Author Archives: Pamela

The house where we lived at the workshop was on fraternity row near University of Washington which means it was noisy. There was a frat house behind us that played all sorts of strange musical choices at pretty much whatever time of day suited them.

One night we were all leaving the house to go to a party and one of the frat boys was on the deck and he leaned over and started asking questions like, “So you guys are writers?”

I guess someone said something about a party and Raj said “I’ve been wanting to go over there ever since I saw that broken window.”

So, you know where you don’t want your car to die?

Science fiction camp.

We jumped in my car to go pick up the t-shirts and it was dead. I know zero about cars except where to put the gas in and how to take it in for regular service. In my defense, I know about lots of other things.

The gang was gathered out back and I said, “Does anyone know about cars?”

And the answer back was: “No.” Then someone offered keys so we could use his car. My response: I want my car to work.

Chuckles was the one (and Owen) who came out and checked that it was indeed dead. I like how people ask you: Did you leave the lights on?

Why yes, does that matter?

Actually, my lights turn off by themselves.

In the end, I dealt with it myself. After some calls, a jump and some diagnostic running around, the car was given a clean bill of health and hasn’t had any more problems. I suspect a door was left ajar or the dome-light on.

This one is for Shane.

After a couple weeks in Seattle I lost all track of the known universe. I didn’t know the news. I never knew the date. Even if I got the day — I still got confused on the month and even the year. I almost wrote 1998 or September in my notebook a couple of times.

Also my personal hygiene went completely out the window. I could never remember when I bathed last and didn’t really care. I wore the same clothes for days in a row. I wore make-up only 2 times in 6 weeks.

Also, everything in Seattle seems to cost an amount to maximize the accumulation of tons of change. $1.05; $8.26; $11.33. I either didn’t have enough change or a pocket filled with it.

When I got home, Bob and I went to the Clark County Fair to have milkshakes (and baked potatoes, and grilled corn) and see baby pigs, goats, sheep and cows. Also grown-up versions of these things.

We also went through a tent that was like walking into a used car lot. People wanted us to sign up for vinyl siding, some sort of magnetic strip that cured pain (?), loan consolidation and tapes that taught you how to be successful. We visited the Clark College booth and then signed up for a chimney sweep.

We also tried to win giant stuffed animals. Just kidding. What am I going to do with an 8 foot dragon?

But I really wanted to see Queensryche.

Bob’s review is here.

I’m out of steam so I will just say that they were awesome and that this is the first time I’ve seen them live. My favorite album is Rage for Order which I only own on cassette and I’m such a luddite I can still listen to it in my car. I need to get the .mp3 version.

Pritpaul and Shane share a moment

This is the first of what will probably several wrap up posts on Clarion West 2008. I’ve still got a lot to digest and I don’t know where to start so these are notes, probably disjointed, that I’ve kept since my last post.

Every Friday night we had a party which was partly farewell to the departing instructor and partly party-on for the local Clarion West/Sci-fi community and partly for us to network and get to know people in the field.

The week 5 party was in Bellevue. We followed Caren over there so we wouldn’t get lost. (She’s local and also one of the best people to follow when driving because she doesn’t drive too fast and she uses her turn indicator so you can figure out what’s going on.)

Caren in the CW 08 Viking hat and Owen

We left the party at 10:30p on our own and used Kira’s GPS to get home. He’s named Oliver and he has an Australian accent. He doesn’t know Washington so when we had to get on Washington 520 he told us to get on Western Australia 520. He was awesome.

When I first arrived in Seattle I was wigged about driving because I’m a nervous driver to begin with and I hate driving in a place I don’t know and then we added a carload of people who need a ride into the mix. The first weekend I was like a 99 year old neurotic cat lady who lost her medication trying to get where we had to be and park and be on time and keep everyone alive and in one piece. Several of the same people were in my car for the last party, 6 weeks later, and they noticed that I was way more relaxed. However, during the whole 6 weeks there was only one outing where I didn’t have to make a U-turn.

An in the CW 08 Viking hat with Christopher looking on.

It was an interesting emotional arc I went through over those 6 weeks. I had a really hard time the first week. It was tough to get settled in. I could not sleep as everyone who has been keeping up with these posts knows. I never did get the sleep thing going. I started to envy my computer for the ease with which it went to sleep. I took a 2.5 hour nap the day I got home and slept 10.5 hours that night. I did only 8 hours last night and I’m feeling droopy now and may go lay down as soon as I finish this post.

After the first week I settled in and then I felt panicked about leaving because I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever want to leave my new friends and have to go back and work and cook my own food and do chores and not think about writing all the time.

Then by the end of week 5 I was done. I wanted my own bed, my own bathroom and my normal toilet paper. Sysco has the sorriest excuse for paper products in the known Universe. The paper towels also = doodoo. I wanted to take a shower in stall big enough to turn around in. I’m not a big person I could barely shampoo my hair without poking myself in the eye with my elbow. I wanted to be in charge of my own food supply. Boy it’s amazing how quickly good eating habits can go to pot. By the end, potato chips and peanut butter pretzels with red wine as a dinner alternative seemed perfectly acceptable.

I told Kira to try to look cute and she did.

When I prepared for the workshop I brought a bunch of ideas and I brought two stories that already had first drafts just in case I got in a panic, I would have something to fall back on. I got in a panic in week #6. One of the things we were encouraged to do is take risks and try things we’d never tried before. My first 4 stories had the same tone, setting, narrative style, etc. I was perfectly happy with my style but I thought I should at least try something different. Plus I did this structural trick which is too hard to explain here but which basically served to tie one hand behind my back.

I didn’t think I was going to be able to pull it off in time so I thought back to the two stories I’d brought with me. And I didn’t think either of those was good enough. My point being that after 5 weeks of the workshop I already thought I’d improved beyond stories that were barely a few months old. I have a stack of stuff for revisions. I have hope for them all.

In fact, this was a major lesson of the workshop that every story I panicked in the middle and thought was an unfixable disaster and all of them I managed to pull something out to put in front of the class.

Waiting at Chuck’s reading. L to R Front row: Maggie, Kristin, Owen, Caren, Eden, Raj and Tracy. Back Row starting with blue shirt: Jim, Carol, Kira and Douglas (They’re working on stories for Wednesday.)

Chuck Palahnuik was our week 6 teacher and by the time he arrived, I’d lost my ability to be intimidated. A huge contrast to the first week when everything intimidated me.

“I love rules,” he said. Here are some Chuck rules as best as I can decipher from my notebook:

Don’t use “to be” or “to have” — depict with a physical action.

No abstract words (e.g. big, nice, tall, great).

No intangibles (e.g. love, remember, desire, think, consider). Make everything tangible.

No screaming the world through your characters. (e.g. “She heard a bell ring.” Instead: “The bell rang.”)

Submerge your “I’s” This is when you’re writing in the first person you want to use as few “I’s” as you can. Try to convert to Mine or My. This was the only week I did a first person story because I don’t like to write in the first person and it took me HOURS to submerge my I’s. But I got a shout out for doing a good job on that.

This is harder to explain but Chuck wants you to know your character’s area of expertise — a consistent way the character notices things, gestures, reacts to things. Watch what is dramatized through gesture.

Never forward your plot through dialogue. This is the least effective way. The best way is through action/discovery.

Wed the ordinary everyday stuff to the situation in the story. Also using the ordinary to give the drama/horror/whatever more punch. I realize out of context some of this is worthless but I don’t know how to explain better.

Use props and items over and over rather than introducing new items. If the characters shows up on the first page with a set of steak knives, then bring the steak knives back. You don’t have to waste energy explaining new objects. Said another way: “Let objects do a job and not disappear.” Be aware of every object you put in.

Be open to trashing your work at any point in the process. Be willing to take a great idea and trash it and know that better ideas will come.

This isn’t all. He had tons of great stuff and he reinforced it all week during class.

(L to R) Standing in back: Carol, Carlton and Pritpaul. Next row: Kristin, Owen, Christopher, Maggie, Douglas, Raj, Kira, Shane and An; Front Row: Chuckles, Caren, Eden, Tracy, Jim, Me and Theresa.

Quotes from Chuck:

“I wish I could teach you to be a beautiful writer but I can’t. I can teach you how to trick people.”

“Look, they catch the sperm back in their penises. It’s like Cirque du Soleil.”

Chuck’s biggest advice: “Don’t stop writing. Be stubborn and determined.”

Quotes Not From Chuck:

“So you can take that with a huge mountain planet of salt.”

“I don’t know the crustacean anatomy that well.”

“I don’t necessarily agree but I don’t necessarily disagree.”

“It’s not necessarily necessary.”

“I think your audience for this is people who like creepy baby stories.”

“I was waiting for the speculum to be busted out. I don’t necessarily know what that is.”

“Can you build in redundant systems in case of reader failure?”

“I’m unsure what Dr. Vito was doing. Why would he facilitate the unbirthing unless it was the world’s longest plan to get laid?”

“Once a again you have written a powerful story that feels like a kick in the balls. I like this one better, possibly because it was a bit more pleasant kick in the balls.”

Today I went to the bank after our last class.

The bank teller said, “Did you go to a party? You have glitter in your hair.”

“No,” I said. “I just graduated from science fiction camp.”

Pam,

I really wanted a steak. However, I’m glad An is going with you, because I only now realized the yogurt place will likely have a special sale this particular Thursday evening for its favorite customers. My frequent customer card has almost enough stamps on it to earn a free jumbo-sized oatmeal smoothie, so I might as well get that last stamp so I can use my card before returning to Texas.

Douglas

I’m posting this for the benefit of the people who know me well so they can stare agog at the alien creature I’ve become.

For lunch today I had a cheeseburger, french fries and a shake.

Here’s another one for Kira.

I turned in my week 5 story a day early so I would have extra time for what I said was going to be something different for week 6. But I’ve been running in place on the damn thing ever since and I’m not sure what to do. If I ditch it, I have to do it now and see if I can pull something together by Monday. Or I can keep grinding away and hope I have a breakthrough. I’m a little panicked right now.

I brought a couple of back-up stories with me but now I don’t think either of them are good enough. For my story I’ve made a major tone shift from what I usually do and I’m wondering if I can keep the story elements but switch back into my more comfortable tone. I don’t know. I’m tired and hungry and need a shower so I can’t decide right now.

I found new gray hair and I’m at Clarion West, coincidence?

(Kira, I took this photo for you)

I keep going through all my clothes, thinking I’ll discover something I haven’t worn yet. I thought I brought a big selection but I’m tired of all of it.

I went back through my Clarion West posts and noticed I keep writing the same thing over and over about not sleeping and eating. I’ll skip those topics this week except to say that I’ve finally reached the point where I’m tired enough to fall asleep, to need the alarm and to take naps. Today I took an hour and a half-er that will go in the top 5 of my “Best Naps of My Lifetime So Far.”

Sheree kept a pretty easy schedule this week. She talked to us one day about submitting and markets other than speculative fiction. It was nice to have some time to regroup which makes me sad that I haven’t gotten anywhere on my story. argh.

Here are a few quotes not just from this week but the whole workshop:

“The attention to the social structure that makes you the Jane Austen of middle-aged small-town American zombie stories.”

“So, why does he give her life? Is he just a warlock dicking around with nothing else to do on a Sunday night?”

“Loretta’s scalp does a lot of work in this story. It tightens, prickles, and gets cold. I thought she might just need a different shampoo.”

“Understand the slush pile–the native habitat of your manuscript.” (Cory)

My workout regime has almost vanished and other than walking and yoga once or twice a week, my exercise comes from reading and writing. My sleep has improved about 3%. I’ve managed to sleep at least 7 hours – 3 nights since I got here. My bedtime is between 12 and 1 and I wake up before 7a. I’ve woken up before my alarm every single day.

I still love not cooking but I’m at the point where I can’t eat one more deli tray sandwich. A couple of times because I didn’t want to go out and find food I ended up having peanuts and wine for dinner. That’s called an airplane meal. I feel like there’s food everywhere but I don’t eat as much as I normally do. Yesterday I hoovered a huge plate of avocado curry for lunch but then I never got around to eating a proper dinner and instead had Wheat Thins (Big) and cashews.

I’m still totally in love with all my classmates. Here’s what we look like:

Photo: Cory Doctorow

Our class photos are taken on Friday when we’re at our maximum in terms of sleep deprivation and brain deadedness. We’re even cuter in person.

The very back two are Pritpaul and Carlton. That’s Kira taking up two rows and in the blue shirt is Jim and the rest of his row is Christopher, Maggie, Owen, Douglas and Rajan. Then in the black shirt is Caren and rest of her row is An, Carol, Eden and Shane. The next row is Tracy, Theresa, Me and Kristin. And in front is our week #3 instructor Cory. Yes, that’s how he dresses. I should link to everyone’s URLs but I don’t have time right now. I should be writing and reading stories.

In other news I have gone 10 days without doing laundry. I haven’t gone 10 days without doing laundry since the 90’s. I’d try to keep it up and go 2 full weeks but then I’d have to go buy (or recycle, ew) underwear and that seems stupid when it’s so easy to power one single load through so I’ll do laundry tomorrow morning.

Can I mention again how much I love the never ending and completely unabashed nerdery? I’m already out as a nerd and live with one but it’s amazing to be in a house with so many of people that out nerd me on a regular basis.

Okay, here are a few writing things from Connie:

Only tell what the reader needs to know when they need to know it.

You probably won’t know exactly where your story starts until you end it. You need to start at the last possible moment. If you’re finding you have a lot of flashbacks, you probably need to move the beginning back.

When you’re working on your story you want things to go wrong. Take any situation and apply Murphy’s law.

Read Les Miserables and study for how the story is built and look for reversals and obstacles. Skip the boring parts.

The perfect title will mean one thing at the beginning and something different at the end. Or else go for something evocative.

When you’re looking for ideas: try to connect things not normally connected. Read stuff no one else is reading. Read tons of non-fiction.

She also told us: “You are never allowed to do a director’s cut.”

One more quote from the weekend:

Me – “We either need to go home or put some pants on.”
Kira – “If those are the choices, we need to reconsider our options.”

Wow. I can’t believe I’ve been here a month.

Another great week. Connie Willis is awesome. I have 10 trillion things to do today so I don’t have time for a long-winded post. Perhaps 1 day next week.

All of a sudden its getting too late for all the things I planned on doing like visit friends and try certain restaurants. Oh well. I’ll be in Seattle again.

A couple of quick Connie advice items:

If you’re going to do public appearances always be prepared for wardrobe malfunctions.

Never send your classmates clippings of their bad reviews in your local paper.

There were some great quotes this week but I don’t have them handy so I’ll give two of mine:

“You’ve got an alien in a thong and a talking woodchuck. It didn’t bother me that Dylan Thomas was there.”

“He seemed awfully easy going for an overlord.”

I’m frittering away my few moments of free time this week, writing this post. I hope I don’t regret it later.

Last weekend Bob went to see Stevie Wonder in Auburn and I drove down to meet him on Saturday and we hung out for about 24 hours.

I can’t explain how strange it was to be with him again for the first 1/2 hour. This workshop is such a full immersion meal deal that it’s like a I’m in a completely different life. So going leaving this and seeing Bob felt surreal at first.

This doesn’t mean I wasn’t very happy to see him.

Bob’s super power is finding weird motels and this was no exception. It was sort-of in a Lowe’s parking lot. We had a view of pallets of bark-dust from our window. It was clean, comfortable and totally low end. The continental breakfast was a basket of muffins on the check-in counter. But the staff was very nice and the location decent so it worked out fine.

We had a big lunch. It seems like we eat all the time at the workshop but at the same time I don’t think I’m eating as much as I usually do and I was super hungry.

We went to Emerald Downs (we’ve never been to the horse races before) and we had a blast. It’s funny to me when I’m in situations where I don’t know what I’m doing, sometimes I’m very timid and sometimes I don’t care. This was an I don’t care. We went to the program booth and said, “We need a program,” and they said, “Which one?” and we said: “We don’t know. We’re new.” And we did that all afternoon. “How do I place a bet?” “What’s a superfecta?” and “When do I get to ride?”

I picked horses purely by their name or how pretty I thought they were. I did not come out ahead. I also didn’t wear sunscreen and got nice pink shoulders.

Later we went to dinner. Bob had found a Greek/Italian place but when he phoned, the message said they were on vacation. We did a drive-by anyway, just-in-case, and they were open and he practically did back flips.

After dinner we did a quick drive around Muckleshoot, the view of Rainier was incredible. We stopped in at the casino. I have been in at least 20 Indian casinos so I didn’t think I could be surprised but this place blew my mind. It was as big as Texas and went on and on with machines and tables and people and restaurants and a bar with a band so horrific they were awesome.

Fun time. I will also report that I slept 7.5 hours — my longest night of sleep since I left home. Then I returned home Sunday by Noon and worked on my story until 1:30am. I had a hard time with my story for this week and was tempted to bag it and not turn anything. My deadline is 9pm on Monday and I worked all afternoon and by 7pm I knew it was at least decent enough that I wouldn’t be humiliated. I should explain that I hold myself to high standards. My classmates will speak out on what’s not working but their feedback is very kind.

Here’s a parting moment with Bob:

B: D’oh!
Me: Do you need my help?
B: I put the cap to my butt creme on wrong
Me: I love being married to an old guy.
B: It’s only going to get funnier.

This was a gnarly week. It reminded me of being at home. Every time I thought I’d have a couple of hours to write, something else ended up taking longer than expected or something unexpected ate up the time. I’m frazzled about getting my story done for next week (due: Mon 9pm). The story I’m working is not coming together very well and my protagonist is still foggy. I wish I had more time to sort it out.

I still love my classmates and being here but I’m still not sleeping more than 5 or 6 hours a night. I find it hard to believe that I am still functioning and reasonably good humored for me. As I write this I’m with Bob and sleeping at a motel, here’s hoping for a good night.

Cory did lectures every day that were for the most part short and everything he said was totally useful. I’ve picked out a few highlights.

He said almost the same thing that Mary said which basically is: you can’t judge the quality of your work by the way you feel about it when you’re doing it. If you develop a habit of writing every day, no matter how you feel, you will find when you look back that you can’t really tell which days were good and which were bad.

I think this is something that I’ve sensed on my own but it would have been nice to learn this 20 years ago.

Cory recommended getting rid of any ceremonial writing habits you need: e.g. the perfect music, a clean house, smoking or drinking connected to writing. You need to be able to do your work anywhere, anytime.

He also talked about ideas and how it’s all stuff you pull out of everyday life and how often the idea that you start with is nothing like what you end up with. The idea is what gets you started. This was true for the story I turned in this week. I had a vision of what I wanted to do and I reset a couple of times but the story I ended up with had very few of the elements that I had envisioned with the original idea. The story involves time travel and Indian bingo, if you’re wondering.

Someone asked him what to do if you’re halfway through your story and you hate it. Here’s another one to embroider on a pillow: “In my experience there is no story that you don’t hate halfway through.”

Here are a couple of hacks:

When you end for the day, finish mid-sentence knowing exactly where you want to go. Those several words you need to finish will help lead you to the next. It’s called leaving yourself a hint.

The first few paragraphs of a story are generally throat clearing and there’s no problem with that but you need to find the real spot where the story begins. This is exactly what happened to me last week. I was testing out a couple of ideas for next week’s story and I wrote about 800 words of each and thought they were both doodoo. But later I realized that the next scene in one of the ideas, was where the story should start and I’m ready to dive back in.

We’ve had some good advice from Cory and other sources about not getting bogged down in research. They suggest making a notation to check on something later and keep writing so you sustain the energy of the story. This is good for me because I let myself get distracted by research.

I had a spectacular adventure last weekend. Someone organized a night out for sushi last weekend and I don’t dislike sushi but the idea wasn’t singing to me. I found out that only one of my classmates had also opted out of sushi and I suggested we go find a steak. He thought that was a fantastic idea.

After some research I decided we should go to El Gaucho which is a steakhouse for rich people or people with expense accounts (as if those two aren’t the same). I thought we should have an adventure and we did. Mink Lined Booth. I am not kidding you. I rubbed against it for the entire meal. I had a filet mignon and I ate every bit and didn’t wuss out at my normal half portion. (Some might laugh at this because it was the smallest steak on the menu but whatever.) The entire evening was a highlight but I’ll mention one other part which was when I was looking for the restroom and this hot waiter guy came over and offered me his arm and escorted me to the ladies’ room. Alas, the special service ended there.

***

Here’s a tidbit about the thefts. Shortly after we discovered that laptops, and Pritpaul lost a bag of clothes, were missing a police officer came and nothing like a room full of writers to explain what happened. “There’s a chair in my room, a big one, beige and there’s a bureau next to it and some of my clothes were on the chair and papers and books on the bureau.” It went on like this, lots of concrete details that might be splendid in story writing but completely irrelevant to how the criminal got into the house and stole people’s stuff.

Two final items

1 – I am using a word processing program called Pages by Apple and I think it sucks ass. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m unfamiliar with it so if I just want to write a footnote I have to spend 10 minutes cycling through menus or that it genuinely sucks ass but I emailed myself some back up files to my gmail account and then later downloaded one to see how it looked and I couldn’t open it. I guess I have to export it into a file format that I can later open? I’m no rocket scientist and bad at things like software but if this understanding of how it works is correct, I’d like to say to Apple: Frack you.

2 – I did a quick vanity check of my stats and one of the phrases in a search engine that found me is: “Pam’s Butt Stinks.”

***

Quotes:

“That last [bit] is just mustache twirling.”

“Proof of God, great. What about my problems?”

“I needed the bingo to do something else.”