07/16/00 -- Clarion is like falling in love and not being able to do anything about it

Okay, just lemme get this out of my system, m'kay?

(Or you can skip to where something actually happens.)

Strange and stupid as it might sound, that's really what Clarion's been like for me.  Clarion is like falling completely, soul-burningly in love and being unable to do anything about it for any number of reasons.  This has been a beautiful, wonderful, intense, sad, tragic, fantastic experience.  If I think about it too much, it makes me cry.  It's like being in love and knowing that everything you love you have to leave behind at the end of six weeks.  And you don't know if you'll ever find anything like it again, feel anything like it again.  Or if your life is going to be the same again, or complete again.

I'm starting to miss people and we're not even gone yet.

In my survey on the Clarion 2000 pages I said I didn't want to be adopted by anyone because I don't want anymore parents, no matter how cool they are.  I've almost changed my mind.  Almost.

In spite of that, there are people I want to keep in my pocket, that I want to keep with me, that I don't want to lose.  Even if that doesn't mean physically in my pocket (which would get pretty crowded after a little while).

I've been on the verge of tears all day because of this.  Week six is starting.  There's not much time left.  I don't want it to stop.  I don't want this weird dream world to shatter back into my real life, to drop me from this amazing and intense place back into something normal and banal.  I know it has to end, but I don't want it to.

I'm intimidated.  I'm desperately afraid I'm not going to live up to my own (possibly foolishly high) expectations and I want to.  I want to live up to those expectations now.  I'm impatient and I know it, but time is doing weird things.  I don't know if I have time to be patient.  If I have time to relax and let everything sink in, click into place, do all of those cliché things they're supposed to do so that one day I sit up in bed five minutes before the alarm goes off and say, Ahh!  That's what Maureen/Greg/Sean meant when s/he said whatever it was s/he said about some great thing that's giving me this pre-alarm epiphany.  I want it to happen now.  All of it.  Bring on the epiphanies!

But enough of that...  Everyone says that Clarion is a different experience for everyone involved so this isn't going to help any of you reading this.  Just remember that and ignore me for a while, m'kay?

(Yes, this is where something actually happens.)

I read and critiqued first thing this morning because I figured I'd be too tired/out of it when we all got back from Lister's this evening.

The bar-b-queue was pretty tasty and lots of fun.  We talked.  We drank a few beers (after I told Greg I wasn't going to drink any beer I could see through, he agreed, and the two of us went on a beer run and grabbed some Guinness and some other stuff--the chick behind the cash register carded me... which was weird... since I wasn't even buying, Greg was... which prompted a strange discussion later about what the cashier must've thought about Greg *teehee*  Guess you had to be there...).  There was much food left over.  There was a game of croquet.  There was a huge fire.  I'm with Trey, though.  I sorta expected it to last longer, the fire to get bigger, to see the fireflies.  But after most folks had left, I helped clean up a bit in the kitchen and those who remained wanted to bail.  It was all sort of strange.

Back on campus, I decided to head over to Van Hoosen and try to write.  Before I did, I discovered Greg was hard at work because he was forwarding email.  *snicker*  So I gave him a hard time, talked a bit about writing, then went over to Van Hoosen and pulled out my spiral notebook.  Yes, I started writing by hand.

And realized a page (small quarter-sized page) into it that I wasn't allowed to summarize anymore.  I whipped out my laptop and started rewriting already.  The little hand-written scribble I had turned into 600 words.  I think this story might work.  That I might finish it before the end of the week.  With luck, it'll get a critique.  Or it won't.  I don't know.  It's going to be a hard story to finish.  There's a lot in it (or will be) that touches my life in places I haven't gone in a while.

Jennifer popped in and was going to critique down there.  We wound up talking.  Then Greg and Maureen came by.  We all talked.  Greg threw himself around on a mattress he found in the closet (he misses his aikido falls!) for a while.  We talked s'more.  Greg went away.  Other people showed up.  Maureen came back.  Greg came back. Jennifer went away.  Maureen went away. There was much talking all through the comings and goings (and a small amount of questioning about the mattress! *snicker*) until I realized that it was 20 minutes until midnight.  Everyone filtered away after that and I hauled by butt back upstairs to try and work on the story s'more.  It's a tiny bit over 800 words right now.  It's probably going to stay that way since it's after 1am right now and I should really go to sleep.

Sleep will help my head from staying fucked up.  I hope.

 

Okay, so other folks are talking about their productivity here.  I decided I may as well, too. This list (and my productivity) is subject to change without notice. :)
Title	Word Count	Finished	Critiqued?
"Where the Blood Roses Grow" Week one, first story.  Wahoo.  And I was worried that something wouldn't come.	5000	6/13	6/15
"Uprooting the Tree" Will probably change the title at some point.	3400	6/16	6/19
"Mockingbird Girl" I think I'm happiest with this story, so far.	2800	6/19	6/26
"Poor as Paupers, Rich as Royalty" My challenge story from Sean's week.  I hated writing it.  It gave me a toothache.	2000	6/22
That fucking first person narrative (not yet complete) - May never be completed.  Don't I feel like an idiot...	(400)
"Switched to Overload"  (That other fucking first person narrative) Actually, I like this one better than the one above it ...  Even if it did wind up being two first person narratives in one story.  o.O	4900	6/27	7/3
"Sweeter Than Honey, Stronger Than Wine"  (My Tananrive Due challenge story.  Write a story in the style of an author whose work you admire.  Aieee!  It was sort of supposed to be in the style of Tanith Lee.  I'm not sure I hit that.  But it's definitely got a Christina Rossetti influence.)	9200	7/2	7/10
"Hypothetical Beaches" I really hope it turns out to be not quite as stupid as I feel like it is.  Finished it just before Maureen and Greg's 24-hour moratorium on writing.  (In case you're wondering, it started from a free-write.)	2800	7/10	7/13
"From Time to Time" (unfinished) Fucked if I know what this is going to turn into if it will turn into anything over the next couple of days.  It's twisted.  Or at least a little gross.	(837)
"Sisters and Sirens" (unfinished) With luck, I'll finish this one.  It's first person.  Ugh.  You'd think I'd've learned after "Switched to Overload".  Feh.  (So I wrote more after I thought I was going to sleep ... deal with it.)	(1204)