Clarion West

It's been a good first day, here in Hawaii.  Best of luck to all '08 participants!

Aloha,

Greer

So, my goal is to write a chapter a week.  I'm about 6 pages into the novel, and I'm nearly done with the first chapter.  This is not a good thing, however.  Half of the action is dragging out, and the other half is compressed to the point where everything happens at once.  I also know I'm not explaining things particularly well, and that anyone coming to this without the knowledge I have is going to be very confused.  So I have a feeling my weeks are going to be composed of writing the skeleton and then back-filling.

I would love to get done with the novel before my job goes away (our office is closing in the middle of August), so I think July is going to be an early November as I try to go with a National Novel Writing Month model.  Let's see if I can keep up a 1,667 word/day pace next month.

Has anyone else had the problem yet where you've started on whatever you planned to be writing, but then another idea crops up that is ever-so-tempting?  (I just got a wonderful idea for a SF mystery last week.)

I added 524 words to "Passage of Earth," my alien earthworm autopsy story, this morning, and 13 words to "Dragon Slayer" and another 547 words words to "The Man in Grey" this afternoon, for a total of 1070 words.  My goal is 500 words a day, five days a week, but since I'll be leaving in not that long to put in a week's work cleaning out my mother's house, I'd best have a lot of wordage stockpiled.  Roanoke doesn't bring out the best in me.

The day's not over yet, plus it's my birthday, so of course haven't done anything. I haven't really partied yet, either. Which should I do first? Uh-oh.

Nota bene: My day stops when I go to bed. It's not one of those 24-hour things. But maybe I ought to slap down a few hundred words right now....

Eileen Gunn

Vice-Chair

Clarion West Board of Directors

Day 1 = 550 words.

And I happen to know that in one of the layers of hell you are required to write sex scenes while your partner is 7 weeks and 2000 miles away...

I'll be checking in here on any day when I actually complete something. So, tonight I got in over four hours' work. I rewrote two poems pretty substantially (added about one-third to half-again as much content while changing much of what remained) and sent them to the MindFlights poetry contest (for any interested poets out there, they're looking for speculative poetry with the theme of exile, up through 100 lines; you can submit up to three poems--http://www.mindflights.com/item.php?sub_id=4327). I'm hoping to finish one more poem this week (this time a completely new draft) for the same contest.

Lyn C. A. Gardner

Hi all, and happy WaTing!

My goal is 7k a week, and I'm trying to keep on track with 1k per day.  Yesterday wass iffy but I made up for it today, though only because I counted some brainstorming I did on the novel. (Hey, it was *written* brainstorming and had a word count!) I also counted a short essay I did for a contest, but tonight I got in a full 1k on the novel, plus I changed many of the initial 256 words I had pre-thon.

My main character's pet chinchilla is now named after one of the moons of Neptune, and he likes to chew on the coffee table (the chinchilla, not the main character).

Congrats to those who are on their way to meeting goals, and good luck to those who are just getting started.

Happy birthday Eileen! (Only slightly belated.)

 ~Deb Taber

http://debtaber.livejournal.com

www.apexbookcompany.com

Waves to all the Write-a-thoners

Day one of the WAT: 500 words on a new story involving boundaries. Nice to join you all--this is my first time doing the write-a-thon.

Karen Roberts, class of '05

20,000 words for the Write-a-Thon is my goal.

I'm heading to a writers' retreat tomorrow, so hopefully that will give me a great start!

Vylar Kaftan
CW '04, Clarion West Forum Master
http://www.vylarkaftan.net

...and, thirteen hundred words for my first productive day of writeathonning finishes off Chapter Thirty-Four of my current project. Hopefully, I will make my stated 2000-words-a-week goal two or three times over every week.

I spent the morning on the expanded version of my Hope Mirrlees essay.  731 new words.  This afternoon, after a few false starts, I put in some work on "The Goblin Lake."  475 words.  Total 1206 words.  Not quite five pages.  So I'm eight pages, going on nine.  Not bad considering. 

451 words on my Golem story, plus a cheerleading speech at Paul Park's reading in the CW Reading Series last night. Great reading, btw, and a terrific Q&A afterward.

Paul is offering to write a story with the donor's suggestion of character or background for anyone who donates $100 to the Write-a-thon. (There might be a limit of one on this offer, so it would be first come, first served. See http://www.clarionwest.org/events/writeathon/PaulPark for details.)

This could be a super torture-the-teacher opportunity for the 2008 Class, at a cost of only $6 each, so Paul had better be very, very nice to them....

Eileen Gunn

Vice-Chair

Clarion West Board of Directors

Another day, another chapter, another 1300 words. This next bit's going to be tougher, though.

Very slow day. I ran some chores, and got in a lot of solitaire, though.

I managed to put in 344 words on "The Dala Horse," a story I've been wanting to get up and running for some time. Which brings the total to 2650 words, slightly over ten pages, my target for the week.

Which is a good thing, because I'll be taking Friday off to drive down to Mount Vernon, home of our most physically fit president ever -- he could crack a walnut in his bare hand! And then I'll be spending most of next week clearing out my late mother's house. So I don't think I'll be getting in a lot of wordage then.

Zounds! I'd better get to work. I'm falling behind even as I type this.

Hi all!

Nice to see so many familiar sigs again.

Writing is going a bit slow for me this week -- we're renovating an apartment. Since the beginning of the Write-a-thon, I have 1200 new words on the novel and 1100 words on the next IROSF piece, some of which Jay contributed. But I haven't yet tackled any of the story revisions I meant to do.

Well, there are still a few weeks for that!

Ruth Nestvold

www.ruthnestvold.com

451 words on Wednesday. Good words, on the Golem story. (Michael Swanwick can take the any credit for this story, as he told me to write it. ("Quick! Act without thinking!") I, of course, will take the blame....

I am off to San Francisco and then to Bishop, California, with Pat Murphy (Clarion '78, frequent Clarion West instructor), Carol Emshwiller (also a frequent CW instructor) and Avon Swofford (Clarion '78). We will talk about writing for seven hours, and then have a tiny workshop in the desert, with the smoke blowing around us. There are 1052 forest fires in northern California, as of last night. Only one of them is contained.

Michael, I know how sad it is to clean out one's parents' house. I hope you find some happy memories there as well, and have some good times with your sisters.

Eileen

Eileen Gunn

Vice-Chair

Clarion West Board of Directors

1200 words today, and Chapter 36 is finished. Adaptation is more work than it really ought to be. I mean, somebody else has already written the damn thing first. Yet, I'm still having to sweat every sentence.

Eileen, I have already entered your story in my bibliography under "Works of Genius by Other Authors the Credit for Which is Mine."

I put in 202 words on the novel this morning and then 61 words on the allosaur story, and then 263 words on the Pushkin story, which brought me to 526 words, and it would have been a lot more if my keyboard hadn't started to fail. 

And here I have graciously erased a long paragraph about the frustrations of that event.

Total: 3176 words, a bit over twelve pages.  So when I write not a jot tomorrow, my conscience will be clean.

So, I committed to thirty pages a week, and I may have overreached myself.  I'll be scrambling all weekend to double my output for the past week.  I should have known better than to Abuse the Muse.

Ah, well.  All for dear old Clarion.  I hope it doesn't count if I have to throw away pages afterward. 

I had other work I had to do all last week to put the tofu on the table, but managed to pump out the 500 words I had committed to on "Looking for Lim."  If you count my comments on the changes I made to Eileen's section.  And the 71 I gave her at the beginning to go on from.  I took care of that Saturday morning, then I went on a (literally) hot date.

Eileen, I promise womanfully not to take so long responding next time if you don't either.

Also, I could write up the broad outline we discussed if you want.  That would count, too.  Wouldn't it?

Take my hand, I'm a stranger in Write-a-thon....

So, I finally completed my basic week one goals at 2 a.m. this morning with a short story called "Caught in the Maze"--an expansion of an extremely short treatment of the same subject.  The new version is about  80%+ completely new draft.  I'd already covered the poetry portion with the rewrites of two poems, "Deliverance" and "Alabaster," for the MindFlights contest.  I didn't have time for any of the optional stuff, but I hope to get into full stride later this week.  In fact, I'm going to start trying to work ahead, as I expect the same sort of family-inspired crunch to occur near the end of the WAT as I've faced here at the beginning.  So with any luck I may soon begin to time travel and slowly report further into the weeks ahead :)

Lyn C. A. Gardner

Actually, let me amend that.  I did one of my bonus activities last night.  While I didn't attend an external literary event, I did go to Starbucks with my dad & brother.  My parents like to read poetry or fiction to each other at Starbucks, but my mom's out of town.  So I brought along my newly received copy of the 2008 Rhysling Anthology of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (www.sfpoetry.com -- a great community) and read six or seven sf poems (yes, including my own--I was giving my dad a copy I'd inscribed).  I know, this isn't exactly what I had in mind--but it was very cool sitting there reading sf poetry to them, adding my vocal interpretation to the poems I loved best, and seeing them both enjoy a genre they don't encounter very often.  We've all grown up loving shows like Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, to which Dad introduced us, so it wasn't a stretch, more like introducing them to the child of an old friend :)

Hello, all:

I finished the first chapter of my novel on Sunday, so my first goal is met.  Just 5 more to go...

The next round of the livejournal challenge/community novel_in_90 starts up today (argh; I can't get the link to work, so go to the livejournal site and search to find the community), if someone needs help/encouragement reaching novel-writing and/or word-count goals.

Hope the writing is going well for everyone!

Sarah

I made my first week's goals. The work is scattered over two works, but together both were up over 2500 words from when I started.

Made a goodly advance on this week's goals tonight on a mystery short story.

I am looking forward to Mary's reading tonight.

M
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in filigrees of silver.
Prov. xxv. 11

Eesh. I completely forgot to check in here, too.

First week was a success. 3K words on the novel--a chapter's worth, as far as I'm concerned.

The bonus words were on a short story whose images wouldn't leave me alone. 200 there, and while the novel believes I'm cheating on it, the little huss--ahem!--story wants everyone to know that we never spent a weekend together at the Fairmont Olympic. Ever.

That keyboard is just jealous.

Good to see so much productivity from everybody! In the first week and a half, I've written just over 5,000 words on my novel (goal: to finish the novel by the end of the WAT), leaving 11,000 to go, and I've revised a short story for submission (goal: to revise 2 short stories for submission by the end of the WAT). Whew. And the WAT is really, really working for motivation - I hate writing novel climaxes, but since I have the WAT for accountability, I've been forcing myself to keep writing every day instead of procrastinating & just eating chocolate. ;)

Go everybody for working so hard!  

Well, I am back from the trek to Roanoke to clean out my mother's house, during which I wrote not one single word, and all I can say is: oh god.

Today I mostly slept. Sometimes on the couch and sometimes at the computer. Put in 190 words on the alien worm autopsy story. I'm thinking of calling it "A Passage of Earth." Which brings me up to 3,366 words total, slightly more than thirteen pages, which leaves me with seven to be written in the next two days. It'll be tricky because Friday's the Fourth and tomorrow I'm thinking of taking off. But I'll do it.

I am unstoppable.

Okay, it's 11:17 a.m. and I'm about to spend the rest of the day going to the movies.  So this moorning I put in 165 words on the worm story, 328 words on "The Trains That Climb the Winter Tree" (a collaboration with Eileen which was begun during last year's Thon) and another 561 words on "The Armies of Elfland" (another collaboration with Eileen, also begun during last year's Thon).  That's a total of 1054 words or four pages.  Cumulative total:  4,420 words, or almost 18 pages.  I've got to reach 5,000 words/20 pages by the end of the week to keep on schedule, so it's looking good.

Eileen, I know it's technically not my turn up to bat at "The Armies of Elfland," but while I was sleeping last night I figured out how to simply end the thing.  As soon as I've got a full and complete draft done, I'll start cutting it down.

First time poster, but already write-a-thoner....

Hi! I'm Erin Cashier, I went to Clarion West in 2007, and I've been browbeating people on my livejournal for funds. (I'm hoping it's working. I guess we'll see!) 

My goal is 5k a week. The first week went well, and i'm edging up on week 2 just fine. I expect things to get complicated at the end by Worldcon and going to the Writers of the Future workshop, but i'm pretty committed (and/or OCD) to getting things done.

Nice to see other people i know here, I just wanted to say hi :D

Erin Cashier

Another half-day.  I put in 149 words on "The Trains That Climb the Winter Tree."  Sasha and Mr. Chesterton are halfway to orbit, where they'll meet Dick Cheney.  Then I put in 406 words on "The Armies of Elfland."  We have arrived at the Day of Two Queens, Agnes's conversation with Frederic in the library, and the inevitable tangle of surprises for the reader.  That brought me up to 555 words, which added to the prior 4,420 words was still 25 words short of the goal, so I wrote 75 words for the Pushkin story, introducing Elena, who will play such a major role in everything to come.  So that brings me to 5,050 words, plus another 16 I wrote just now -- taking a moment off from this post rather than forget the idea contained in them -- for a grand total of 5066 words, and almost a quarter-page ahead of my target.  So I can take the afternoon off.  Huzzah!

I got a late start on the Write-a-thon because I am trying to get my game ChipWits - http://chipwits.com out the door.

July 4th: I’m launching my online novel, “Operation American Freedom”: http://opamfreedom.com  . My goal is to write an hour a day at least six days a week.

----

It’s 2013 and George W. Bush leads a band of American insurgents against Chinese/Iranian occupation forces. It’s hard work.

Try not to puke as:

* President Cheney appoints Alberto Gonzalez to the Supreme Court.

* President Limbaugh becomes the ChIranian's puppet for an bottomless supply of Oxycontin.

* Fred Phelps' church stops picketing soldier's funerals and bombs the Republican Convention.

* Blackwater buys the Department of Defense.

* George W. Bush cements his place in history with a bloody cover up.

Thrill as:

* Dubya is waterboarded at Guantanamo.

Operation American Freedom (OAF) is a profane, below-the-belt tour of a nightmare Republican future.

I’ll post new chapters frequently.

“George W. Bush is a skidmark on the underpants of history.” - OAF

----

Old-school game programmer currently reviving my game ChipWit - http://chipwits.com -

and writing an online novel, Operation American Freedom - http://opamfreedom.com

Rough week, for a variety of reasons. Only one completed chapter in Aetheria, though it was 2000 words. So, technically I've made my W-a-T goal, even if I'm falling ever farther behind my lofty chapter-a-day pace I once imagined.

The past two weeks have been productive. Today I completed my write-a-thon goal. Plenty else going on, but decided to make the Fourth of July a writing day since the usual family festivities didn't happen this year.

M
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in filigrees of silver.
Prov. xxv. 11

Elizabeth McDowell

I have been writing, but have had a number of physical challenges that I didn't expect.  In the first week of the write-a-thon, I wrote for 9 hours, working on a short story that was in rough draft/notes condition.  It is not finished yet, but I am setting it aside for the duration probably.  It was not my main goal, just a warm-up.  After almost a week's break from writing, I am back at it, and on the main project of revising a novel that is close to completion. 

The challenge:  I am due to give birth to my first child in 3 weeks, and in addition to having very swollen feet, I developed karpel tunnel syndrome in both wrists/hands (and for a while arms/shoulders) due to the pregnancy.  This hit just at the start of the write-a-thon, and after a week of really trying to write every day, I had one day that I did typing for 3 hours of business work and then 3 hours of creative writing, and then my wrists got so irritated that I couldn't hardly function with them for 3 days!  I mean, I couldn't type or write, I couldn't cut food with a knife, I couldn't take a hot or warm shower, I couldn't use my electric vibrating toothbrush--all that caused intense tingling and pain.  So I HAD TO STOP the writing.  On top of that, Seattle had a heat wave, which further exacerbated my problems with swelling.  OK, it was a miserable week.  But it is cooler now and I am back at the real work. 

Today's work went well, reviewing and revising Chapter 1 of my novel.  I have the other chapters lined up and ready for tonight and the rest of the weekend and beyond.  Maybe it will go well.

The wrist braces that I have to wear day and night help my wrist/hand condition a lot.  They also make me look either like an invalid or a cyborg or something.  They are a nice striking black color. 

I am celebrating July 4th by writing. 

Second week is over, and despite reactions of myself and everyone connected with the workshop to the theft of four student laptops from the CW residence, I managed to meet my Write-a-thon goal again.  You can read about the theft and the SF community's amazingly supportive rallying-round-the-students activities elsewhere in the Forums.  You can read what I wrote on a totally unrelated topic at http://www.briancharlesclark.com/joni-mitchell-and-the-i-ching.

Onward!  They can't stop the skiffy!

Go Elizabeth for managing to do so much writing despite everything! Much, much sympathy on the carpal tunnel syndrome and swelling, and YAY for the upcoming baby - I'm expecting a baby in about 15 weeks (a double-Clarionite baby, since both parents attended CW in 2001 ), and I'm not battling any symptoms nearly as challenging as yours, but the sheer pregnancy exhaustion is still making things feel really hard. I'm really impressed at your productivity!

Well my first week was a wash.  I was hospitalized with symptoms like appendicitis, turned out to swollen lymph nodes.  But before a biopsy could be scheduled, I broke out with an intense case of shingles.  Okay, who can be grateful for this extremely painful virus?  Me!  No cutting, no radiation, no chemo.  But massive pain pills and no writing.

 This last week, however, has been much better. Especially since I'm still on pain pills and can't drive anywhere.  I've made great strides on the novel.

 I did, however, have a terrible argument with my villian.  I was writing a very diabolical thing for him to do to the daughter he is just now meeting.  But he doesn't believe he is a villian and totally objected to what I wrote.  After a day and a half of arguing, and him calling me an idiot, I finally gave in.  And yeah, he was right.  I wrote a much better scene that while it's him reaching out to his daughter, it makes me shrink inside beause I know how truly warped he is and my main character doesn't.  So I'm happily on track.  This week I'll be finishing this climatic scene and closing in on the end of the novel.  Whoo hoo.

Another week, another week of goals met! Yay me! A total of 3K on the novel, I've just about caught my other two POV characters to my main protag's adventures, and *cough*knock on wood*cough* it's going swimmingly. If I didn't just curse the thing, which I may have.

It's actually going so well, I'm considering upping my overall novel goal to 20K by the end of the marathon, which would put me nearly 2/3 through. Don't hold your breath, however. Blue is not necessarily becoming--and I have a trip coming up with my mother. It's quite difficult to convince her that I can only write if she doesn't speak to me. I must make certain she has a book or ten in our hotel room.

The short story doubled its size this week also. I have 400 on that, and may double that goal, too, so it's actually finished by write-a-thon end. Or not. (Hello. Meet my inflated sense of self-protection. Shut up, you.)

I put in the morning writing an appreciation of Thomas Disch. Now I'm waiting to see if the Philadelphia Inquirer will return my call. If it doesn't, I'll throw the thing to one of the local weeklies. So, since I'll be paid for this, and writing it is an essential part of my job, it counts. That's 737 words, plus another 14 I pegged into the novel to make it come out to 751 words -- an even three pages plus one word.

So I'm a page ahead of schedule. Plus one word.

Back to work with me now. Let's see if I can pile on some serious pages.