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- The Official 2000 Class Picture (not to be confused with the
unofficial 2000 class pictures). Photo taken by Karen Simmons.
From left to right:
Top row: Michael Samerdyke, Larry Taylor, Carl Frederick, Peter Huston, Michelle Gawe, Anthony Giacomelli
Middle row: Keith Demanche, Barbara Campbell, Laurie Lanzdorf, Laura Whitton, Theodora Goss, Jeanne Cavelos, Dan Simmons
Bottom row: Douglas Cohen, Sarah Todd, Elisa Romero-McCullough, Jim Isaak, Alette Willis, Boris Layupan
- The Unofficial 2000 Class Pictures
- Great(?) Moments from the Odyssey 2000 Workshop
- COMMENTS FROM THE ODYSSEY CLASS OF 2000
"What makes Odyssey unique is that you're learning from someone who is a writer and an editor--the best of both worlds."
"In my first two days here, I learned more about writing (not just genre
writing, but all writing) than I did in three years of creative writing
courses at college. Then I realized I still had five weeks and three days
left. DAMN! That's what I call my money's worth."
"If you're serious about writing and getting published, it's well worth the
sacrifice in time, money, and effort to attend Odyssey."
"I made new friends, discovered that I am a writer, had the most intense six weeks of my life and read great stories. Odyssey is the BEST!"
"Odyssey taught me what I didn't learn in my college writing classes. My time writing and making friends who are writers themselves really encouraged and challenged me."
"Odyssey has chopped the writer in me into its component parts--a painful process--and improved and reassembled them. I am much better now, and the scars will heal."
"An incredibly valuable experience. I knew I would learn a lot, but I didn't
expect to learn so much about my writing problems by the second day!"
"Odyssey made me aware of bad habits my writing had developed and made me fix them. It gave me the chance to write five short stories and a short-short in six weeks, a pace that would have been impossible elsewhere. I am very glad I attended Odyssey."
"If you aren't made of iron before, you will be."
"Odyssey is the best writing workshop I've been to and I've been to several. I've been taught by the best, but Jeanne is in a universe far beyond those other instructors. She's better than the best. Other workshops don't go nearly into the depths of story crafting as Odyssey does. If you want to learn about the craft of fiction and are serious enough to put in an intensive six weeks devoted solely to your craft then Odyssey is the only choice."
"Odyssey has taught me an enormous amount about the craft of writing. I now understand the components that make up my stories--the arc of plot, characterization and point of view, world building and achieved strangeness. For the first time, I'm writing not just from instinct but from a firm knowledge of what makes good stories and how to improve my own. Jeanne is an incredible instructor--insightful, passionate about the craft, and committed to the class's writing and careers. She held us to a high standard throughout, and made us write better than we've ever written before."
GREAT(?) MOMENTS FROM THE ODYSSEY 2000 WORKSHOP
Once again, during the 2000 workshop, certain statements of the students and guests resonated with exceptional truth and insight. These statements have been preserved so that their wisdom can be shared with other writers, and so visitors to this website can get an idea of the consistently high level of rhetoric and insightful critiques that ring through the lofty halls of Odyssey.
WARNING:
THE FOLLOWING QUOTES HAVE NOT BEEN EDITED FOR LANGUAGE!
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"With a plot, it will be that much better."
"Which leads to me getting off on Christ."
"June Cleaver in the gene lab."
"It was like 'A Boy and His Dog' without the boy or his dog."
"I didn't like it, but that's because I understood it."
"I tend not to believe ball clutchers."
"Who's clutching my testicles?"
"I hate to keep referring to male genitalia, but I will."
"I didn't know what the hell had gone on. But I didn't care."
"The funniest part was the doll-beating scene."
"I'm not going to tell you to go hang out in the porn stores, but maybe you should."
"I felt it was like a bad translation from the French."
Dan Simmons on Henry James: "He chewed more than he bit off."
"You've got a lot of flaming ducks here, and it's hard to chase them all down."
"I felt like I had little hamsters running through my head. That's not necessarily a bad thing."
"What's the point of creating a fantasy world if it's smaller and darker and less visible than the real world?"
"For people who don't have a five-year-old kid at home, it can be just one damn saurus after another."
"The image I had of this guy was he was slender and prissy and needed to be roughed up a little."
"I would like to have a pocket like this, where all I have to do is reach in and all my questions are answered."
"We want to see the nasty underneath."
"Does he know how she felt when she got her first slit-nosed doll baby?"
"Just because you dress your women in hard brassieres doesn't make 'em tough."
"I've found examples in Tolstoy, in Faulkner. It didn't work for them either."
"It wasn't half as awful as I thought."
"Clearly you must be wrong then. I can't think what other explanation there could be."
"Watch out for the Alpha Beta Conan fraternity."
"He'd probably be a lot more worried about, 'Does this dress make me look fat?'"
--Elisa Romero-McCullough
"Isn't it good shit? Isn't it good shit? It's good shit!"
--Peter Huston quoting Doug Cohen regarding Doug's story
"Where is he going with one sheep?"
"It started out with that routine worm kill."
"It was just the death of her mother or something like that."
"A young birch is about as un-nutmeggy as you can get."
"Maybe I overreact when sticky things fall on me."
"I want to date the ghost."
"I know this means something, but I don't know what."
"I think you need to spend a little more time on slitting the throat."
"And then you just ramble on a while like, 'Holy crap!'"
"Another dead horse!"
--Elisa Romero-McCullough
"The bloody knife, the happy soup bowl, the warm cups."
"The great stirrup controversy."
"I didn't mean to call you honey."
--Charles L. Grant to Anthony Giacomelli
"I avoid movies and books and anything in a submarine if I can."
"I didn't understand anything that's going on, and that made it hard to read."
"As long as he's decapitated, I want to see it."
"The business with the severed head could be better described."
"I want the moment those teeth go into that stick of love."
"You can't drop the dropped penis."
"If that happened to me I think I'd be terrified, with or without a penis."
"I wouldn't want to get near a naked confused woman, especially alone."
"I found him just a detestable little boy."
"She just seems to me--mwaa ha ha!"
"Nobody can giggle. Ever."
"Can he just be great in bed and have clean fingernails?"
"It is unforgivable. You will roast in hell forever."
"If I see it one more time I'll throw the story in the fireplace."
Thanks for dropping by!...
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Updated Apr 2, 2006
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