[Clarion West 2k1 draws to a close, and only a few more entries remain to be written...]

Friday. The last day of class.

I was supposed to be up in time to leave by 8:30am, which is when I normally leave for class. In this case, though, the idea was to be ready to meet with one of the administrators so that a classmate and I could help her carry some graduation-related ceremony items (as it turned out, cake and goodies) from her car up to the classroom. Interestingly, for the first time during the program, I slept through my alarm.

I woke up at about a quarter past eight and, realizing what time it was, managed to compress my hour long morning routine into the fifteen available minutes. Raymund and I met her mostly on-time, and we got everything up to the classroom without incident. Nonetheless, it was an odd way to start my last day of class.

We critiqued four stories, mine being one of them. As always, the comments on my own story were helpful, and I am optimistic that this piece can be fixed up and submitted with the guidance from my peers, as have been some of my other stories. We'll see.

We'd been encouraged to write alternate endings to our stories this week, but the story I'd turned in, quite simply, had no other ending. I'm thinking, given the critique I received, that I might want to shoot for an alternate middle, however....

I also think that the week ended on a particularly strong note with the other three stories that we critiqued. They were strong stories with tight writing and quick pacing, and represented some of the best writing from their respective authors. One in particular had a terrifically dramatic first paragraph, while another had a rather gruesome conclusion. (Two, if you count the alternate ending.) And, yes, I know I'm using adverbs quite a bit in my journal. Get over it.

A few of my classmates had grabbed long streams of raffle tickets and draped them as headwear about half-way through class. Very humorous.

Jack's talk for this class was, fittingly enough, about endings. Unlike certain other art forms or presentations, the novel should not end at a point making the reader want more. Rather, the novel needs to end at exactly the right point; the reader should feel fulfilled (my interpretation), not deprived. The closing of the book is how the reader will remember the author, long after the details of the story have faded.

Jack also encouraged us to get to the ending of a project and then *move on* to the next. Don't keep re-writing your current project indefinitely.

At the end of class, it was time for the usual week-ending business. We had our raffle drawing, and for the first time, *I* won the author's book. Jack has several novels out there, and I'd already purchased a couple (Let's Put the Future Behind Us, and Terraplane), but the one that was raffled off was one that I've been wanting to get but hadn't, yet: Elvissey. Most excellent.

We then had our graduation ceremony for the course, followed by cake and beverages. A co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction -- Cory Doctorow, a Clarion East grad -- graciously donated a copy of the book to each of us, and we in turn signed each other's copies, wishing each other the best and all the sort of things you'd expect to see in a yearbook. Jack signed mine with a hilarious comment about politics.

The group then had lunch at the Thai restaurant. Everyone kept asking where we should go, and no one could come up with a better idea, so this fallback became our plan. Once again, we had almost the entire group in attendance. Most excellent conversation over good food; my idea of a good time.

During my one on one conference with Jack later that afternoon, we talked about the stories of mine he liked and what could be done to clean them up, and we also talked about The Do Over -- a premise that he says he likes. We talked about the possibilities and the pitfalls that come with that kind of premise. We also talked about humor and satire, in general. I have to say that, in retrospect, I wish I had turned my story in earlier in the week so that we could have had our one-on-one earlier. Had we had a chance to get to know each other better earlier in the week, I think that would have elevated the fun-factor for me even more.

Later that afternoon, Avi and Karen and I went on a trek to Ballard, looking for salmon jerky. Avi used to live in Seattle, and he knows of many places where cool stuff can be found that I have not yet discovered, myself. We arrived at the Portlock store... but, they were out of salmon jerky. Too bad. Avi and Karen each bought some strips of smoked salmon (which is most yummy), and we made our way back to the dorms.

As it turns out, Avi's birthday was only a couple of days away, so a bunch of us followed Emily's lead and took Avi out to have sushi for dinner. As many of my friends know, I'm happy to eat sushi on occasion, but I really don't know the first thing about ordering it. So, as usual, I let the others figure out what we were going to have, and I went along for the ride. The meal was good, but it was getting late, so we rushed back to the dorms to regroup and head out to our last Friday night Clarion party.

Once again, we had a chance to meet several influential people in the industry as well as local supporters. The fact that this was the weekend of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference (PNWA) meant that we had a lot of people in from out of town, as well. We were also treated once more to seeing a Very Large Book Collection. Mmmmm. I guess it helps that our hostess is an avid reader as well as writer, and our host is a manager of a used book store. :)

But, alas, this was also the final party of the final week of the program, and I'm sure I must have looked as dazed as I felt.

We returned to the dorms and my classmates dove into the task of packing their rooms and cleaning out the kitchen and pantry. As much as I wanted to stay up and visit with my classmates for one last, late-night session, I knew I was going to have to get up early and start shuttling people to the airport the next morning. I went to bed at around 1am, and fell asleep right away.