[Clarion West 2k1 week 3... the saga continues]

Monday. Up and at 'em early, we all headed off to the classroom, where a couple of elves (my compatriots during our recent trip to Archie McPhee's) had placed little plastic creatures at each of our seats.

They had put a little mouse in front of my name plate. I asked why.

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, because you're Charlie Brown. Everybody's always picking on you."

I still don't get it.

Anyway, we had yet another excellent critique session which brought out some wonderful issues with regard to sympathetic characters and unsympathetic characters and making them compelling regardless of how sympathetic they are.

Then, Nalo talked to us about killing off our characters. She says that most writers have to be encouraged to be more "mean" to their characters in order to make dramatic things happen. Not in our case. We're killing off our characters left and right. (Write?) She told us that this is not always the best way to go, by way of discussing resolutions. A resolution can be a conclusion, but it can also be a revelation/realization. The resolution doesn't have to be THE END, but it should point the way to the end.

Nothing overly profound, perhaps, but important to hear, as our class has more and more gone down the path of making our resolutions rather final. It's funny, because the story idea I ended up coming up with today is rather final in its inevitable conclusion. I've been pretty good about *not* killing off characters (well, okay, I had one murder story), but I think my next story is going to see an awful lot of characters bite the dust.

I don't want to spoil the ending for my fellow Clarionites who actually read this journal (I'm told that they like to find out what they've been up to :-), but my next story has something to do with a Ms. Solar System pageant which, uh, ends dramatically.

Bwahahahahahaa.

After class, a few of us went to Pagliacci's for pizza and Ben & Jerry's for ice cream. The weather here was perfect today, and the walk to and from lunch was exquisite. Upon returning to the dorms, I discovered that we could see both Rainier and Mt. Baker today. The Cascades and Olympics were also out in full view.

I did my critique work, made some phone calls, and generally failed to begin writing my new story. At one point, I had even hoped to actually get the first draft done tonight. But, really, I'll begin it tomorrow.

Really.

A few of us ended the evening with milk and cookies and an attempt at not talking politics... which was kinda hard, given that one of us was an intern at the White House in the summer of '96, one of us clings to the "stolen election" story of the Florida ballot, and the other of us (which is to say, me) had the audacity to suggest at one point that Reagan will ultimately be remembered more favorably than any of the other Presidents of the second half of the twentieth century.

There was a great deal of other time wastings as well as good, deep, productive conversation... but, alas, I think tomorrow I shall have to focus on my writing.

Or, have I said that already?

--Allan

PS: Carly Simon tune -- "Procrastination/ Procrastinaaaaayaaation/ It's making me late...."

:-)