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On Clarion and Privilege and the Internets

Neil Gaiman has been catching a lot of flack for this tweet.

a tweet by Nail Gaiman

People are, understandably, saying that the equation clarion + student = pro writer is not the only way you can reach that particular sum, and they are absolutely correct, although the drama is — as is often the case on the Internet — a bit hyperbolic.

This is the fact of F&SF (and any other genre) writing — there are writers disadvantaged by gender, or race, or sexuality or other physical circumstances. But there’s also a big group — which contains a disproportionate number of those differing physically — affected by economic issues.

Here are two simple facts:

  • If you have the economic means to attend a workshop like Clarion West, Clarion, Kevin J. Anderson’s Superstars, the workshops given by Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, etc, it can give you a career advantage, primarily in terms of forming a support network of peers, although there are a number of other plusses. The degree of advantage depends on both luck and how willing you are to make the most of the time at the workshop.
  • If you have the economics means to attend a convention, it can give you a career advantage, primarily in terms of industry contacts. The degree of advantage depends on both luck and how willing you are to make the most of the time at the convention.

But there is nothing being taught at a workshop that you cannot pick up by yourself, given time, though it is true that workshop teaching can often be inspirational, effective, and sometimes entirely life-changing.

Being able to attend a convention or workshop is not just a matter of being able to pay the substantial fee. It’s being able to travel and most importantly — it’s being able to take time away from both work and family. That’s an incredible privilege.

I came through Clarion West in 2005. My instructors were (in chronological order) Octavia Butler, Andy Duncan, L. Timmel DuChamp, Connie Willis, Gordon Van Gelder, and Michael Swanwick. I am a pretty convivial person, and remain close friends with the majority of my instructors. I also was part of a talented class that included E.C. Myers (winner of the Andre Norton Award for his book Fair Coin), Rachel Swirsky (frequent nominee and winner of things) and goddamn Ann Leckie, whose Ancillary series has set the bar for success so high the rest of us are just going, “Yeah right.”

I was able to do this because I had a partner willing to let me quit my job and try writing for a while. A decade later, I have yet to make half of what my Microsoft salary was through writing; I continue to persevere. If I had a family to support, it would have been incredibly difficult to do it — perhaps simply impossible. It gave me an advantage, and it also kicked me in the ass to be productive, because I was intensely aware of just how lucky I was.

Neil is — obviously — not saying you can’t be a writer without such a workshop. Note that Gaiman himself did not go to such a workshop, as far as I know. He is, though, enthused about the workshop (as befits a former instructor) and aware of what a big advantage it can prove.

But it also depends on what you make of it. In any class there will be those who persevere and those who fall by the wayside. Of the people in my writing workshop from decades ago at Hopkins, only a handful are still writing. Ten years later, a few members of my Clarion West class seem to have dropped off the face of the planet.

You have to want it hard enough to work for it, no matter what. You have to be willing to make time for writing words down and thinking about the order and what happens when you rearrange them. You have to have a hide hard enough to survive the day when there’s three rejections plus a nice fan letter whose writer is confused and thinks you’re someone else with a similar name. You have to be willing to trim away some bullshit activities and substitute stuff that lets you work at your craft, like reading or taking online classes or whatever. That’s the part you need.

A while back, I read someone saying that we all have someone who gives us permission to call ourselves a writer. For me, it was John Barth: sitting in his sunlit Hopkins office, a bookcase framing his smiling, balding head talking about my stories and a fellowship he wanted me to apply for is something I will always remember. But that is less important than giving yourself permission to call yourself a writer. It’s harder — it requires a certain amount of adamant ego and determination — but that permission can — and must — come from inside as well as externally. That’s the most important component, and you can do it with or without the aid of a workshop.

TL;DR version? Ain’t nothing going to substitute for hard work. Why aren’t you writing?

Later addendum: Most of the workshops do offer some scholarships; if there’s one you’re interested in, I do suggest asking about what financial aid is available.

90 Responses

  1. Spot on, Cat. My own take (five-plus years after Clarion and no real sales to speak of) is that it’s not necessary, but it sure as hell helps. As for the present outrage, my own working hypothesis is that most folks are full of angst and rage at things they can’t (or won’t) do much about, so when an outside target arises, they are all too happy to direct their vitriol at it as a way of venting some of the pressure. OMMV.

    Also, in case anyone’s interested, I also blerged about this particular kerfuffule, at http://wp.me/p1BIcx-j0

    Reply

    1. ” my own working hypothesis is that most folks are full of angst and rage at things they can’t (or won’t) do much about”

      This seems pretty on the mark to me.

      Reply
  2. Pingback: On Neil Gaiman, Clarion and Writing Workshops |
  3. Pingback: What I Wrote in 2016 and The List of Award Eligibility Posts I’ve Found | The World Remains Mysterious

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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

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Early December Stuff

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In recent news, I’ve got some stuff in recent bundles. The VanderMeer Winter Mix Tape Bundle includes The Bestiary, which holds my piece, Tongues-of-Moon Toad, and The Other Half of Sky, edited by Athena Andreadis, and containing space opera piece “Dagger and Mask.” The Holiday Fantasy Bundle includes my Christmas R-rated story, “He Knows When You’re Awake” in Naughty or Nice, edited by Jennifer Brozek

At the same time the current HumbleBundle holds one of the things that I’m happiest about from this year, Ad Astra: The SFWA 50th Anniversary Cookbook, along with a lot of other great stuff.

I talked about reading the classics in an Another Word piece for Clarkesworld Magazine. What prompted me to write it? Because there’s been a lot of discussion of the classics as though pointing out problems with a piece is the same as crossing it off the list of stuff to be read. I talked about the decision to change the World Fantasy Award bust back in January for Clarkesworld and emphasized that yeah, you can read H.P. Lovecraft and yet not want to accept an award bearing his face, and moreover, your objections could be pretty complicated and nuanced.

Today I’m finishing up the draft of the third in my series on teaching for the SFWA Bulletin. Part one was about prepping to teach and Part two about teaching, while this last part talks about what to do afterward and how to keep doing it if you find you enjoy teaching. Freelancers, the SFWA Bulletin pays ten cents a word and is actively looking for material, as is the SFWA Blog, which pays six cents a word.

Just turned in my edits for “Red in Tooth and Cog,” which appears early next year in a market that’s been a longtime goal of mine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Writing wise, I continue assembling Hearts of Tabat into coherent shape. I’m also finishing up a bespoke story, tentatively titled “She Eats My Heart Entire,” for an anthology and I’ve got a couple of others I want to finish up this month, including a Christmas piece that I should get drafted today and at least a couple for the Patreon campaign.

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Social Networking: How Much Is Not Enough?

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Social networking - is it all just navel-gazing and blogging about blogging? Or are we actually building connections that will matter?
So one of my resolutions, post-Confusion, was to be better about social networking and spreading word of my projects. Towards that end I’ve been posting scraps of the WIP on a daily basis (and plan to do so until it’s done or someone buys it), doing more writing for the SFWA blog (just finished up a review, and I’ve got interviews scheduled with authors Myke Cole and Jason Heller) as well as a series I proposed on Thomas Burnett Swann for the Tor.com blog, and — in keeping with my belief that one of the best ways to promote yourself is to promote other people — trying to mention interesting stuff on various social networks.

So – it’s weird, but they all have such a different vibe for me that I find myself posting different stuff depending on what the network is, and this, I think, leads to a certain amount of inefficiency and wasted time, which since in theory I am a fiction writer more than I am a blogger is something I should curb.

I’ve pretty much abandoned Livejournal, and I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing. I should probably set up a widget to collect G+ posts or Twitter tweets on there. Google+ is great (and my favorite, truth be told), but not everyone is on there. I use it a LOT for class stuff.

Facebook is where almost all of my family members are (and where I get most of my baby pictures, between certain people named Corwin, Dresden, Leeloo, and Mason) and it’s also where I seem to talk about politics the most. Twitter and I have an on-again, off-again relationship, and I always feel like I’m missing parts of the conversation on it in the BLAST of stuff from the firehose of tweets constantly crawling up my page. And then there’s this blog as well.

One of the things hampering me in setting up a good system is a feeling that too much social interaction can be a bad thing — that people will unsubscribe if there’s too much, and it seems as though that varies from one network to another. I like Jay Lake’s Link Salad — and maybe one thing to do is collect the links and stuff posted on other networks to present here in a weekly entry. Is that something people who read this blog regularly — or sporadically — would find useful?

And should I be posting the same stuff on all the networks? I took a look at what I’d posted over the course of one day on FB, Twitter, and G+ and while some stuff got crossposted, there wasn’t a lot of overlap.

Part of the reason I’ve never cottoned to Twitter is that it feels like you’re shouting all the time. I like being able to like or + a comment to show I read and appreciated it without feeling like I have to say something. And conducting a conversation on the latter two feels like…a conversation, while Twitter feels like shouting across a room of people who aren’t particularly interested (or else are overly so) interested in the conversation.

What do you think – how much social networking is too much? Do you stick to a particular network or employ the same scattershot approach?

Enjoy this advice about social media for writers and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.

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