Wow.

Another week. 1/3 of the way through. Scary stuff.

At the dinner-table here, when someone makes an inanely obvious statement, they are passed a green plastic frog dubbed "The Obvious Frog." I suspect that I probably deserve to hold it when I type the sentence, "Maureen McHugh is an incredible teacher." Its true, though, and good to say now and then, obvious though it may be. Good for the soul. She is. Also a very, very fun, funny and laid-back human being in general.

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So I went through my first critique on Monday. Almost every story I've ever written has gone through some critique of one sort or another, I'm familiar with the process, but...

Being critiqued is one thing. Being gang-critiqued by sixteen sharp and perceptive people, and then by one very sharp and perceptive person is a whole different thing. It's not that it was harsh or negative, or even that it wasn't helpful. It was. It's just the sensory over-load gets to be a bit much. A classmate when we were at the cafe later that afternoon sympathetically dubbed it "the great cleansing flame." Hell, it would be that even without Maureen at the end.

She said some really nice things about the story ("could be the Jewish 'Salem's Lot'"), explained exactly how it could be fixed on a structural and dramatic level in a startlingly clear and convincing way and basically said that it should be expanded out to a 12-20,000 word novella. My heart sort of sank at that last part--good God, I was so pleased with myself for bringing it in under 5,000 for once--but I'll have to think that through post-Clarion.

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I switched with some one with a Sunday deadline for this week, so I go through the Great Cleansing Flame again on Tuesday. In the hothouse Clarion environment, I'm finding it easier than ever to come up with premises and harder than ever to execute them.

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Some random things I learned this week, some of it from Maureen, some of it from observation and some from conversations with others.

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Describing the taste of good Scotch (an Islay, specifically, in context) to someone who's not familiar with it is harder than it sounds.

"Peaty" doesn't pass muster, since while it's intensely evocative of taste to me, it doesn't mean anything to anyone without the vocabulary acquired through drinking a lot of it and spending a lot of time talking about it.

Talk of fire coursing through your mouth is too cliched to connect on a visceral level.

"Smoky" is OK in a pinch, but ultimately the judges favor:

"It tastes like a campfire smells."

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"moon, teeth, vicious"

Don't ask.

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Some ideas that sound cute and whimsical are deeply disturbing if you think them through on a literal level.

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First person, present-tense recollected is wicked cool if you can pull it off.

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Wednesdays are Sangria night at the house.

This is a Good Thing.

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Hanging out + Writing + Critiquing - Basic Time-Management Skills = Sleep Deprivation

This is a Bad Thing.

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Not every sentence in every story has to be from a point of view. You can have a narrorator if you want. It's not against the law.

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"moon, teeth, vicious"

Seriously...