It's November, and here I am, finally attempting to talk about week one of Clarion West. It's hard, I think, in a lot of ways, to talk about the experience. Mostly, because CW is 100% about the people you work beside, and I'm simply not willing to discuss my friendships with my classmates. But also because it's so big, and words are so small. I guess that's the problem in general.
But here I am, trying to write about it. Because I read CW blogs obsessively before I attended. And because, even if I can't share the experience, I can perhaps share a little about what I learned.
CW week one was Elizabeth Hand's week. She was to be our first instructor, the one to initiate us in the mysteries awaiting us.
Sunday afternoon, we gathered in the classroom for the first time. And there's Liz. Beautiful and cool, charming from first word to last.
She had us do an exercise, each of us using the same two lines of dialogue to write stories in randomly chosen genres. We turned them in anonymously, traded them around, and read them out loud to each other. All of us nervous. All of us laughing.
Few of us wrote quite so well again as we did on that first week with Liz, and her brilliant husband John Clute, at the helm. She had this magic way about her, this way of making us unself-conscious and eager, willing to go beyond our own capabilities and be amazing.
She taught us to dig deep, to take out our hearts and put them on paper. She taught us about fictionalizing pain, or pleasure, about the power of reading out loud and connecting. We wrote our fears or our loves or our weaknesses, and we read them to each other, terrified and giddy.
Liz set the tone for the whole six weeks, by urging us to be both honest and raw, by finding our strengths and letting us share them with each other.
John taught us a lot as well. That man is scary smart. I took notes until my hand fell off. He talked about looking to the root of things. About being aware of influence. And about the power and the danger of metaphor in fantasy.
What I learned in Week One:
Write with emotional sincerity.
My classmates are amazing.
Be a good physician.
Be careful with metaphor.
