[Clarion West 2k1, week 3: Thank God it's Friday]

Friday. In the morning, I had serious second thoughts about submitting my story, "Broken Connection". It had a few major things going against it, mostly stemming from the fact that I was perfectly aware of a few fatal flaws that still needed to be corrected. But, that said, I also want additional feedback on it as it goes through the revision process and I still wanted to have two crits during Connie Willis's week.

The big concern about submitting it, though, is that it would be my first story during Connie's week, and if something came up that would squeeze the number of slots available for the week, I would lose my Friday slot... and that is when I'd be handing in whatever story I create after I've heard a couple of Connie's lectures.

I brought the story in with me to class and again talked to most of my classmates to make sure that it would be cool if I was the second person to submit two stories for the week. Everyone said fine, no problem, and I went ahead and submitted the piece.

Nalo gave a lecture about writing race. This was a topic that many of us wanted to work on, as it had come up a few times during the first two weeks. Nalo handed out an essay by Nisi Shawl on the subject (published by Speculations) and then addressed a number of issues that surround writing race.

The points were many, but a few highlights include (please keep in mind that these are my notes; you are reading what I think I heard and what has passed through my own internal filter, and it may not accurately reflect what Nalo was trying to say):
* Think of writing race as writing culture. Race is sometimes defined by skin color, or ethnic heritage, or religious background, or class, or any number of other characteristics.
* The minute you stop writing autobiography, you are writing outside your experience. Writing race/culture is likewise outside your experience (when you take into account characters or situations outside your own racial experience). Approach accordingly.
* When writing race, remember that you can't separate race from power. Who profits from the racial distinctions in the world about which you are writing?
* The dominant race is not necessarily preoccupied with matters of race; the non-dominant races are always aware of it, however.
* Keep in mind how racial distinctions constrain your characters. (Will they affect the jobs your characters can hold? The places they can travel? The people they may associate with? et al)
* Watch out for blanket generalizations. It's okay if your characters make generalizations, but the author should not.
* Keep a diverse diversity. How many cultures are there? In real life, there are always more than just two (the majority and -blank-). Once you've set up a character's race, don't tokenize him/her. Show *exceptions* to the known archetypes.
* Tell the reader the important characteristics of your character early on. You will often have to use more than simply physical appearance (read: skin color) to convey something meaningful. Use additional cultural cues: music, food, dialect, clothing. Do not withhold this kind of information, as it will only bump the reader out once you bring it up.
* If you are writing a story *about* race, keep in mind that simply flipping racial roles isn't sufficeint to be effective. It's not a real paradigm shift to just switch black and white people, for example, because if the minority position is generally demonized in reality, it is then shown as the oppressor in your allegory when you flip roles and the race you try to show as oppressor ends up being the underdog. If the reader already holds biases, then those biases are only reinforced when you simply try to put the shoe on the other foot. Take special care to make a *real* paradigm shift if such is your aim.

I found the lecture most useful, and it brought out some points I'd never considered before (esp. that last one).

Halfway through class, there was a little blip when someone who hadn't signed up for a slot next week asked to take the Friday slot (which would bump me) after all. Happily for me, several of my fellow Clarionites were kind enough to alter their own schedules slightly so as to accommodate this late change and still allow me to stay in my own Friday slot. (Recall that I would be the first one to get bumped if there was slot compression.) I was amazed to see the group pull together as smoothly as it did to make this all work out when, for a second there, it seemed like my fragile plans were all about to fall apart. :-)

After class, most of us went to a nearby Thai restaurant. This was the first Friday when we did not all participate in the farewell lunch; a couple members of the group had other commitments. Alas, I suspect this will continue to be the case for the next couple weeks, as well. Still, I'm impressed that we've hung together as a group so well thus far.

In the afternoon, I had my conference with Nalo. She gave me feedback on my story and on a couple of my earlier stories; all of the feedback was very helpful... even if, in a couple of cases, it went completely contrary to the prevailing opinion of some previous discussions. :-) I liked her take on the stories.

Ah, but let me speak for a moment about "Derivative." Before I had handed it in on Thursday, I had twisted a couple of bits so as to make them inside jokes for my fellow Clarionites. It was a humor piece, after all, and I could always change them back. Well, it turns out that during week three for other previous Clarion classes, someone ultimately writes the inside-joke piece. Nalo made sure during class to discourage this kind of thing, as it can start to get out of hand. Since I had drawn first blood on the inside joke thing, she seemed to come down a little hard on me.

Now, I must confess that I thought her apparent anger was simply because she saw promise in my work and that I'd failed to live up to the potential. Self-centered, of course, but I can rationalize anything. Turns out that the reason she came down so hard on me was because, well, during *her* Clarion experience six years ago, *she* was the person to draw first blood on the inside jokes, and she, too, had had her hand slapped.

We talked about ways I can bring out the satirical aspects of my story, but it's obvious that I have a lot of work to do. Poking fun at the media is hardly a new idea; I'm going to have to work hard to make this one fresh.

Anyway, I got a lot out of our conference and truly appreciated her insights and suggestions.

Later in the day, a slight computer malfunction gave me the pleasure of losing all of my e-mail that was pending in the Out queue. This meant that some pieces of humor I'd been working on for the Top5 Music list got lost, as well as some personal correspondence. Guess that will teach me to work on non-Clarion writing during Clarion.

Oh, wait. And, I lost my un-posted entries for my online journal. Hmmm. I wonder if that's a message that I should stop writing to my online journal for a while...

Nah.

We went to the Friday night party, this time held in Wallingford, and had a pleasant wind-down for the week. Several of our group decided that they were going to go hike Mt. Rainier on Saturday morning, but I knew that I was going to have other plans: sleep in, and then sleep some more.

Got to bed at around 2am. A fitting ending for a sleep-deprived week at Clarion West.