[Clarion West 2k1, week 2 continues]

Tuesday. Only three manuscripts critiqued in class today (excellent though they were) and a brief bit of advice from Brad: read your work out loud. (I'll pause to point out here that Pam Goodfellow has strenuously made this suggestion to her class at UW that we took last year; it is the foundation of our Wednesday night critique group. Nonetheless, excellent advice and I'm glad that others in the field see its value.)

Tuesdays, I reckon, are going to be light on the class side of things because that's the evening that the instructors offer their readings at Elliott Bay books, and there's a lot of work involved both for that and for class the next morning that can't be made up for during the presentation.

Anyway, I got back to the dorms from class and dove straight into crits and, even though I didn't pause for a nap or nothin' (after a brief lunch), I still seemed to make extremely slow progress. I only managed to have three stories critiqued by the time we headed down for dinner and then the event.

A bunch of us had gone out on one of the ferries to work on the water; an excellent idea, but I (and another six or so of us) chose to work here in the dorms anyway. Both groups met up at a Mediterranean restaurant on Cherry by 1st Street. A couple folks said that they liked it, but I found it to be both expensive ($8.50 for a shish kabob sandwich and a beverage!) and poorly cooked. C'est la vie.

[note to last year's Clarion West: speaking of differences of opinion and differences in experience... our group has found the local IHOP to be completely out of the question. After giving them just one chance, a small group of ours ran away vowing never to return because there was hair in their food. Then again, we had a good experience at the Ethiopian place nearby, and I've been told that your experience was less pleasant. Funny how things work out.]

Anyway, we went to the reading. Brad is a wonderful reader; he presents with passion and wit. He read the first and fourth chapter from his novel Lunatics, and there was a Q & A session afterward.

'Twas a long walk back up James Street to return to the dorms. I finished my critiques, and am now procrastinating... I have yet to type even one sentence for the story I will be handing in on Thursday morning.

I'm going to do something similar to what I did last week at this time. I'm going to finish this entry, type for a bit on the new story (that would be a change from last week, when I hadn't actually begun work until 6pm the night before), go to bed by midnight and get a relatively full night's sleep, and then charge ahead full bore tomorrow. That plan worked well for me last week. Let's see how it goes this week.

I've also decided to go with the story idea I'd originally thought to pursue this past Monday. Makes no sense to hold up the writing while I try to make that next "great idea" appear. I'll continue to strive for the great ideas, but I'll write what I can in the meantime. There's also a strong temptation to revise a story I've been working on before coming to Clarion, but that's not going to move me forward as effectively as starting a new one from scratch. So, there ya go. I've got a plan.

Yee-haw!