Saturday, October 6

Let's see. I got two stories back out in the mail and that means I have nine stories out there. Soon I'll break the double digits!

And for my hour today I worked on the collaboration with Nina and Leslie. Otherwise, I haven't been faithful with my hour a day. I'll see if I can change that this week.

More later.



Wednesday, October 10

Nina and Leslie have my section of our collaboration. I think the story can be expanded. Leslie is writing the ending, so soon we'll see what we need to do with story. Hopefully it can be whipped into shape.

Other writing calls to me. I have story that could be in the mail real soon if I focus on it each day. Perhaps I can reach ten stories in the mail on Tuesday!





Tuesday, October 16

Things are a bit out of whack with the Wordos right now. Last Tuesday, the bookstore (Tsunami Books) where we have our workshop had some other event scheduled for the evening. We had the choice of not giving up our space on Tuesday, but the bookstore has been good to us so we wanted to be easy to work with. We gave up our Tuesday there and the Oltions said we could have the workshop at their house.

Great! Except Jerry came down with the flu and he didn't want anyone catching the bug, so he cancelled the workshop. No workshop last Tuesday, so that felt a little weird. Btw, Kathy also got the flu soon after that, but I hear the both of them are much better now.

As for tonight, Leslie What is giving a reading at the local library. We decided to switch the workshop to Wednesday night this week only, allowing those who want to go to Leslie's reading.

Again, it feels weird knowing I'm not going to workshop on this Tuesday night. Although I'll see most of the people I normally would, because I am going to Leslie's reading. It will probably feel strange tomorrow. Tuesday night workshop on Wednesday. I'm sure I'll make the mistake of thinking of Thursday as Wednesday.

Next week things will be back in order.

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Over in Trey's journal, he's been writing about loss of enthusiasm while writing fiction.

I think it's part of the cycle of a writer's developement. Maybe, just maybe, more so for introverts. I'm an introvert and can only speak for myself.

I remember a loss of enthusiasm or you can say I lost belief in myself early in '93, months before I went to Clarion that summer. I started to write stories where I questioned the point my stories and the ideas didn't seem original. My output grinded to a halt.

I went to Clarion and I didn't write much there. I had written more when I was taking fiction workshop classes in college. Clarion was still a great experience but I wonder what more I could have gotten out of it if I wasn't in my own way.

Clarion was my first experience with round-robin critiquing. Everyone critiques verbally in round-robin. The critique works its way around the circle, from one side of the author to the other. In college, I was in workshops where it was open discussion. You didn't have to say anything. I rarely did.

At Clarion, on the first day, I was to the left of the first story to be critiqued. I was to give the first verbal critique. In a way, it was my first verbal critique ever. Yes, I was put on the spot.

I stammered. I stuttered. I lost my train of thought. I imagined I was damn near incoherent.

I continued through Clarion, critiquing stories verbally, flailing most of the time.

Then I moved to Eugene and In the workshop here I've spent a lot of time stammering and losing my train of thought. I hated the silence when I stopped speaking between sentences--it meant all attention was on me. I quickly learned that if I read my notes on the manuscript, I could verbally critique better. I had found a crutch.

Through the years of critiquing and listening to critiques, I grew confident in my critical eye. I learned to be calm during that silence between sentences, allowing myself to gather up my thoughts to put into words.

Today, I'm more likely to breeze through my critique without any stammering and I now add new thoughts verbally to my written comments with no problem.

I'm probably way off topic here. After all, I was talking about losing enthusiasm with writing fiction, not critiquing. Well, I think there's a connection.

Through workshops, I learned what works in the story and what doesn't. Maybe more importantly, I learned what I like in a story and what I don't like. And through workshopping my own stories, I learned my own strong and weak points.

In short, I had gathered knowledge. Knowledge is power. If the belief in myself that I had lost was actually fear of the unknown--can I do this, will I fail--then my found-again excitement and enthusiasm is a breakdown of that fear. I have acquired some tools to combat the fear.

I'm not "free" of myself YET. Readers here will notice I'm not that successful with dares. I still can't write a story in a day. Not even in a weekend. But I can achieve gains if I write everyday and beware of my archenemy inertia.

When it comes to the enthusiam, I think, for me, it also comes to choice. I've become acutely aware of myself choosing the safe road, the road of least resistance. I have chosen that road most of my life because of habitual conditioning. I can talk of ambition and how baby steps are fine but I'd rather be a giant baby all I want, but there's a part of me that wants to sit back and watch time slip on by. Because it's easier. It's the safe route. I'm guarenteed not to get hurt. I learned that at a very young age and the realization of this didn't come to me until a few years ago.

Every damn day I have to be aware of the choice I'm making. Am I checking e-mail before writing because I'm stopping myself? Am I too focused on my flaws? It has come down to this: I need to know when I'm procrastinating and not living in the moment.

The second part of this journal entry started with talking about Trey's journal entry about loss of enthusiasm. The focus switched to me because I only know Trey through e-mail and journal entries. I know myself better--isn't that the blessing and the curse of an introvert? I hope talking about my own enthusiam is helpful to Trey. And I'm not done talking about it. I'll touch on this subject again because it is helpful to me too.







Thursday, October 18


Leslie attracted a good crowd for her reading at the library on Tuesday. Since that was workshop night, and we did not have a workshop, there was close to a dozen of us Wordos in the audience.

She read an essay about her experience presenting a Nebula award at last year's banquet. Funny as only Leslie can be. I remember one passage where she talked about being humbled speaking in front of legends like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. Leslie took note of Harlan smiling at her as she stepped up to the podium.

Leslie also read her short story "Sweet And Sour Tongue."

Many of us went out to High Street afterwards.

Speaking of Leslie. And Nina. And I. Our collaboration. Leslie said she'll be able to write her end section of the story any day now. I'm patient. It took me a week to get going on the middle of that story. This three way collaboration seems easy so far. We'll see how the next draft goes . . .






Sunday, October 21

Last night, artist Alan Clark had a Halloween party at his home. We played games for prizes. One such game (to make us look at his paintings, Alan said) was a scavenger hunt. He has his paintings hung throughout the house and we looked for things in the paintings. Things like fourteen streaks of rain and six cannibalistic bums and two weirdos with hands in their mouths. It took me a long time to find at least one item from the list and then I was finding all sorts of items. This game was fun. I wasn't even close to winning. The three winners all got books.

I stayed over at his house until 2:45 am. Melody (Alan's wife) went off to bed a hour or two before then and Alan, Marti McKenna, and I stayed up talking. Alan Clark may focus on the art and illustration, but he's also a writer and basically a story teller, period.

The Clarks tell me they should see me more often than just at the Halloween parties and conventions. I'm going to make sure I see them more often.

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The Mad Marvin will return. He's just in hiding at the moment. I'll bring him back out in the future. This quarter I'm working on getting stories in the mail.

And this weekend I got a rejection from Talebones, so that brings my stories circulating down to eight. I gotta pick another market for Recall




Wednesday, October 24

Another number to the rejection meter and now I only have seven stories circulating the markets.

Alas, by e-mail, I found out a story of mine submitted on March 24 to Realms Of Fantasy has been declined. Bummer. I need to get a new story out to ROF soon.

I also found out Shawana McCarthy won't be at World Fantasy in Montreal. Bummer yet again. I still haven't met the editor who bought my first story.

And yes, I'm still going to World Fantasy. I've got my passport too, just to get back into the United States. I'm not sure what the attendance will be, but I'm looking forward to the Con.





Sunday, October 28

Ya know, I saw October 23 coming and I didn't write a journal entry about it. That's the anniversary date of my arrival in Oregon. On that date in 1993, I saw rock faces of the Columbia River Gourge painted rose from the rising sun. Hours later, I drove my '77 Mercury Monarch into Eugene. The car was weighted down by three of us in the front seat, the back seat and trunk filled with our belongings, plus a U-haul cartop carrier on the roof of the car.

It was a Saturday when we arrived in town. I went to my first Tuesday night workshop that very next Tuesday.

Within the first week here, one friend went back to Minnesota. The other lasted until early March of '94.

It was all because of Clarion in the summer of '93 that made me decide on moving to Eugene. There are professional writers there! Must be a great place to learn how to be a professional writer!

Eugene and its writing community history is so familiar to me now it seems like I've been here forever.

After six years here (almost seven) I made my first sale. I'm new. I've only just begun.

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The Wordos had Career Day on Saturday. We met at India Palace in Salem. Two reasons for the Salem location: One, for the great Indian food: two, it's a fine middle ground for the Porland and Eugene Wordos. Well, Devon lives in Salem, so she was the closes of us all.

Career Day was just an opportunity removed from regular workshop time for our seasoned professionals to talk about career building and planning. With twenty of us seated around a long square table, it looked like a regular Tuesday night workshop. We heard from writers such as Bruce Holland Rogers, Nina Hoffman, Leslie What, Jerry and Kathy Oltion, and Ray Vukcevich.

Leslie was the organizer and moderator of this. She had a great list of questions to ask myself about goals. I believe she has the questions written in a Speculations: Rumormill topic. I don't have the link right now. It's quite a list of questions and I need to sit down and think about those.

I've seen Leslie in teacher mode and I think she'll make a great instructor at Clarion next summer.

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I sent off my application and submission story to The Oregon Coast Professionl Writers Workshop. That's the two week workshop taught by Dean and Kris. Thanks to Eric Witchey, he pushed me to get the application in asap. I didn't realize, and should have, there is a pool of writers they know that are interested in this and there are only twelve student slots for the workshop. There will be a waiting list. There is an application process and many of the writers they sent the applications to are certainly qualified.

I liked what I sent. There were some questions to answer and I answered them honestly and I think i articulated my thoughts well. I didn't get all neurotic in my answers. My story "Pieces Of Us From The Earth" is one of my better ones, I think.

It feels good to get the application out. It's out of my hands now. I don't have to worry about it.

One of the questions on the application was "Why do you want to attend this workshop?" It would be another Clarion for me. A Clarion for the modern me. I need a Clarion type workshop now, more than I did in '93. Things are clearer. I know a little bit more about critiquing stories. I know what I look for in a story. I have a vision of the stories I want to tell. I know myself better and all the walls and blocks I throw up when I'm unsure of myself.

I feel an anxious ambition to do the workshop. I probably felt the same way before Clarion. But what I know of myself now, I think the two week coast workshop could be more important than Clarion.

We'll see . . .