Epilogue

1:00 a.m., eastern standard time. Home after a stop-off at mom's house, for mission debriefing. Among everything else, the cats were anxious to see me.

I sit here, freezing in my Clarion South tshirt, riding the fumes of 6 hours' sleep across 72 hours. A Clarion South yearbook sits on my floor, with some of the nicest things friends have ever told me. Junkmail overflows from my garbage pail, which is indistinguishable from the tornado farm appearance of my bedroom floor. My family is sick with winter-ish sickness.

There's so much to do. Arts Crossing needs maintenance. My international writers' mail house needs building. I need some more immediate way to make money. And, of course, stories need to be written.

16 names. A billion memories. One oath.

The Final Chapter, part 2

Last night, I continued to knock heads at Mafia with my "patternlessness." I won the first game as a final round villager, and in the last game as a mafioso, I very nearly wiped out the entire village, until at the last second, I was lynched. How perfect that would have been...


But this morning, my patternlessness totally broke. I lost it in the classroom. We all had to give a farewell speech at the end of our last crit, and I said all the good things that I wrote in my last post, more or less. Then, my face went to pieces. I had to keep looking down and bending toward my sneakers to wipe my eyes and nose, and doodling furiously in my notebook just to stop from crying even harder.

Fuck. I can't remember the last time I cried in public like that.

In that respect, though, I wasn't alone. We all supported each other, as I hope we continue to do over long distance.

Clarion South: the final chapter (2/15)

As I've mentioned, I've made some of the best friends here that I've made anywhere, anytime during my life. I've had continual luck in terms of the responses to my writing, received only one major critical assraping (week 5), which I took gracefully and professionally. I recovered my reputation nicely during this final week. I haven't had time to implement the advice I've been offered here yet, but that should come as I start revising. Some of my classmates improved tremendously from week 1 to week 6. I don't feel that was the case for me, at least not yet, but I do feel like I've improved as I normally would with this amount of intense practice. One classmate referred to me as a "watchmaker", the way I methodically and meticulously cracked out stories that didn't read like first drafts, and that could be the reason why I feel like I haven't "grown" as much as some others.

But, yeah. I loved the whole thing. Maybe more than I've loved any life experience.

I'm also very glad to be going home, if only because the work load will end. Every bit of it was exhilirating, but man...I'm burned out. I'll also get to catch up on Heroes, season 2, which has been taped for me. And I need to get back on the ball with Arts Crossing.

The nice girl from the staffing agency has been keeping in touch by e-mail, and she might have a job interview for me. I really need to hibernate for a few days, though. Clarion burnout + jetlag != interview-savvy Michael.

A shout out to all Clarion colleagues who stumble across this, especially floor 3. You guys are my new family (or at least, extra family), and long distance won't change that. For ever after, I will be The Patternless Man.

Lord of the Flies, indeed (Monday, 2/12)

Today, things finally got feral. A fight broke out in the crit room, and two good friends are now at each others' throats. Comments were taken way out of proportion to their intention, though I can see why it happened; it was simply the wrong time and place. The stress is finally taking its toll. I offered to talk to one on behalf of the other. Declined. I have the urge to mediate and ask another one of my mediator-type apartment mates for backup, if these two don't smooth things over by tomorrow.


[later]: okay, looks like everything is cool again. Whew.

week 5

The Patternless Man battles fatigue, sleeplessness and sickness in his attempt to crack out a week 5 story that people will generally like.
The Patternless Man fails. On the scoreboard where a decent response gets half a point and a mostly positive response gets a full point, we now have:
Michael: 3 betterlucknexttime: 1.5
Week 6 will be decisive. I've got a reputation to recover, and an "M. Night Shyamalan" slope of decline to avoid.

halfway mark

So, we've passed ze halfway point of ze Clarion South. This weekend I got all dressed up for the Aurealis award, and learned that I still suck at talking to people in schmooze-for-all environments. Towards the end, someone asked me for my thoughts. I said "I'll gather my thoughts and explain later", but I very much wanted to explain to her that I had a social kryptonite belt on. These kind of things get me the reputation of being "stand-offish", when deep down I'm wishing people would just take one glance inside me and see that I'm not that way at all, that I really do want to come out and play.

It's all good, though. I handed in story #4, and I think it may be my turn to end up with multi-ringed spank prints on my arse before 1:30pm tomorrow. To top it off, I have a one-on-one session with Gardner Dozois (yes, the one and only). What am I going to say to Gardner Dozois without doing the whole "we're not worthy!" act? (more to the point -- what's he going to say to me?). But if nothing else, this will give me a chance to take a panning gracefully.

My floor continues to be awesome. We eat together, have random midnight chats together, we're civil, and we remain intact amidst rising tension and frustration among the clarionites. And yes, there is rising tension and frustration. I keep my half-grin and outer confidence about my writing, but I'm feeling the burnout as much as my colleagues.

Good night, and good luck.

I guess I am one of the luckier ones so far at Clarion. I've been having more or less a sweet ride through the crits and responses. That could change any week, though. I think the sheer self-confidence in my writing helps me produce decent works in 7 days or less.

Yesterday I had one of the most personal stories I've ever written highly praised by almost everyone in class, then ripped to shreds by the tutor. Yet it bounced right off me. Looks like that thick skin is finally growing, though there's no way of telling what's in store for weeks 4-6. I could very well be facing what some of my poor colleagues are going through now, emotionally.

entry deux

I continue to hit social pay dirt at Clarion, and my week 2 session went extraordinarily well. Apparently there are "fighter pilot" and "bus driver" types, and I'm a figher pilot. Woohoo!

It's only the end of week 2, but I'm already thinking about how much I'll miss these guys when it's over. I've distinguished myself socially as the quiet-ish guy with periodic wit that makes the room explode with laughter. I've distinguished myself as a promising writer who can crack out kick-ass drafts within a 7 day span; story 2 received an uber positive reaction, including one colleague saying it was one of the best stories she'd ever read.

I'm still a big chicken in one respect. Today at lunch, I became especially aware of that during a certain conversational moment. That ain't going to change right now, due in part to sheer impracticality of trying to change it out here. I'll only say that I wish I'd come up with some witty interjection filled with subtle suggestions, but I ended up just staring at my plate instead. This one will go under "The effects of 3.5 hours sleep on Michael's wit" section of my eventual memoir.

And, yeah, I'm being self centered since it's my bathtub--err, blog. Story 3, which I just handed in, is an extremely risky and extremely personal piece. It could generate a bipolar reaction, it could get praised, it could get the little red riding hood treatment. In any case, I'm sure there's more to pick apart than in my last one. But, thick skin and all. Lay it on me, mates.

Days 0-4

Pre-Clarion lesson: Critiquing a pile of manuscripts on the airplane is a great way to draw attention from the hot blonde woman sitting next to you. Too bad she disembarked at LAX (though not without my e-mail address and some scholarly writer-submitter advice ;).

Where do I begin? The jet lag went away with surprising ease, for which I have Emer-gen-C to thank. Ah, but the anxiety. Waiting to meet my apartment mates, barbecuing with the staff and week one tutor and stumbling into a colisseum of social uncertainty triggered my UC for a bit. I must have hit the bathroom twenty times that day.

That said... after 28 years, Michael slowly begins to crawl out from under his shell. Most other people who know me in the flesh know me as the man of legendary silence, capable of sitting in classrooms or at dinner tables for hours without speaking a word. Here, at Clarion, I feel reborn. My colleagues kick ass, and though I'll always be a naturally quiet person, I can actually relate to them. I've done more socializing over the past five days then I have throughout all my school years combined, perhaps even college. I make people laugh. I make people cry (well, not yet). I'm actually part of something, rather than having to fish out one or two friends, as I usually have to do when I'm in a group of 20 or 30. People are getting to know me. My tastes, my quirks.

At academic "literary" writing workshops, I've always been the black sheep. While none of those people blatantly scorned my kind of writing, I had the sense that few of them took me seriously. In turn, I had very little to say about their writing and often found myself in "trouble" with classmates and teachers for my lack of participation, and a couple of other things that I won't get into at the moment.

Here, I pull my weight with commentary. I still find it hard to speak up during the free-for-all discussion segments with all 17 of us sitting in a wide circle, but I'm able to offer insightful and (if I say so) valuable feedback when it's my turn to talk.

To quickly summarize:

Day 0 -- barbecue, introductions, first impressions. I'm not quite the youngest, but I'm down there, which is fine by me. At night, I actually cough up 250 words on my first Clarion story.

Day 1 -- Wrote 650 words, but whenever there's a conversation out in the main room, I feel this urge to run out and join. Talk about bizarro Michael.

Day 2 -- The day I never thought would happen: I had practically no time to write because I spent too much of it socializing. Trekking to the pool, chatting with my housemates and one of the convenors. Oh, and the little detail of my first story being critiqued. The Raconteur, my Peter Pan prequel. The night before, I dreamed that some psycho was trying to kill me with knives because he thought (erroneously) that I had once dated his girlfriend. That's a good indication of my stress level at the impending critique, which I'm happy to say was largely unwarranted. Though there was a mix of positive and negative, there was certainly more of the former. I came away with the feeling that I could indeed make it into an excellent story with some work.

Also, my one-on-one session with tutor #1, Robert Hood. Very, very cool. These sessions are supposed to last from 45 minutes to an hour. Used the whole hour, and there was much laughing and nodding about the industry and the craft.

Day 3 -- I finish Think Fast, a super hero piece and my first Clarion story. Three days, little sleep. 1700 words, though my original canvas suggested 3000. I simply didn't need that many words. Not bad at all.

We made our dinner for Rob Hood (actually, one of us made it).

I showered. I shaved. Woohoo!

Day 4 -- Blogging. Heh. Lots of critting to do for tomorrow...

Every morning, we critique between 2 and 4 stories, starting 9:00 a.m. Time goes pretty quickly, thanks in part to the reward of tea and biscuits between stories.

My housemates and I have become early birds. I'll wake up at 7:20, sometimes earlier, to find half the doors open and fingers punching away at keyboards. Once, I organized a small trip to the cafe for a pre-crit breakfast (go go bizarro Michael).

That's it for today, neighbors. Tonight is Rob Hood's public reading, and possibly another Indian restaurant excursion. More to come "soon." :-)