Month: October 2009

As I get permission from them, I’ll be grouping other fighting 13’ers’ and instructors’ responses to VP XIII here, just to show you all why you should drink the kool-aid as well.

photo courtesy of Matt Hughes

Viable Paradise
Viable Paradise Index
Official Viable Paradise Site
Student Sales Page

Bo Balder:
VP XIII
Viable Paradise, the aftermath

Brent Bowen
So What’s Your Story? #vpiii

Steve Buchheit
Long awaited VP Posts: emotional side up
Long Awaited VP Posts: What I learned on my Fall Vacation

Christopher Cornell
Viable Paradise XIII, Part 1: The Unnecessary Prologue
Viable Paradise XIII, Part 2: Setting
Viable Paradise XIII, Part 3: Characters
Viable Paradise XIII, Part 4: The Plot Thickens
Viable Paradise XIII, Part 5: Random Wisdom

Sean Craven
Return from Paradise
Chili-Dog Casserole, as served at Viable Paradise XIII

Marion Engelke
Writing after Viable Paradise

Chia Evers
So, What Was It Like?

Matt Hughes
From the Little Island
,,,and Home Again
Viable Paradise–Sunday
Viable Paradise–Monday
Viable Paradise–Tuesday
Viable Paradise–Wednesday
Viable Paradise–Thursday
Viable Paradise–Friday
Viable Paradise–Saturday
Viable Paradise–Tips for Future Students

E.F. Kelley
Back from the Vineyard

Magistera
(occupationally discreet moniker)
On Viable Paradise

Darice Moore
from My Candle Burns at Both Ends

Cath Schaff-Stump
Rain, Travel, Books
Viable
Viable!
And You May Ask Yourself…
Viable Paradise: Reflections

MacAllister Stone
VP Veggie Curry, because I promised Darice

Brandie Tarvin
The Workshop Experience
How Viable Paradise Works

Whoops. You caught me keeping Viable Paradise hours. 🙂 I’m on the downhill swing of the cold, and a hot drink is helping me decroupify.

I’m only three stories in, but I can unstintingly recommend Christopher Barzak’s The Love We Share Without Knowing.

Barzak’s gentle story cycle will be of particular interest to those of you familiar with the culture of Japan. Not the shiny, glossy anime Japan, but rather the soft, multi-layered, nuanced Japan that anyone who has visited the country for a length of time will recognize. Barzak’s particular strength is the taffy-like interpersonal relationships he describes among Japan and those misfits from soto or out groups. In Barzak’s case, the outsiders are not all gaijin or foreigners.

Effective on many levels, subtle but not obscure, the book is a chance to get a glimpse into a culture that sometimes seems like a secret.

Catherine

Viable Paradise was an intense week of seminars, critiques, one-on-one sessions, and colloquium discussions, with a fair amount of socializing thrown in. Again, I can not encourage writers enough to apply. The worst that could happen is that you are rejected, and if you are a good writer, your chances of being accepted are fairly good. You can also apply multiple times.

For me, Viable Paradise was my only real workshop option. The kind of job I have would never allow me to be gone for the six weeks workshops like Clarion and Odyssey require. It’s a great venue for those of us who work. Tuition is reasonable, and by the time you add in airfare and lodging, it is substantially less than the six week experiences as well. Of course, you can visit the VP page for all the specifics on cost.

Is it a good investment in your writer education? Yes. It’s a transformational experience, a paradigm shift, and a networking experience that I don’t think you can recreate on your own. You may have noticed already my transformational gushing.

I’ll be honest. In spite of my cool outer shell, I am like many beginning writers. I am shy and uncertain when it comes to talking to people in the field I admire. After the workshop, I understood that I was in the club. That we were expected to introduce ourselves to other writers, and be, you know, writers.

It’s like my Carolyn Stevermer entries, only magnified. *gulp* But it’s really cool at the same time. It seems impersonal for me to think of this only as networking, but that aspect of it is undeniable.

I expected many things from VP, but I didn’t expect paradigm shifts. The first thing we were told was that we would be the top 2-3 percent of a given slush pile. We were told repeatedly that even though our work would undergo intense scrutiny, that we are good writers. The critiques we were given and gave each other were the kind that other writers would give, tough, but underlying the critiques was the strong belief on the part of the instructors that we are good writers.

And (here’s the shift) we were considered writers by the instructors from the moment we arrived. We weren’t considered, as I think many of us saw ourselves, as people who wanted to be writers. We were considered the next generation of fantasy and science fiction writers. For me, that didn’t sink in until the end of the workshop, after I’d received both good and bad feedback on my piece. These instructors took us and our stories seriously. We were considered people who are building writing careers.

There are some other writing paradigms that have shifted for me. I’ll hide them under here in case you’ve reached the point of blah, blah, blah. Remember your opinions and mileage may vary. These are things I’ve come to think after the workshop.

Continue reading “Viable Paradise: Reflections”

(Today was a serious work day. I’m almost caught up from being gone.)

When we last left our Pandavas, they had finished their 12 years in the forest, and they were going to spend a 13th year in disguise in the court of Virata. The Pandavas chose some interesting disguises. He-man Arjuna dressed as a eunuch. Yudhisthira, who finally learned the secret of dice, dressed as a gambler. Bhima was a cook. Draupadi was the equivalent of a hair dresser.

This section of the Mahabharata echoes the war that is to come in many ways. Bhima kills a man that makes advances toward Draupadi. Arjuna acts against his nature. Yudhisthira stops gambling and starts playing with certainty.

At the end of the 13th year of exile, the Pandavas return home. They try to negotiate a return and once again their kingdom, but Duryodhana and his brothers aren’t having any, so there is a giant epic war at Kurukshetra, where much of the foreshadowing from the dice game is fulfilled.

At the beginning of the battle, Arjuna is filled with doubt about his role, particularly when the god Krsna calls on him to shoot Bhisma, the Pandavas’ uncle and the mighty hero who has guided Arjuna. Krna counters with his recitation of the Bhagavadghita, which is where we’ll begin next time.

I’m feeling a bit better, although it’s time for the return of Dr. Squeaky, apparently. I’m sure my students will giggle much tomorrow.

I have sent off the short short stories I wrote at the workshop:

Empress Dark went to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
The Make-over went to Reflection’s Edge
Mama’s Girl went to Clarkesworld Magazine

Tomorrow, regrettably, I give up my writing time because I didn’t get into work today. Don’t worry. It won’t become a habit.

Catherine

In spite of my generous spirit, I have decided not to share my Vineyard plague with the world at large, and am thus home sick today.

Book group, this means I will not be on hand tonight to talk about Lockmora. Even though I really liked it. Have a good time.

Back to couch and fluids I’m going to work tomorrow, even if I have to wear one of those dorky little masks.

Catherine

I’m home. I’d like to thank Viable Paradise for many things, including a cold, which keeps on giving. So I’m playing today pretty low key, and I’ll be back soon.

Life is pretty good though. If a little a sniffly.

Catherine

The Talking Heads have a song called “Once in a Lifetime.” Let me time warp you to 1980. I was a mere 15 years old.

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Thirty years later, I’m sitting up at 5:02 a.m. on Martha’s Vineyard. My sleeping patterns have been erratic since I got here, subject to the whims of late night writing and socializing, acid reflux, and creative insomnia. They feed us healthily, but if I kept this up, I’m sure I’d cause some sort of major health problem. This has been a glorious week.

David Byrne’s song asks the musical question: How did I get here? Many things happen to people around my age. We begin to take stock in what we’ve done with our life in a way that we theoretically knew we would when we were younger.

I was right about one thing–I am pretty happy with the whole altruistic what I’ve done for others angle, and I’m happy that teaching has helped me make a contribution. No meaningless life issues here.

If Bryon and I were to have a midlife crisis, it’s probably the issue scaffolding our conversations of how we’d like to do something else that’s a little more creative and personal. We do a great job with the time and money resources we have in that regard, but I know that if the money were there for us to do something else, we probably would start some sort of new venture. Overall, though, we are happy with how things have turned out. And Boss, if you’re reading this, no worries. I plan to retire a teacher, unless the Terry Pratchett tidal wave sweeps me out of the office.

Yet, at those pivotal life changing moments, you find yourself really introspective. Life changing moments. Let me show you them.

Continue reading “And You May Ask Yourself…”

Well, that was cool.

But I promised to wait until AFTER I’d received all the feedback, didn’t I?

However, I think one of the instructors just gave me a whole lot of the right kind of work today.

Slow down, buckaroo. Someone is still waiting on the troll story.

I’ll try to tell you tomorrow, but I won’t be doing anything until after I get a 20 page story ready for Thursday.

Wow.

Catherine

Up and at ’em since dark-o-thirty. I went to bed early last night, and it seems to have been a wise thing to do. I think it’s going to help me get through the next few days on a more even keel.

What can I tell you about the experience here so far? I liken being here to a lot like your first week in the army, or at college. It’s a different culture, people are getting to know each other, and everywhere you look, you see cultural adjustment going on.

One of the things that instructors have asked is that we don’t tell you specifics about their lectures, as they’d rather do that themselves, or rather, they’d like to keep the material marketable. Have I learned anything that I didn’t know already? No, not really. We’ve had a workshop on plot which was very interesting, as it was an extended metaphor that could probably have been taught only by that instructor, and I thought was good teaching. Props to James MacDonald for that.

Elizabeth Bear delivered a lecture on structure that presented the information in a clear, straightforward demo, and came with a demo from the audience. That was pretty good too. Our writing collegium from yesterday was organic, but serviceable.

Props to the instructors. They gave the same speech I give at the beginning of every comp class. It’s not about you, writers, it’s about your story. James Macdonald reminds everyone that we’re all good writers, else we wouldn’t be here, but they are focusing on the kind of feedback they’d give their fellow writers.

The other students are all over the map in experience. Some of them are where I’m at in the process of getting published. Others haven’t submitted, or don’t have a novel. Some of them are very easy going about the critiques they’ve been getting, whether they’re what they’d hoped for or not. Some are working their way around a critique carefully, as they figure out the new culture. Just like my own students.

Substance has had a one-on-one critique so far. I walked out to the beach with Elizabeth Bear yesterday. Today I meet John Scalzi for another one-on-one, and tomorrow I have my student critique with six other students and a couple more instructors. I have food for thought. Which is why I came. My writer fantasy is no longer to be told I have nothing to do. That’s a very young writer’s fantasy. Nope, I’m all about getting shots from different angles that are specific to my story, so I can think about what happens when and if I revamp and send it out again.

I’ll write up something about the overall feedback I receive when I’ve collected the whole set.

Another thing I’ll probably write up are hot tips for VPers. Logistically, there are some things you might want to be aware of if you make this trip, and that might be useful for folks in the future.

Anyway, I’m doing fine. Missing Bryon lots, but he’d be bored.

Catherine