I was working on my story yesterday (tentatively titled "Lifespan"), and I realized I needed to talk to a priest. (No, not for spiritual support; I needed to know what the church's view on what happens to the soul after death is.) At first I was planning on calling up my mother and asking for the phone number of her priest. Then I said, "DUH! I'm at a Jesuit college. I'd be willing to bet this place is fair crawling with priesty types." So I hied on down to the chapel, where I did indeed find a priest, who was more than willing to talk to me. I explained who I was and what I was doing, and then he proceeded to give me exactly the information I needed to know, as well as ideas for other twists in the story. Plus he's a science fiction reader! He's reading Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow right now. It was an extremely cool conversation, and after I thanked him for his help he gave me his card and told me to call him if I needed any more info. There's certainly something to be said for real research.

* * * * *

Well, last night we had our official introduction to Gardner Dozois, where he told us what his plans/goals were for this week of the workshop. He started out by saying that he believed in the whole workshop process (which is why he teaches them so often), and it was obvious that the workshop was working for us, because he could see a lot of improvement in the stories we'd been turning in. But then he turned around and told us not to get cocky, becase at the same time none of us were "ready" . . .and then he proceeded to give us a list of what we were all doing wrong (what Daniel later termed the "form Asimov's rejection"). I think many of us came away from the meeting pretty discouraged. (Myself included.) My story is being critiqued today in class. It will be interesting to see what happens and what is said.

Bleh.