Sunday, October 02, 2005

Clarion Wanna-Be's Rejoice!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I hope to attend Clarion within the next two years. Having read the blogs of participants in both Clarion East and Clarion West, I've concluded that I don't really care which one I attend -- it's all about who the teachers will be. I'm still considering next summer, but my daughter will just be three, and it will be really hard on her for Daddy to be gone for six weeks (and Daddy will miss her too!). When she turns four I don't think it will be such a big deal. We'll see how that goes when the time comes. I may put in an application this year just to see if I can get accepted (which is probably akin to cruising a car dealership "just to look" and driving out with a new car).

Until that time though, here is a book every Clarion wanna-be (like me) needs to go out and get right now: Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers' Workshop, by Kate Wilhelm. Kate and her late husband Damon Knight taught at Clarion for just about every year it has existed. The book is half memoir and half writing instruction book and both are blended together extremely well. If you want to get a good feel for what it's like to attend Clarion, you have to pick up this book. I had to get it special order from Amazon.com. The publisher was someone I'd never heard of, so there's a good chance your local Borders isn't going to carry it. It's been well worth the wait so far! I'll post my comments of the book once I've finished it, but so far I'm entralled.

By the way, an update to my post of yesterday: It turns out there are a couple of pages of text in the Agile Rabbit maps book. There is a thumbnail of each map, a date, and about a 4 or 5 word description. The descriptions are singluarly unhelpful, but they do provide some clues for those that want to embark on the treasure hunt. It would be very interesting to find some of the places mentioned (Babylon is one) in the modern world...

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