I stagger at the thought it's been ten years since I went to Clarion. Ten years ago today, if I'm remembering correctly (and if not, I'm pretty close), I was on my way to East Lansing Michigan on a bus from Fargo, ND.

Let's recap, shall we? In order of appearance, my instructors: Tim Powers, Joe & Gay Haldeman, Karen Joy Fowler, Eleanor Arnason, and Damon Knight & Kate Wilhelm.

The guest editor was Ellen Datlow.

As for my classmates, where are they now? Or a better question--have you heard of them? Well, Alex Irvine is the most familiar one. He's had a lot of good stuff published in the last few years. His writing had spark and clarity at Clarion. Pat York has had a couple of Nebula nominated stories, but I haven't seen anything from her in awhile. John McDaid had a story in Asimov's in the mid-ninties. Jim Cowan's stories have appeared in a few places, plus he's been in Gardner Dozois Years Best. Michael Bricker had a few short stories published. Let's see, Michael Carr has been writing and sending, but I'm drawing a blank on what he may have had published. I might be missing a couple of people. Of course there's me, Rob Vagle, with one short story sale.

It's been almost three years since that first sale. That's a staggering thought as well. I remember Leslie What saying it was two or three years between her first and second sale.

But anyway, back to Clarion. Clarion was great and neat experience. More social then anything else, meaning it was my first experience being surrounded by, not only other writers, but speculative fiction writers. Clarion instilled that desire to move where professional writers gathered. By Clarion I had already read many author bios with the city Eugene, Oregon as home.

I probably would get more or something completely different out of Clarion if I went today. Different person, different writer.

In March of 2002, two week workshop on the coast had a bigger impact on me. Speaking of which, I now have all my archives stored here at my Journalscape sight. I have some comments about the March 2002 workshop. Sorry, to make it easier on myself I just archived by the month in most cases. So for example, all of October 2001 entries are under one Journalscape entry. I don't write too many long single entries so doing it by month isn't a lot. Besides, you must be really bored if you want to read my archives. :-)

This has been a rambling, somewhat disjointed entry. I'm just getting an entry written since it's been awhile, ya know.

Stories Circulating: I finally cleared off my desk!--8

On Desk: 3 still there.