writing

A Great Writing Workshop

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I was lucky enough to attend a workshop taught by Jack Skillingsted and Nancy Kress over the weekend about “Writing in Scenes”. Nancy is renowned in SFF-land as being a gifted teacher, and Jack should be as well (as far as I know, he has done less of it). It was the excellent kind of workshop that balanced advice, concrete craft knowledge, great exercises, and lots of insightful asides that I doubt made it into their workshop notes but really enriched the day. The Clarion West One-day class (which, full disclosure, I am the administrator for), had a range of writers in different parts of their writing lives, and that got me thinking about how writing, in this deep way, never reaches a point where you stop learning. I think that is one of the intangible rewards of writing or doing any art: it is something you can sink into, give your all to, and never get bored of. It is also, of course, something that drives me bananas about writing. In any case, here were some things from the workshop that I found super useful:

1. The tension spine: Jack had this brilliant way of describing plot as this spine of tension that runs through the skeleton of your book, ever rising until the climax. As someone who can get really hung up the nine step method and the three acts and the heroes journey (etcetera to infinity) this was a more useful metaphor for me. Also, I am working (so hard!) on having more tightly plotted stories, so this was an excellent tool for evaluating my works in progress.

2. How important beginnings are: I know this, you know this, your mom knows this, but also it’s really good to remember that for a short story editor, you have maybe three paragraphs to catch their attention. For a book editor, maybe three pages. Polish and rework and polish and is it amazing yet? Make it even more amazing.

3. Sharpen your sentences: One of the delicious parts of reading is coming across fresh metaphors that crystallize some hidden meaning you’ve never been able to talk about. The job of the writer is to delight and engage the reader, and this can and should happen on the sentence level.

4. Sharpen your paragraphs and scenes: A scene works best when it has a good combination of dialogue, exposition, thoughts, and action. Get all that in there and make it awesome. Easy? No. Good idea? Yes.

And for any writers who are reading this and wondering if writing workshops, either short or long, are worth the cost, from my experience they can really shorten some of the time you spend bumbling through the woods on your writer’s journey, but at the same time if you don’t have the funds or time or convenience of geography, they are not fundamental to writing.

Right Livelihood

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I was just listening to Rachel Maddow’s podcast and wow is she a geek about elections. Politics and what you think of her slant of things aside, she is living some right livelihood. She is a huge and ecstatic nerd about all the beltway and campaigning minutiae, and her excitement is infectious. You can almost imagine her being that kid from Wet Hot American Summer spending all summer doing a radio show even when the mic isn’t plugged into anything.

I also happen to watch a lot of Curious George episodes (don’t judge) and one of the surprising and joyous aspects of it is that everyone from the doorman to the scientists to the restaurant workers are utterly gonzo about their jobs and love whatever it is they do. The show imagines and presents to kids this reality where all people love what they do and no one is denigrated for their labor. It’s a bit of a quiet utopia that I adore and wish was more prevalent in the real world.

Today I got to take a long walk on a rare sunny day through the quietness of my South Seattle neighborhood full of all kinds of small beauties and crumbly houses next to brand new ones. Spring was budding out and popping up everywhere, and I ended up at this Mexican bakery run by a family that flawlessly makes tamales, quiche, bagels, and flan. I got an excellent almond croissant and settled into a corner with my laptop and a scene from the urban fantasy series I’m working on which I might describe in three words as “Modern Medusa Mayhem” though that leaves out all the devils in my details. I wrote fast and hard as I do whenever I get to have a walk before writing: it somehow helps my subconscious even if I’m not thinking about my story. I had some excellent ideas that had that ineffable feeling of being true, which is odd since I’m obviously making it all up. Then I walked home and stepped into my other kind of mayhem which is the happy chaos of my family and all the pushing and pulling and meeting needs or not which happen on any given day.

All of which is to say I’m so lucky to have my right livelihood which is wrapped up in a lot of levels of both privilege and sacrifice, and I hope whoever might be reading this has a right livelihood too, or is on their journey to getting there.

Thoughts on Clarion West

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One of the many hats I wear at this Katie moment in time is helping out a bit with the Clarion West Writers Workshop. What is this thing, you may ask? It’s a six week intensive writing workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy writers. Every week there is a different professional writer, and every week it is hoped you write a short story. Which may sound sort of doable, and in practice is bananas, because the short story will be critiqued by everyone.

I went to Clarion West in 2005 and loved it so much. There’s probably a couple reasons for that. First, I am, at my core, a summer camp kid, and CW echoes back to a summer camp experience where you get thrown in and your life gets changed forever and you meet weird friends you would have never met otherwise. Second, it’s a truly excellent and thoughtful program that smart people have been running for a long time.

Anywho, I’ve been picking up people from the airport and hanging out at the house a small bit as students arrive for the summer, and no one has asked me for any advice on the workshop but if they did? Here’s what I would say (and it applies for any writing program, really).

1. In advance of the workshop, read a thing or two by your teacher/s. It will help you know what they are really good at, and therefore how they can help you. Also, it’s flattering to have people who’ve read your work, and you want to make friends with the instructors. They can be huge for helping you out in your writing career.

2. Out of ideas on what to write? Sometimes the problem is you could write anything, and therefore it’s too huge. So give yourself some constraints. Mine, during Clarion West, was writing every week a story that was in the same vein of the author. So for my Octavia Butler week, I had creepy aliens, and for Andy Duncan week I did alternative history.

3. In any kind of workshop situation, there’s all kinds of FOMO (fear of missing out) moments because new friends are always doing this that or the other thing. But here’s the secret: you won’t miss out on anything if you do what you want because wherever you are, that’s the moment you want to be in. And if you decide to stay in to write? How incredible that you get the chance to do that.

4. You will fit in some ways, and you will be the outcast in some ways, and both things are fine. For me, it was such a wonder going to Clarion West and meeting all these SFF writers who were smart and literate. I was a pig in awesome mud. But also, I was leftier than almost everyone else and often found myself arguing with people in my head and real life. So it goes.

5. Stretch your writerly muscles. Write things that fail. Write things that suck in new and exciting ways. Write things you care about so much it makes your hands shake to get it on the paper.

6. Feed the animal. You are the animal. Take yourself on walks, eat healthy food, talk to loved ones, and get your sleep.

Big luck and love to anyone in a writing workshop over the summer, but especially to the Clarion West class.

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What do we want? Brains! When do we want them? Brains!

My new writing manifesto, sort of.

/ katie / Leave a comment

I was at the MLK jr. march on Monday–which is one of my favorite Seattle events. It’s usually soggy and full of brass marching bands and excellent friends I don’t get to see very often. I was walking with a friend of mine who talked about how she was in a bit of a rut and wished she had some creativity in her life, and that she wished she could discipline herself to be a writer. She said it with this sad longing in her voice. I hear that kind of thing all the time from people. Like maybe they want to write someday when they have the time, or that they wrote fantasy when they were young, or that they have this book they want to write about a bank heist but it’s the World Bank and things get really complicated and political fast (I so want to read that book). Or they tell me that they think about writing and read about writers and don’t know how to start, but it seems like this thing that is missing from their hearts and lives. And has anyone else noticed that the internet is full of articles and inspirational quotes on how to become a writer? (Or maybe that’s just my internet.)

Anyway, writing. People are into it, and do I think it’s cool? Yeah, I do. I mean, I love it like nothing, but I don’t mean cool in the high school way of more popular than thou, or cool like wearing hip new jeans. It’s the opposite of that: it’s raggedy-ass jeans with holes in all the wrong places that you are wearing because you decided who cares but then everyone is looking at you funny. At least it’s that if you are writing about all the scary and true things you want to think about and want other people to think about. It’s cool in a way that means worthwhile, vulnerable, and badass all rolled together.

And I think that’s the reason why there’s this whole ocean of people who are pining to be writers because, well, if we only have one life to live, and then we are dead forever, we want to live worthwhile lives. And lives that effect other people and change the way people see the world, and how do you do that? I don’t know, nobody knows, but writing might do that, if we’re lucky. And on top of that it’s this daily practice where you get to be your fullest self and also use your brain cells to be tricky and smart about how to make story irresistable.

So the next time someone tells me they want to write, and have a story they want to publish, or whatever, I want to hear it in a different way. Not like they are failing to do what they want, but that they are on the edge of jumping in to something important. I want to tell them so loud that they should do it and that I will read it. I want to tell them, so loud! That they should write their beautiful hearts out, and also be activists for what they believe in, and also find work that at the minimum doesn’t make the world a more terrible place. And heck, if I’m being all bossy anyway, I want to tell them to fall in love with the world and be in it like it matters and they matter. I want to invite them to the dance, the big rowdy human dance where there’s a mosh pit in the middle and people are banging their heads together with their stories and all kinds of other body parts and things.

So, you got any stories you want to tell?