[Clarion West 2001, week 5: we now return to our normally scheduled program, already in progress]

Tuesday. We talked a bit about opening paragraphs during class today. Ellen read the openings from a few short stories in William Gibson's Burning Chrome as we talked about those as "grabbers".

We also talked a bit about some of the technical matters of the industry: manuscript format concerns, being experimental and getting an editor's favorable attention, and submitting novels.

Since we were already into week 5 and none of us had done anything about the traditional class t-shirt, I asked the group if anyone was interested in working on putting one together. After a few folks expressed interest, I suggested a quick meeting in the afternoon to get the ball rolling.

After class, a fellow Clarionite and I had lunch at the Ethiopian restaurant that few (if any) of us have visited since we'd been there for Octavia's farewell lunch at the end of week 1. It was nice to have an unhurried, mellow meal there.

By the time I got back to the dorms, it was getting kind of late in the afternoon (class had run a bit late, and lunch was leisurely), and I still hadn't done any work on my story for the week. But, there was only an hour left before the scheduled t-shirt meeting, so I certainly couldn't get any real work done. Perhaps it was more important that I play some computer games, instead....

At three o'clock, Ben, Raymund, Sean and I got together to talk about the class t-shirt. We each took a task and set deadlines. There was still a possibility that we'd be able to get the shirts printed up before the end of Clarion (ergo, we wouldn't have to mail them out when they were done), but we'd have to hurry.

Since I had agreed to take on the task of phoning for quotes, I started doing that right after the quick meeting. I found a place that would be able to take our artwork by Friday and still have the shirts to us by next week.

Of course, none of this furthered my story for the week.

I read the four stories for the day and wrote my critiques for a few of them, and then it was time to head down for the reading at Elliott Bay Books. The "reading" this week was an interview-style Q and A. Howard Waldrop conducted the interview.

Afterwards, a few of us decided to order pizza, since quite a few of us had neglected to eat dinner before the reading. We ordered some Pagliacci's and then settled into a critique party in my room. There were five or six of us just quietly reading our stories and writing our critiques.

Pizza arrived, and there was much rejoicing. By around midnight, our late dinner was done and most of us had finished our reading and critiquing for the day. Bedtime for Bonzo.

But, did I end up getting any writing done for the week? Well, not really. But, I did jot down a quick outline of how I wanted to story to unfold. There. I got *something* done on it.

But, yet again, I saved the bulk of the work for the night before my story was due. Again. Duh.