One week until Clarion applications are due.

I’ve made good progress today, despite not being home for most of it. 585 words written and roughly 3,000 to go. The story is coming along as I expected. I should outline more often. Working through the major elements of the story before I began seems to have helped.

So far, so good. I’ll need to kick it up a notch if I want to finish this draft, get some quick feedback from a first reader or two and have some time to fix up the glaring mistakes in both stories I’m using for my application. I might not get a lot of time for polishing, but I think that will be okay. There are more important details to consider. Thanks Trey

Another day off the calendar, another day closer to the April 1st deadline. I didn’t get any work done on the new story. There were too many work issues today and I’m too tired to do anything productive now. Going to get some sleep and make day seven a productive one. I should be able to finish a complete draft by the end of the weekend, giving me a full five days to tighten up both stories.

I’m gathering some statistics to torture myself with once my application is submitted. There are only 18 people are accepted into Clarion. At least one person has already received an early acceptance. If I can find out the average number of applicants per year I could figure out the statistics at being accepted. The wait for the phone call acceptance or snail mail rejection will be painful either way but this way I’ll keep my mind occupied.

I’ve been thinking about Clarion for nearly five years now. Every year I have talked myself out of applying due to the difficulty of getting the time off of work. I tell myself that next year will be a better time to apply.

After giving it a lot of thought and talkign to my friend shweta from AbsoluteWrite, who’s already been accepted for the class of 2007, I have decided to get my application in and worry about the logistics if I get approved.

The application requires two short stories between 2,500 and 6,000 words. I only have one recent story that falls into that range that is representative of my current writing abilities. That gives me nine days, between now and April 1st, to write a second story and edit both of them up so that they represent the best work I’m currently capable of.

I still need to maintain my work load but as long as I don’t procrastinate and waste time there is no reason I can’t make the deadline. The added bonus is that April 1st is also the deadline for the workshop at Penguicon.

As a matter of accountability, I’m going to post daily updates. If you see me miss an update, feel free to send me angry emails and tell me to stop being a slacker.

Last night I typed up all of the notes I had about the new story and tonight I write a 700 word outline.

Technorati Tags: clarion, penguicon, writing

Clarion is one of the most widely known and respected writing workshops in the country. Each year, they accept a handful of writers for six weeks of intense work. Someone once said that the “six weeks of Clarion are the literary equivalent of boot camp.” I would believe it, judging by the comments I’ve heard from members of the group

The process is fairly straightforward. Send in an application with two complete short stories by April 1st, 2003. If accepted, there is a $100 enrollment fee to hold your spot, and the balance of the $1059 fee due upon arrival to Clarion. One nice thing is that this counts as four undergraduate credits from MSU.

Sounds easy so far, right? I think so. The actual difficulty, aside from actually being accepted, is getting out of work for six weeks and keeping my job. At the stage we are at, where I’m one half of our entire development team and we each have a seperate and distinct skillset, being unavailable for that long is nearly impossible.

Perhaps going this year is infeasible. Even with six months advanced warning, I’m not sure I could pull it off. Still, I wonder if I should apply to Clarion anyways and deal with the time issue if I actually get accepted.