My second story was critiqued yesterday. Ow.

I say again: Ow.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't as bad as all that, but I knew when I'd turned it in that I'd copped out on the ending, but it was 3am and I just wanted to end it. But I paid the price for it in critique when everyone nailed me for copping out on the ending. And once again my basic world-building fell far short of the mark. I'd left out way too many details that were essential for the flavor of the story.

But the good thing (and I have to concentrate on the fact that there was a good thing) was that I got high marks for the concept and the plot setup. We spent almost an hour on my story yesterday. (It's usually closer to 30-40 minutes per story.) But I came away with a lot more ideas about what I can do with this story, plus George suggested that the idea was interesting enough that I could potentially do a series of stories with this concept as the focus.

But it was still an owie critique.

So later yesterday, with that story and its critique fresh in my mind, I was talking to Karen and telling her that I'd signed up to turn in my third story on Thursday, but maybe I would take a few more days and get it more solid. But dear pragmatic, sensible Karen gave a pragmatic, sensible sniff and said, "You have a few more days in September. Just write the story and turn it in. We know it's not done. You don't get anything out of it sitting on your computer."

And she's right. At last Friday's party there were some Clarion grads from the past couple of years, and they mentioned that there were some people who only turned in one or two stories during the entire workshop.

We were all rather appalled. What on earth can you get out of just writing one story? Yes, I know, there's a great deal to be learned from critiquing the others, but at some point you have to try to apply the lessons learned to your own product, and then get feedback from the class to see if you succeeded. Writing one story doesn't do that for you, no matter how beautiful the final product is. We're all paying a whole lot of money to be here. Might as well squeeze as much value out of it as possible.

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On a slightly related note, I learned the trick of how to handle an owie critique: Take lots of notes. If you're busy writing as fast as you can, then you don't have to look at the person speaking. Plus, of course, you have the advantage later of having all of those notes to look back on.

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I also had my conference with George Martin yesterday. We talked a great deal about writing careers, marketing savvy, and the world of publishing in general. It was very interesting.