I haven't posted here for a while - since I was planning on doing Clarion about now. Thing is, I've been to Write-by-the-Lake in Madison two summers in a row now, and I think I can skip the short story route and go right to writing a novel. I had a good start on it, but this year's WBTL convinced me I need to go back and replot a lot of it. I'm a lot happier with and more motivated to write the new version....

Oh, and our 25th anniversary was great. We stayed in a B&B on the Elroy-Sparta bike trail and rode the trail. Beautiful countryside out there.

This may end up being a distraction from my Clarion ambitions, but I'm off to Write by the Lake in Madison next week. I'm signed up for a novel writing track, but some of it should transfer to short stories. Speaking of stories, I have one rejection back and two stories out for consideration since my last post - Leaving Branningan's and Harrington Down.

I just jettisoned my last RPG writing project last week and freed up a little more writing time in the mornings. Our writing group also started meeting once a month (tentatively called Aspiring Novelists Group Editing and Review - ANGER), and I'm getting some great feedback on my writing. Actual production of short stories has been dirt slow for a couple months, however. Nothing's gone out since the submission to IGMS.

I've sent one story off to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. I've also got three other stories at various stages of sketching/writing/editing. My writing workshop at the local technical college started up last Tuesday, and I 'll be there tonight, reviewing my latest story a thousand words at a time. We've also set a date for the first meeting of our smaller novel/short story review group and have passed around the first chapters.

Due to my 25th anniversary, the fact that I might have to quit my job to get the time off, and the financial realities of having two kids in college at the same time, It looks like I am going to hold off until Clarion 2011.

I've finished reading Kate Wilhelm's Storyteller. I enjoyed it, and she managed to sneak a lot of writing advice into what is basically an insider's history of the Clarion Writer's Workshop, which is really a history of the relationship between the instructors and the students.  I think this book will find a permanent home on my writing how-to shelf, right next to my two favorites of all time: Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King, and Creating Short Fiction, by Kate Wilhelm's late, great husband, Damon Knight.

I have two lifelong friends, one here and one in England, who's midlife crises are also manifesting as extended adventures a couple years out. Instead of Clarion, they've decided to enter ARC, a transatlantic sailing race in November of 2010. How does this impact me and Clarion you ask? Like this.

My friend and I are taking the elevator down to the bodega on the first floor of our office building and he tells me his problem. He needs to be certified in a number of sailing courses before the race, and he can get two of the main courses out of the way by spending a week in Florida this Summer sailing non-stop. The problem is that his 25th anniversary falls during that week.

I nod and start to wonder about my own 25th anniversary, coming up in July of ....Doh! Oh crap. Smack dab in the middle of Clarion 2010.

Would my wife be willing to fly out for a few days to be with me? I have to learn more about the Clarion environment to figure out if it's even possible to get away on a Tuesday night for a nice dinner and a walk on the beach. And we have always discussed a trip for our 25th. We love England and would like to see more of Europe (San Diego and Seattle were never on the list) but I don't think I could swing that much more time away from work in the same year.

A delay to Clarion 2011 may be looming on the horizon.

For a few years I've been participating in a weekly writer's workshop at a local technical college. It's a good mix of people who write a wide variety of things, and the feedback is generally pretty good, and frequently surprising. It works well, but because of the size of the class, we're limited to presenting about 1,000 words per class. I didn't sign up for this last semester, but the next session starts in January.

This week someone emailed me to ask if I want to be in a smaller, more focused group that will meet less frequently but review a lot more writing at a time. I know the other people in the group,and they're all great writers and give good critiques. If I set a goal of a certain number of stories in a certain time, I 'm sure they would encourage me to stick to it.

Maybe I'll do both groups.

As I've searched the web for information about Clarion Writer's Workshops I've come across a few blogs documenting people's process of preparing to apply for the workshop, and preparing for the workshop itself once they were accepted. I'm intrigued.

I have about 19 months until Clarion 2010, but only 14 months until the application process begins. In that time I have to do the following (pretty much in priority order):

• Write lots more short stories
• Convince my wife that this is a good idea
• Try not to take on many new RPG writing responsibilities
• Come up with the money
• Arrange a leave of absence from my job
• Find a more focused writer's group
• Get something accepted for publication or win a contest
• Read Kate Wilhelm's "Storyteller"

Future posts will elaborate on my plans and track my progress for each of these.