AWP Conference

I'm leaving soon for Chicago and for AWP! I'm excited to see my friends, learn from other authors, and wander the gigantic bookfair.

I'll be tweeting from the conference with photos and happy moments. If you'd like to follow me, you can read my posts on:

https://twitter.com/#!/yuriparavion

I'll post more photos and a convention roundup when I get back. Yay!! :D

Clarion West: Changing Your Schema

CW Class of 2011 with instructor Paul Park

If you've read personal accounts of Clarion West or other residential writing workshops, you've probably heard one phrase mentioned over and over:

"It changed my life."

But what does this mean? 

Some writers may leave a workshop with stories they publish soon after in pro markets. But the people who say a workshop changed their lives far outnumber the amount of writers who leave a workshop with a publishable story. 

You've probably also heard writers say that they expected for a workshop to be life-changing, but in the end the experience wasn't quite that. It may have still been a wonderful, fun, inspiring experience - just not life-changing. 

What I think happens in a workshop, and what determines whether you describe it afterwards as life-changing or just excellent, is whether or not you experienced a change of schema. 

Your schema is your worldview. It's how you see yourself, the world, and yourself in the world. 

People experience schema shifts when they decide to embrace or reject major modes of thought in their lives. These are usually concepts that impact daily living: 

Adopting a religion. Or rejecting one. Or all of them. 

Becoming vegetarian/ vegan/ raw. Or moving away from these after embracing them. 

Having a child. Adopting a child. Or deciding not to have children. 

In the case of the writing workshop, your schema has to do with how you view yourself and your writing. And very importantly, what place writing has in your daily life. 

If you go to a residential workshop like Clarion West and you already have an agent, a published book, and/or a coterie of established authors you hang out with at conventions, then the workshop experience might not be a life-changing one for you. Writing is already part of your schema.

But if you're like me, an unpublished beginner with a handful of writing friends who writes in short bursts of inspiration once a month, then a workshop like Clarion West could very well change your life. 

I know it changed mine. 

After Clarion West, writing was part of my life. I considered myself a writer. Not a gifted writer, or a crappy writer, but someone whose daily work is writing. Maybe not for money, but for myself. 

And because I considered myself a writer, I wrote more. 

I couldn't allow myself the excuses I'd made before the workshop. They didn't fit my schema anymore. 

When I came home to Alabama, I missed being around other writers. At Clarion West there were always people willing to talk about Star Trek, your story in progress, or watch an episode of MST3K at midnight. There's a community for you, both inside the house and at the Friday night parties. 

After Clarion West I sought out my local community. This was something I hadn't had the courage to do before Clarion West, and to be honest, I thought it didn't matter. But I realized that community is so important. It is probably the second most important part of writing life, after the actual sitting down and writing part. 

There are tons of other, smaller changes. Reading more short story magazines, joining my local writers group, signing up for a novel workshop - I could catalogue the changes down to finally getting a new pair of glasses. My schema changed, and I changed, at a fundamental level.

More than anything, this schema change post-workshop made me feel whole. It gave me a sense of calm and drive as a writer. I felt less of a rush to publish, win accolades, find a fan base. The daily act of writing, of being with the story, was no longer drudge work. It fulfilled and sustained me.

They say that every year at Clarion West two writers fall in love. Two years ago, in the middle of my MFA program, I hated my writing. I wanted to torch my stories. At Clarion West, I fell in love with writing again.

OOO

The deadline to apply to Clarion West is fast approaching. Submit your stories by March 1st. Check here for more information. 

If you're still not sure whether you want to apply, here are some posts from my classmates:

Sarah Hirsch - The only one of us to blog a little while at the workshop. Her posts give a good sense of being there. 

Mark Pantoja - Mark had an amazingly successful fundraising project on Kickstarter. 

Jei D. Marcade - wrote some lovely parting thoughts on her way home from Clarion West. 

Whether or not Clarion West changes your life, it is a wonderful, unforgettable experience. I'd recommend it for anyone interested in writing. 

A Visit from Orion

Earlier this month, a test module of the Orion Pathfinder visited the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville.

Orion Capsule on display in Huntsville

The Space Center hosted a lecture as part of their Pass the Torch series. Todd May, NASA's Space Launch System Program Manager, and Mark Kirasich, NASA's Orion Deputy Project Manager gave a presentation on the Orion project.

What was most exciting about their presentations was the focus on Mars. The Orion program's aim is to get humans on Mars, and further out into our solar system. 

The entire right half of the auditorium was filled with schoolchildren from Georgia. I'm really glad they were there, because after the lecture there was a Q&A session, and they were the only ones who came prepared with questions. 

And their questions were really great. 

The presenters had made a big deal of telling the children that they were the future of the space program. And that they'd be the ones exploring Mars and other worlds someday. 

When it came time for the Q&A, one boy asked his question with a tone of exasperation beneath his politeness: "So, you keep saying we're the future, and we're going to get to go to space when we're older. But do you ever think there'll be a time when kids can go to space? Like, at the age we're at right now?"

He's itching to go to space. He wants to go now. 

And even though I was sitting on the left side of the room, with people my age and mostly older, there were rumbles of support for the kid's question. We want to go too. 

Outside the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL

Another great question asked by one of the schoolkids:

"So why did we ever switch to the shuttle when we knew that the Apollo design worked?"

The presenters said that the shuttle design helped carry payload back and forth to the International Space Station. 

After the lecture and Q&A ended, we wandered out into the Davidson Center. At the end of the long hallway that holds the Saturn V rocket, there's a glass display case with this inside:

An Apollo capsule on loan from the Smithsonian

I grew up in the 80's, so the shuttle missions are my milestones, just like the Apollo missions were for my father. I watched the Challenger live on TV in my elementary classroom. And I remember sitting in the break room at work watching the last US shuttle launch on the television and feeling a great sadness at never going to one of the launches down in Florida. 

But maybe the capsule design is better for capturing the imagination of the world. 

With the shuttle we ferried supplies. But with Orion, the focus is exploration, heading further and further out into the cosmos. And that sense of exploration is what makes people excited about the space program. It's what fuels great stories and films that inspire children to study the sciences. Stories of the USS Enterprise would not have been as interesting if they'd spent all of their time between Earth and the ISS. 

Before the Orion visited Huntsville, I had no idea what was going on right now in the space program. With the shuttles decommissioned, I thought the whole program was in decline, and that we'd be forever hitching rides. 

But the space program is still alive, and I'm ready to start exploring. Even if it's only in my stories. 

Hatch to the Apollo capsule

Star Trek: For the Love of Gorn

"I weary of the chase. Wait for me.

 I shall be merciful and quick."

~ the Gorn to Kirk, "Arena"

I fell in love with the Gorn captain from the original series episode "Arena" pretty much at first sight. Maybe it was the short gold tunic, or his metallic eyes. Definitely his no-nonsense approach to fighting factored in somewhere. Even though he lumbered around, there's still an awesomeness to the Gorn that few other alien species in Star Trek possess.

We've been watching The Next Generation lately, heading into season three where the episodes are really starting to come together. But a little thing happened that made me want to pause our TNG odyssey and go back to TOS just for one episode, just to "Arena."

I joined Starfleet. 

And once I joined Starfleet, I discovered Starfleet Academy, where you can take courses on Star Trek topics. 

I figured I'd take a couple of Klingon classes, see what else was available. And then, I came across this:

Institute of Alien Studies (IOAS)

The Gorn Academy

Oh. My. Goodness.

Now, these courses aren't really courses in the usual college sense. You don't attend lectures or interact with a professor.

You watch the episode/ read the book and then take a multiple-choice quiz online for the 100 and 200 level classes. At the 300 level, you can write a Gorn Thesis, which is a short story about the Gorn.

When you pass, you get an awesome certificate.

The Hermione-Anne Shirley part of my brain compels me to complete each of these Gorn courses. And yes, that means I'll write some Star Trek, Gorn-centric fan fic sometime in the next few months.

(I bet Gorn ladies are badass. And I've been challenged to write a badass character.)

I've seen the Gorn vs. Kirk fight scene labeled as the Worst Fight Scene Ever. And if you watch just this scene, well, it does come off a bit slow-moving and silly.



You really have to watch the entire episode to love the Gorn. Then you'll see him chuckle to himself as he makes a trap. You can admire the Gorn's wit as he silently listens to Kirk babble on about his strategy over an open airwave.

The Gorn is menacing and alien. He makes Kirk run around in circles, lose his cool, and ultimately wins his respect - which influences the Metrons in their decision of whether or not to blast both ships to pieces due to their aggressive natures.



So before you skip over the episode "Arena" in your Trek watching, give it a shot. You may find yourself liking the Gorn more than you thought you would.

As for me, I'm moving on to the next logical step for my Gorn obsession.

A Gorn costume.

I'm going to AWP!

Looking Down on the World's Fair, 1893

This year I'll be attending the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Annual Conference for the first time. The AWP conference is the big literary conference. Margaret Atwood will be giving a keynote address, there'll be three days full of panels on writing and teaching writing, and a mammoth book fair.

But what I'm most excited about is seeing my friends. It will be the first time I've seen my MFA friend Ashley Cowger in several years. And I'm going to get to see Clarion West classmate Maria Romasco-Moore, too. In fact, the only reason I'm going to be able to attend is because of the support and encouragement of these friends.

The passes for AWP are completely sold out this year. Usually, they offer at the door memberships. I was one of the lucky people who bought one of the last 200 tickets when they went on sale. They sold out in 8 minutes.

Here are a few of the panels I'm looking forward to attending:

• A Writing Life, After the Workshop 
• The Long and Short of It: Navigating the Transitions between Writing Novels and Short Stories
• Selling Out Everyone You Love: The Ethics of Writing Nonfiction
• Villains and Killers and Criminals, Oh My: Representing Evildoers in Literary Fiction
• Beyond Pulp - The Futuristic and Fantastic as Literary Fiction
• NPRU Kidding Me? It Can Totally Happen
• The Image, Written: Using Photography and Mixed Media to Teach Creative and Composition Writing
• Pleasures and Perils of Drawing Fiction from Life

I'll be tweeting from AWP and I'll blog about the experience when I get back. The conference will be at the beginning of March, but I'm already getting excited and packing my suitcase. I can't wait to reunite with my writing friends, and to spend a few days immersed in a world where writing is what matters most. 

And I'm excited to go to Chicago for the first time, and to daydream about the White City of the World's Fair.