Just one week left.

My God.

I'm going to miss everyone terribly.

Except for exactly one person who I secretly hate.

If you're reading this, yes, I'm talking about you.

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(Takes a beat.)

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This week's crit was pretty lukewarm, but was probably deserved. I think (hope?) I can see steady improvement every week for the first three stories, but the fourth story (the one this week) represented a fairly shallow skimming of the waters of imagination. Comes of burning out the circuits on "Sing, Goddess", not writing for a week and having to write something on Thursday. On the plus side, at least a few people said they thought that the characters were best developed of any story I've written so far, so that element might be improving even if the overall product was shaky.

This week I did a very short (1600 word) dark humor piece (with some subtle meta-Clarion references) entitled "David and His Zebra." Should be interesting to see people's reactions, but it was fun to write.

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At the last party, I got to shake hands with David Levine, who's on the roll of honor of people who made this possible when I needed financial help.

Seems worth mentioning.

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A bunch of us decided to come to this weeks party in face paint, since one of our number is a professional face-painter. Right now, I look not unlike a member of KISS, but at least I have strength in numbers.

Actually, what I've got on my face is bat wings with blood dripping from them. I told the artist to be paint whatever she liked, and I guess it seemed appropriate to my persona. I like it.

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Despite how amazing the workshop experience has been, during ocassional forays out of the house I've been pretty down certain aspects of Seattle as a city...the jaywalking fascism (they'll actually turn on the sirens and pull over pedestrians, even if there's no cross-traffic), the smoking ban (daddy knows best!), the smug-yuppie vibe...and, yes, the fact that contrary to pervasive Seattle-ite propaganda, the coffee is nothing special.

As such, to help me appreciate the city aspect of the experience, I decided to sit down and think through things that I actually like about Seattle as a city. (Again, the city not the workshop, which has been great.) On careful thought, there turned out to really be quite a lot of things. Here are the top 5, in no particular order:

(1) The troll--there's this gigantic stone statue under a bridge of the top part of a troll emerging from the ground and crushing a car (which is a real car contributed to the project) under its hand. It makes a pretty awe-inspiring visual up-close, and its fun to see little kids playing on it. Sort of suggestive of a high fantasy kind of setting, where a troll wandered into the village one day a hundred years ago but stayed up after sunrise and got turned to stone...and is, a century later, just a tourist attraction. Awesome.

(1.5) The same neighborhood has an actual, full-sized Lenin statue. Some wealthy Seattle-ite bought it in the former USSR and shipped it back. It now stands guard outside a tavern, its shoulder hunched as it Stares Nobly Into the Future.

(2) The bookstores, while probably nothing you couldn't find in other major cities, are incomparably better than anything you can easily find out in the provinces. I'm too tight on both cash and suitcase to be taking advantage of the opportunity to load up on books, but I've spent a lot of time drooling.

(3) The total and utter absence of Bush apologists is refreshing, although its probably best not to think about what they did with them all. (Is there a crpyt somewhere with all the local Republican dumped in it?)

(4) The scenery. Mountains. Cliffs. Space needle. The Pacific Ocean. All this makes for a really impressive skyline-view, and ocean breezes make for nice summer weather.

(5) Obviously, the biggest elephant in the room of this list is the SF community. East Lansing may have Clarion East (for the moment anyway), but it certainly has no Science Fiction Museum. Or a community of speculative fiction writers living in and around the city year round. I've gotten sloshed with people at parties who were names on book jackets to me before the workshop. Everybody knows everybody, people are friendly and open, and it's really cool.