Had my meeting with Kelly today. It went pretty well, actually. Apparently, I have a voice (which presumably has some sort of unique quality to it). That surprised me quite a bit. Voice is one of those things that they talk about in creative writing classes which never quite made sense to me. I understand what a voice is. I mean, I can recognize an F. Scott piece or a Hemingway piece or a Marquez piece without a by-line. But I didn’t understand why that was. I still don’t, exactly. But it’s nice to know that I have something to say. That’s one thing I’ve worried about; the idea that maybe I’m too young to really have anything to contribute to the discussion.

I honestly think that whatever voice I have has really come bursting out in Clarion. My stories before Clarion (with a few exceptions) seem to lack the same flair as my Clarion stories. Often, it’s just that they weren’t nearly ambitious enough. My very first few stories had very inventive concepts (even if they were poorly executed) and my last few Pre-Clarion stories began to approach that inventiveness again. But in the middle there was a vast body of work that didn’t aim high enough.

Anyway, I just got back from playing a modified version of Mafia in a combination of Spin the Bottle and my own knowledge of Bermanology combined to win the day for us “scientists”. It was ka-razy.