So it's over.

The first week of writing, learning, ocassional drunkenness, intense discussion and more or less incessant hanging-out has come to a close.

What to say about that?

Hmm....

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Well, first things first, I've finished my first story that I've written here. It's in the first batch of stories to be critiqued (on Monday next), so I had to get it send off to Kinko's by Thursday ad 9 and iit was passed out to everyone on Friday. Since Paul Park opted to have us do a series of writing exercises in the first week rather than going through the submission stories in class, these will be the first stories to be critiqued in the standard format. The writing exercises were read aloud anonymously each day, which was followed by a sort of free-wheeling general discussion, so there's a sense in which the standard Clarion stuff will start on Monday.

My story was a 4,000 word affair called "After Sunset," and it takes place in the immediate aftermath of a vampire apocalypse, which my classmate Gord has shortened into a single word--"vampocalypse," a word that has been so often referred to I'm afraid it might end up on the t-shirt at the end.

Yikes.

Out late at the pub one night, he dared me to actually call it "Vampocalypse Now," which I accepted on the condition that he title one of his stories something equally ridiculous (its his story, so I won't say what here). Suffice to say that he kept his part of the bargain, but I couldn't bring myself to use that title in the version I turned in to the whole group. I did put together one print-out, which I gave him as a sort of limited edition, that actually used that title, further hammed up to "Vampocalypse Now! A Wooden Stake Driven Through the Heart of Darkness."

In any case, whatever its called, I finished it at about 4:30 Thursday morning, enjoyed a brief nap, went to class and then did a bunch of revisions on Thursday afternoon. On Friday I didn't write, and on Saturday I started a new story, which is not about vampires, and is in fact sci-fi, albeit of a somewhat horror-tinted variety. The working title is "Eye Meat, A Fever Dream of the Singularity."

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Paul Park is an amazing teacher.

If I start going on about the specifics, I'll ramble on forever, so I'll leave it at that. Suffice to say that I've learned so much this week that I almost wish I could go home for about six months, try to absorb it all and incorporate it into my writing, and then come back and do Maureen McHugh (week 2).

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He's also a great reader--both in the reading he did from "the Tourmaline" and the stuff he read aloud in class, he's got a great knack for it. Frequently, over the course of the week, he read us aloud stories by other people that demonstrate various points he was trying to make about characterization, setting, plot pacing and so on. One of these was "A Dry Quiet War" by Tony Daniel. While most of them were pretty good, that story in particular utterly blew me away, and everyone else I've talked to had the same reaction. It's now probably one of my favorite short stories. It is, essentially, a very familiar western movie archetype (returning soldier tries to live a normal life and is pulled back into a life of violence) but executing astoundingly well and merged into an awe-inspiring vision of cosmic tragedy, with the western and sf elements fusing into a whole that is far more than the sum of its parts.

It's available on line here.