My Writing Theory of the Day

Your approach to writing SF is basically determined by which Burroughs you give your allegiance to.

Clarion West 2014

So this is great news that I can now share: I got notified a few weeks back that I was accepted to attend Clarion West this summer. For those who haven’t heard of it, it’s a six-week writing workshop with a focus on speculative fiction, held here in Seattle. (There’s an affiliated workshop that’s basically the same thing held annually in San Diego, confusingly just called Clarion). By all accounts it is the absolute shizzle shizazzle for folks who write SF or fantasy and want to get better at it.

This year’s lineup of instructors looks great: Kij Johnson, John Crowley, Ian McDonald, Charlie Jane Anders, Hiromi Goto, and Paul Park. I’ve read work by some of them, and obviously I’ll be checking out the others’ writing in the next few months.

Apparently it’s a pretty intense six weeks. Folks come from all over the US and from other countries to attend, though fortunately for me it’s only about four miles away: I’ll be living at the UW campus for the six weeks with the rest of the group — in a sorority house, apparently — but I should be able to visit with my wife and son occasionally. It’ll also be great to be hanging out in the U District again — I worked at the University Book Store right off-campus for three years in the mid- to late-90s. Good times. All in all I have to say I’m really looking forward to this whole undertaking.

Quote #18

“Putting my weakest books to the wall last night I came across a copy of Howards End and had a look into it. But it’s not good enough. E. M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He’s a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain’t going to be no tea.”

– Katherine Mansfield, from her Journal, May 1917. I like Howards End, and feel like this is actually a better description of the stillborn A Passage to India. But it’s still hilarious.

S.T. Joshi in the NYT

Two things I didn’t know but am now aware of, thanks to the Times profile of S.T. Joshi:

• Joshi lives here in Seattle. Some quick online sleuthing reveals that, although he was profiled a few years back in my neighborhood’s goofy little newspaper, he actually lives up near Ravenna. It’s always surprising and gratifying how many people with some relation to SFF live in this metropolitan area.
• True Detective, which I haven’t seen but am interested in, was influenced by Robert W. Chambers’s 1895 book The King in Yellow, which I haven’t read but am also interested in.

Poor Debussy, Poor Vaughan Williams

One of the more depressing things I’ve come across recently: searching the Seattle Public Library catalog for Debussy preludes brings up “Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album.”

Even more depressing: Vaughan Williams’s lovely Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is also there.