Yesterday was a fairly prosaic day. We went to the Michael Swanwick reading, and I bought two single-author anthologies, Tales of Old Earth by Michael and Strange Days by Gardner Dozois. When I sat down to read them last night, my mind kept critiquing the stories (the critiques were good, but still). It was then that I realized I’ve learned more about writing in the last week and a half of Clarion than I did in all my writing classes combined. But I hope that after I leave here I’ll relearn how to read uncritically.

Today was another interesting day. They just seem to fly by.

Which brings us to my second story getting critiqued tomorrow. I’m not that worried about it. Not because I think it’s particularly great, but because I know I can take my licks. However, though the prospect of my conference with Michael Swanwick is fairly nerve-wracking.

We also have over 40,000 words of fiction to critique for tomorrow (although roughly 6k of that is mine), none of which I have done. Instead I decided to pace around for four hours searching for inspiration. I did not feel comfortable going into my critique tomorrow without any idea of what I’m going to be doing next. But I found my next story idea! I’m going to combine two ideas of mine (both of which have been desperately searching for stories for some time). It’s going to be a science fiction story based off my time working at the Holocaust Museum.

Anyway, I’m in Van Hoosen now and I plan on starting my critiques.