Monday, June 14, 1999

Unfortunately, my body was so wired with all the excitement of the past two days that I found that I could not sleep. I tried to close my eyes and not get up out of bed, but that did not work. So I turned on the lights and worked on my critiquing some more, figuring that I would tire out and get back to sleep. It was a nice theory, anyway. Each time I went back to bed, I felt crankier and crankier but I still could not sleep. Being a morning person, I am usually chipper at breakfast, but this morning I was positively grumpy.

Fortunately, the critiquing session went well. All of us were warned in advance that we only have 45 minutes to do each story, so we kept our critiques under three minutes in length. We were also admonished to say "ditto what X said" if someone else has already made our point on a certain subject, so that we don't waste too much time repeating the same stuff over and over. I was impressed with the depth and quality of all the critiques, and began to relax about the idea that one of my own stories will be up before the group in a few days. I discovered that my fellow Clarionites are an insightful group whose opinions I respect deeply.

After the critiquing session and the lecture by James Morrow were both over, Lister Matheson (our director and fearless leader) took a few minutes to discuss the question of online journals and what they mean to Clarion. He had noticed that this year we have five online journalists, and was worried about issues of privacy and respect. He explained that what goes on in our critiquing sessions is very private. No one feels comfortable with the knowledge that their unpublished and unpolished stories are being discussed openly on the web. And web journals are not the place to discuss your personal grievances with the other students or writers in residence.

I think that it was good that Lister brought this issues up. Although all of the Clarion journalists had agreed in advance that we would not invade the privacy of our fellow students, it was an important thing for the Clarion group as a whole to hear. If at times this journal seems unbearably narcissistic, keep in mind that I am the only one I can safely discuss at length. Does this mean that I can never talk about the other students with me? No. But it does mean that whenever you see a funny anecdote repeated here, I have asked permission of all the people involved first.

After lunch, we were all dragged off to pay our housing bills and get our pictures taken for our student IDs. I really wish that I had a scanner here with me, because I think you should all see how my ID turned out. Unthinkingly, I wore an old SF convention t-shirt that proclaimed: "Wanted: Volunteers!" My ID photo, which resembles a grainy police mug shot, now says "Wanted" right under my face in big letters. When he saw my ID, Lister laughed and said in that glorious Scottish accent of his, "I always knew that you were a bit of a delinquent, but I hadn't realized it had gotten this far."

James and Kathy Morrow are hosting an SF film festival in their rooms this week, but I had to miss the first session. Because of all my computer woes, I did not get a chance to start my first story yet and was feeling desperately behind. Besides we had been given four more stories to critique, and I was feeling exhausted from having so little sleep the night before. I am now a thousand words into my first story, and am feeling calmer about all this.

Hmm