[Clarion West 2k1, week 5: closer to fine]

Friday. Went to class. We critiqued five stories. Managed to stay relatively succinct. The group had excellent suggestions for improving my own story, although I'm now at a loss because it is the ending that is at issue, and changing it will require a lot of re-work.

Still, it appears that I'm getting the hang of tightening up the story, if nothing else. :-)

After class, we all went for lunch to the Thai restaurant that has become a mainstay for us, and treated Ellen. Paulette joined us for lunch (reminder: Paulette was a Clarion West student last year and is helping them out with creating promotional materials this year, so she is occasionally seen helping out. :) and afterward, she was kind enough to donate some of her time to the cause of getting the t-shirt design done in time to get it out to the t-shirt printer.

I'm pretty happy with the final result; we'll see how it looks on the shirts.

The big event of the day for me was at the Friday Clarion West Party. While there were a lot of very cool and interesting people both hosting and attending, I was most surprised to end up bumping into someone from my high school days. Someone, in fact, who I hadn't seen since my sophomore year in high school, if I recall correctly.

A bunch of us at the party were talking about novel projects, and when I mentioned that mine was partly set in Buffalo, one of the women made a cross sign and a hissing noise. As bad as I am with names, her name had sounded familiar when we were introduced, and her negative reaction to Buffalo convinced me that she was the person I'd known way back when. (And, no, when you're in your thirties, you are not likely to recognize someone whom you had last seen as a teenager, especially out of context.)

Turns out that in the intervening years, she had attended Clarion West in '94 (I think; I'm bad with dates), spent some time as a Clarion West volunteer, and had worked at my former employer, Microsoft, for about eight years. She and her husband are now living about two miles away from Paulette and me in Redmond. Crazy coincidences abound.

Oh, and she's in a writing critique group with another person who I bump into all the time in completely different circles (a previous grad of the UW Commercial Fiction program and a board member of RASP). Crazy, crazy, crazy.

Made the acquaintance of some other very cool people at the party, as well, who also live in the area. And, a couple of Clarionites from last year came up for the party, as well. A thoroughly enjoyable evening, for me at least.

Came home. Went to bed.

...which leads to the thought of the day. This is the end of Week 5. There is only one more week to go. Only one more story to write. On the one hand, I can't imagine that this is all going to be over so soon. On the other hand, I couldn't imagine going much longer than one more week, either.