[Clarion West 2K1, Week 1: the saga continues...]

No formal lecture, as such, today. Octavia wanted to dive right (write?) into critiques. This group is very good at POV and character development through emotional and visceral responses. The critique is quite good.

Through our dissecting each of three stories in class today, I learned that there are three kinds of symbioses (handy info to know, I assure you) and that one person's sub-plot is another person's distraction. Well, that last bit is not news to me, really. But, we had a most excellent free-for-all discussion about one of the stories. Very juicy. We got into politics and religion and ethics (and permutations thereof). To me, that's part of the best that good SF has to offer: something to make you think, talk about, and wrestle with.

I learned my lesson from the last couple days (ha!) and started to work right away on reading the stories for tomorrow as soon as I got back from class. Our group is starting an interesting tradition of silently reading and critting in the big lounge that we share on the 12th floor. A cool bonding experience (silent though it is) which I haven't yet participated in, but I expect I will once my writing this week is done.

Today, though, I chose to work in my room. After I was done with the crits, I had time to walk around, see what others were up to, think about my story that I have to write for Thursday morning... and procrastinated actually starting to write it.

A group of ten of us headed down to the "I District" (in Seattle, the I District means the International District; the U District is the University District) and had Thai at a favorite restaurant of mine near where I work. We had a great conversation about scapegoating. Truly, this is a talented bunch of people with whom I just love to spend time listening and sharing stories and the like. One can only hope that we'll all still feel as good about each other in week six as we do now. Given our conversation today, I think we're going to make every effort in that direction.

We barely made it out in time to walk over to Elliot Bay Books for Octavia's public performance there. It was a fun Question and Answer session. I picked up a couple books while I was there, and the group generally broke up into smaller pieces for the return trip. I was one of the poor fools who walked up, engaging in another wonderful discussion about politics with one of my fellow Clarionites. This particular fellow is the one who gave me the idea for how, exactly, the murder is going to be committed in my upcoming story.

Walking up Capital Hill from the Pioneer Square area is, well, an awful lot of exertion. And, sad to say, I'm still a fat old man. If I keep up this walking around thing, though, I'm hoping that I'll start to see some improvement in the physical fitness department.

Upon returning from the reading, I immediately hopped on to check e-mail, started typing this entry, etc. Then, a bunch of folks were camping outside my door and laughing at some game they were playing, so I naturally had to go into the hall and see what was up. The long and the short of it is: I'm still procrastinating starting my story for Thursday morning.

So, I'm going to sign off now. See how early it is? Not even 10:30 Pacific Time yet. I may even get a reasonable night's sleep. I just want to put in some time on the story first.

Well, maybe after I make just one phone call....