I spent much of last night rewriting "Erin, Yes" in a new 1400 word version, taking into account all the critiques, including Terry's. And when I say rewrite, I mean just that, not a revision. I wrote it over from scratch. Version 2.0. I was hoping I would be finished in time to play a game of Settlers of Cataan, but by 11:30, they had packed up the game.

This afternoon at 3:00, I had my conference with Terry, where he looked over the rewritten "Erin, Yes" and gave me some more good comments. "Needs more of a twist." That's the biggest lesson I've learned from Terry: you have to put a new twist on your stories, because no one will give a damn otherwise. He's giving a reading tonight at The Archive, and I'm excited; he's going to be reading from an unpublished story, something no one else has seen yet! And we'll be critiquing it tomorrow at the session. Hee hee. I'll just have to make sure I take an allergy pill before I go to the reading.

A really good schedule and explanation of the whole Clarion experience is provided at the Clarion Ex Machina site, written by Hilary Moon Murphy, more succinctly than I ever could. (Though the washers now cost $1.50 per load instead of $0.75.)

I'm seeing a weird trend develop, one I'm a little wary of. This entire week, I've gone to bed at around 12:15 or 12:30 each night, and I'm just as exhausted in the morning as when I get only three hours of sleep. That just doesn't seem right. I can't wake up fully until noon, having yawned almost continuously throughout the critique sessions. God help me when I get to Week Five.

I stare at the blank screen, and wonder what my next story will be...