Friday, March 1

I'm ready to leave for Lincoln City and, naturally, I feel like I forgot something.

I've had some money woes the last couple of days. I have buyer's remorse when considering the refrigerator. My taxes finally came, but three hundred dollars less than what I was expecting--It had to do with that refund everyone got last summer.

So today, on the day I'm leaving to spend two weeks focusing on writing in a little pressure cooker on the coast, I was stressing about money as I packed. Once I hit the road, I'm shaking this funk off. After all, I do start work again full time on Monday, March 18. It will be a tough summer paying things off, but I think I can handle it. I might be in danger of not going to World Fantasy Con. Seasonal lay-off next year? I don't know. Time will tell.

I hope my story sent to WOTF last quarter does good.

I was cleaning out my e-mail--I'm such an e-mail pack rat--and I came across something Eric Witchey wrote in an e-mail to the Wordos listserver. Something like, life happens if you write or don't, so you might as well write. How nice.

I'm happy with my word count for February. It kicked ass compared to January. My starting and abandoning various stories has me worried. Whatever stories I write in the next two weeks, they must be done. They don't have to be good, they just have to be done. How will I get anything out of this workshop if I don't?

Like Rockaway, there will a synergy at this workshop. Twelve of us under one roof working hard.

I'll update this journal when I get back on March 17Th and give a report on the two weeks.

Hey, I think I'm shaking off that funk already.






Sunday, March 24

Okay, I'm a week late with updating. Sorry about that.

I'm just going to ramble on here about those two weeks on the coast. I didn't keep a journal while there. I got too busy too quickly to keep up with a journal, but I do have plenty of notes, not to mention the memories. Check out Dayle's journal for more details of the OCW workshop experience. I think she got a lot out of it.

Prepare for a long journal entry. Consider this Part One!

First: The House. Twelve bedrooms, most of them smaller than the dorm rooms at Van Hoosen Hall on the MSU campus--those of you who went to Clarion know what I'm talking about. A few of the rooms were larger than that. I had a small room facing east, with a large window, and a large desk. Plenty of desktop space! My room, like many of the rooms, had shelves of paperback books, some old, some of them pulps, some of them in plastic protective sacks. Actually, my room had more magazines like Omni, Twilight Zone, and others. There were a few stuffed animals or teddy bears. In fact, at least one room had a teddy bear theme.

My room was in the wing off of the laundry room. There were four bedrooms--one for me, one for Loren Coleman, and basically two for Eric Witchey. Dan Hoyt had to cancel out of this workshop, so one room was vacant. Due to the fact that Eric's bedroom was so small (packed with shelves of paperbacks) he used the vacant room as his writing room. Eric and I shared workshop copies of stories to be critiqued each day. This worked out well because we would leave the stories out in the hallway so we wouldn't disturb each other when we went looking for the stories to critique.

There were two bathrooms in the house. The downstairs one I call The Wrath Of Kahn bathroom because it had pictures from Star Trek II on the wall. These pictures were collector items just like the books and teddy bears. The upstairs bathroom had an ocean view. Taking turns using the showers wasn't a problem. Everybody seemed to shower at different times during the day. There was more waiting to use the toilet, especially during workshop breaks. There would be line at each bathroom.

Twelve people sharing a kitchen wasn't a problem. We never got in each others way, it seemed. Each night a different person was responsible for dinner for the whole group. Loren Coleman had thought this up and it was a great idea. Everybody cleaned up after themselves too. The dishwasher ran twice a day. The refrigerator was stuffed. We enjoyed fresh ground coffee because I brought my grinder.

The living room was the workshop area with a window overlooking the Pacific ocean. Here, we critiqued stories and Dean and Kris gave lectures from 10 am to one or two o' clock in the afternoon.
Every night except for one or two, we regrouped to play a writing-life roleplaying game. In this game each person started with a different writing speed (I had two books a year, one other peson had six), different amount of monthly expenses, and a different amount of reserves. We played sixty months of this game. This was a valuable tool to learn about cash flow and the speed of publishing. Most of us had to get day jobs early in the game, even the guy who had six books a year. But by the end of the game everyone was off of the day jobs except for one person. We rolled dice to figure these numbers out.

I was able to increase my writing speed to three books a year by the end of the game. The next group in the fall will have an even better game because Dean and Kris were learning how to run this game as they taught us. For each month of the game, we had to roll for "life happens." We might get short story sales which helped with the cash flow. However, shit happened as well. For example, you need to buy a new hot water heater or fix the roof. Many of the "shit happens" were based on real life writer experiences. Someone was even hit by a van while walking in the country--an event taken from Stephen King's experience! Each bad event caused a drop in reserves and week or more of writing time lost.

This was a great game. Alan Lickiss added a lot of humor to this. He was stuck at a day job from the very begining with real high monthly expenses. He'd talk about working at McWriters and hiring each and everyone of us as we needed day jobs. His novels all had titles involving fast food--"The Man Behind The Stainless Steel Counter" and "Death Of A Fry Cook." Even after the workshop, McWriters lives on in our listserver. Alan makes reference to it in his signature line.

The game went on for too long some nights, especially in the beginning. It takes a lot of time for twelve people to roll the dice three times each. 8 pm to 11pm we would play. Sometimes longer.
With the workshop and the game it was just like having an eight hour day job. Not to mention reading and critiquing stories, the narrative technique assignments, and the grammar quizzes.

Yes indeed, Dean and Kris kept us busy. Kris called the technique and grammar assignments diagnostic tools. I learned that I have progressed in my writing. In general, I have learned some technique. This isn't to say I don't have anything to work on. I've come farther than I ever realized. There are still some grammatical things I need to work on, but here too I've come a long ways. I learned I've been using my subconcious and intuition in the right way.

I'll stop here. In Part Two of Oregon Coast Professional Writers Workshop experience, I'll write about word counts, the writing, and more on my personal experience, what I learned, etc.

The workshop was intense!

More to come!





Thursday, March 28

I'm floundering in the first couple of weeks of working full time back at the day job.

My word count during the two week Oregon Coast Professional Writers Workshop was around 10, 000 words. One day I wrote 2322 words total. A few other days I wrote over a thousand words. I wrote four short stories and two novel proposals.

I had the lowest word count of everyone at the workshop. My stories tended to be short. One story ended just because it had to be done, so the sun went nova, so to speak. I have two stories fit to be mailed.

I wrote a 5,000 word story when I was shooting for 10,000 words. Dean talked to me during the writing of that story. He and Kris had been talking they compared my developement to Ray Vukcevich. They knew Ray from the early days in the Eugene workshop, and there was a time when Ray wouldn't be able to write a 10,000 word story. That's what they said, at least. So Dean told me the important thing was to push myself, finish the story, and shoot for 7500 words. I wrote 5,000, but I did reach the end of the story.

That 5,000 word story was well received.

I wrote two novel proposals. One was on a story idea I had in my head before the workshop. The second was one I came up with at the workshop. Ginger liked the novel idea came to the workshop with. The newly developed idea in novel proposal form needed more massaging, she said.

Time Will Tell is the title of the proposal she liked. It came out to be seven pages. And she did tell me she'd take a look at the finished novel. Not three chapters and an outline, but a finished novel. Why? It's because of my lower output, my short-short stories. I understand this request. She needs to see if I can go the distance.

A door is opened now that an editor said she will see something of mine. Timing is important here. I don't want to wait until next year to send her the novel. This novel will have to be written this summer. Before I start on the novel, in the next two months I'm going to push my monthly word counts.

More on this and much much more in future entries!

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Congrats to Mike for being excepted to the short story workshop with Kris Rusch and Gardner Dozois. It should be just as intense as the two week workshop. I'm a bit envious. I wish I could go. If I could only afford to.




Sunday, March 31

What else haven't I mentioned about the Oregon Coast Professional Fiction Writers Workshop? We got tee shirts! Isn't that so Clarion? The shirt looks pretty good. It has "Kill The Myth" on the front and our names on the back.

We also surprised Dean and Kris with a gift on the last night. We knew we wanted to get them something and Loren suggested a DVD player because Kris had been talking about it. We all pitched in for the cost and it was a gift of thanks for everything Dean and Kris taught us. They thanked us for it, but Kris said the best gift we could give them is to keep writing and sell stories and novels. At that point, I called the DVD player immediate gratification. The sales will come in time.

The first stories we critiqued at the workshop were our submission stories. My submission story was "Pieces Of Us From The Earth." It's 3500 words. I learned some things during the critique of that story. I need to use critique groups as an audience-reaction-tool. Check for clarity, did they get what I was trying to do, etc. I also need to know what I was aiming for when I wrote the story--that helps when I'm bombarded with so many suggestions and deconstruction.

With that said, I came home to find a rejection from Ellen Datlow at Sci-Fi.com. The story was "Pieces Of Us From The Earth," although it wasn't quite a rejection. She found it powerful and she suggested I might expand it (but not too much) and she even mentioned some things that were not clear to her. She said if I should expand it, she would be happy to take another look at it.

When that story was critiqued at the workshop, Dean and Kris understood the story and found it powerful, but everyone else mentioned things they weren't clear on. Interesting enough, Ellen Datlow mentioned some of the same things that were unclear to the rest of my workshop participants.

Now I'm going to use the feedback I got from the workshop to help clarify things and answer some unanswered questions for Ellen. What I learned at the workshop is being put to use! I'll be adding very few words--after all, she did say expand a little--maybe 500-1000 words.

I think I've talked here about my writing time during those two weeks. As I said, we were kept busy as if we had eight hour day jobs. The grammar quizzes and narrative techniques took some time to do. I didn't sleep much and I was able to pace myself. I found I could go to bed at midnight and be up at 5 am to critique stories or write. I'm much better after sleeping some instead of pushing through a tired spell. The only time I came close to an all-nighter was when under one of the many deadlines, I slept from 10 pm to 2 am and got up to finish a story. I didn't take a nap until late afternoon.

I wrote in the afternoons between the workshop and dinner. After dinner we played the game and by the time the game was over it was eleven o'clock or midnight. And I usually needed some sleep to recharge by then.

I liked the routine I got into there. I found I could get by on five hours of sleep for many nights in a row. I wasn't as much of a wimp (or not as much of a sleep-whore) as I thought.

One other thing about those two weeks. My introverted tendencies really kicked in. I needed my time away from everyone to produce or just to do things to maintain myself so I could produce. I don't think I talked to everyone as much as I would have liked. Even when I was driving Alan and Julie to the airport after the workshop, I felt , well, exhausted. The brain was FULL. Everyone else probably felt this to different degrees. Although some people socialized a lot (it seemed to me) at the dining room table or in the living room and they still got a lot of words written.

All is not lost. We have our own little e-group to stay in touch and to cheer each other on. Dean and Kris are there, too, to share their publishing and writing knowledge.

Onward and upward.