06/15/00 -- Trial by Fire

Ohmygod!

We critiqued my first story today.  I wasn't expecting it.  As prolific as we've all been, we've let stories slip to following days because we've been getting through about three a day.  Well, we went long today (after a lunch break), and mine stayed on the agenda for today.

AAAAAAIEEEEEEEEEE!!  I wasn't expecting that to happen.  I wasn't prepared.  After lunch (where Suzy, Stuart, Kelly and I chatted about gender relations, feminism, work, and a whole slew of other things over scary looking food), I ran back up to my room, grabbed my purple floppy hat and deposited it on my head, grabbed Lansing (the octopus -- you'll probably see him when Stuart gets some of the digital images to me and I put them up on the ce2k pages), and went back down to Van Hoosen.  One critique before we got to my story.  I just had to survive it... and then survive mine.

As much as I had feared, everything went okay.  Trial by fire turned into helpful suggestions (which I had already come to expect).  And I've got some ideas to help fix this up.  I'm not sure I can change everything that was suggested (not that I had ever planned to) because it would require a second story similar to the first, but with other things happening.  Which is fine.  I just have to figure out how exactly I'm going to do this and how to cut and expand and not end up with something that looks, well, hacked.  I'm not too worried about it, though.  I survived the Great Ordeal (tm) and came out very grateful for the wonderful people critiquing.

I think I'm really weirded out by how, well, not overly social this group seems to be.  Most of the folks work with their doors closed (okay, so some of them have ACs and it's more efficient to keep the door closed if you're cooling down) so I can't tell when I walk the hallways if they're in their rooms and busy, in their rooms and not minding of someone knocking and disturbing, or if they're not there at all.  I truly wish, also, that we were all on the same floor and in the same part of the hallway.  This isn't how I imagined Clarion to be as far as the dorm situation goes.  I guess I sort of pictured back to Lewis & Clark and the way we'd all have our doors open (unless we really didn't want to be disturbed) and people would poke their heads out, shout something into the hall, and see another head or five in response (whether they were asking about homework, a trip to Banning's, or whatever).  That isn't happening.  I really wish it could, but we're between two floors and in two different hallways up on the third floor.

Suzy is awesome.  Have I mentioned that?  Her reading was tonight at Archives (great little bookstore! -- They had a used Tanith Lee book [that may be out of print], so I bought it.) and she read her story "Boobs" which originally appeared in Asimov's and then got into a bunch of anthologies.  The story is great.  Listening to Suzy read it is even better.

I realized, when Stuart pulled out his digital camera, that I still hadn't put film in my camera at all and I hadn't brought it with me to the reading. I was a little annoyed with myself for that and I've vowed to make up for it.  I'll bring it to class tomorrow morning and get a few pictures of Suzy while she's still here. :)  And I'll try really hard to remember it during the next 5 readings.

Jennifer and I were going to work out this evening, but with a long-running class to try and get as many stories critiqued as we could, and meeting at 4:45 or so to head off to Coral Gables for dinner and then head off for the 7pm reading, it didn't happen.

Oh.  I started a story this morning.  And then finished it (after reading stories for critique tomorrow) right about 2am.  I was going to sleep.  honest.  But I just couldn't.  I wanted to get another story out and in as quickly as possible.  Karen's got two done already.  Though there is still at least one person who hasn't finished one yet and probably won't get a story critiqued by Suzy.  That seems to be the goal of most of us... write enough stories to get one critiqued by each instructor.  If we write more, great.  Though I think someone mentioned wanting to write two stories a week.  I'm not sure I'd be able to do that even without all of the reading of stories and critiquing of stories.  I'd go out of my mind trying to cram that much writing in.  (Never mind that I turned in two stories this week -- it was a fluke.  I'll write six stories in the first two weeks and then nothing for the rest of Clarion, I'm certain.)

I set the printer to print the story so I could look at it first thing when I woke up and then I went to bed.  Whoa, what a day.