lai and Graham Joyce - and for the next three weeks - Kelley Eskridge, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Samuel R. Delany - for their efforts to keep us encouraged while trying to break our worse habits.

One thing's for sure, though - as much as I've missed my wife over these weeks, and as happy I'll be to get back home, when this is over I'll be sorry.

Benshlomo says, You seldom get everything you want all the time.