[Clarion West 2k1, week 3. The saga continues]

Thursday. I managed to get up at 8am and make it to class on time to hand in my story. My eyes looked smaller and pinkish, as if I'd been crying. Others said I looked sick/distressed/disappointed. Sleep deprivation always makes me look weird, but this was an odd effect. Had I been aware of this on my way to class, I probably would have brought along my sunglasses.

I wasn't the only person who struggled to hand in a story Thursday morning. One other person who submitted that morning ended up late to class (I assume he was catching up on sleep, but I could be wrong), and another had to take a pass altogether from handing in. Too bad, too, because I was interested in seeing how he was going to pull off having his liquid rock beings falling in love.

Oh, the opportunities for puns there! I hope he hands this story in soon. :-)

Anyway, Nalo talked to us about research sources (she used to work as a librarian, so this was a natural topic with lots of good ideas) and she also recommended a method for tracking our submission stories. She then went on to talk about the day-to-day mechanics of being a writer.

Given my lack of sleep the night before, my plan had been to take a big long nap after class. Instead, I found I could sleep for no more than an hour, so I dove right back into reading and critiquing and worked through the day's stories relatively quickly. (It helped that one of them was mine, so that I had a reduced work load.)

Then, several of us decided to go for pizza at Pagliacci's. This little trip turned into a little bit of a production, as I had promised to drive one of my fellow Clarionites to the airport to pick up his wife who was flying in from Switzerland with their infant child. He came with us for Pizza, but I ended up driving (while most folks walked) so as to make sure we'd be able to get on the road in time to get to the airport.

At the same time, I noticed that no one had taken the fourth story slot for Monday's critique session. Given that there are only 19 slots, and given that one other person had claimed one of the two extra slots, and given that she comes in order of priority over me (we have a system, you see, for working out who gets to bump whom), it became clear that if I were to be able to have two stories critiqued during week 4 (which I very much want to happen), I would have to turn in something on Friday morning to take the only vacant slot, which was Monday.

See?

In order to get a story in by Friday morning, I would have to put something together Thursday night. I was not in a state to be able to write a story from scratch on Thursday night, but I had a draft of a story that I'd been working on and had had critiqued a few months before Clarion West started. My plan was to pick up my critiques of that story, which were sitting at home in Redmond, and then run them back to the dorm, read through them, and then write my revised version of the story to hand in on Friday morning.

Ergo, time was starting to close in on me, with a trip to the airport, a trip to pizza, and a trip to Redmond before I could even begin to work on my story for Friday morning.

So, we all eventually met up at Pagliacci's and had a fine meal, and then the two of us who were airport-bound went to Sea-Tac. It didn't seem when we left that we quite had enough time to stop off in Redmond before going to the airport, but it was soooo close. We therefore arrived at the airport very early, since I'd decided not to take the risk. The flight arrived, we had to wait for baggage, and then we loaded bags into the car, set up the safety seat, secured the child (she's a cutie, too, I must say) into the seat, etc., etc. Got to the dorms by around 10pm or so.

Unloaded the car. Went to Redmond. Found my stuff. Quick chat with Paulette. Back to the dorm. By the time I'd started work revising my story, it was midnight.

By the time I finished, I wasn't as far along with it as I had hoped. But, I was as far along with it as I was going to get and still manage a few hours sleep. The story was supposed to have shrunk from its original 5,100 words, but by the time I'd finished cutting and adding, it had actually gained a little weight at 5,300. Oh, well.

The things I'll do to get extra feedback from Connie Willis!

My plan is to spend some time this weekend prepping for the next story (which I plan to hand in on Thursday morning of next week) and recharge so that I'm as fresh as possible for week 4.

The big question as I went to bed on Thursday night/Friday morning was whether I'd actually turn in the revised story, since it still required a lot of work.

To be continued...

[this is the danger of writing these entries well after the fact; there's no punchy wrap-up at the end of the day... it just blurs right into the next.]