Yesterday I drove to Santa Cruz and wrote with Rachel Swirsky, Erin Cashier, and Katherine Sparrow–all Clarion West grads. We ate brunch at Zachary’s, then wrote at the Octagon. After that we moved to Katie’s house, where we wrote in her living room overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I made peach cobbler for everyone. We visited the Bay Tree Bookstore and passed the Santa Cruz Shakespeare outdoor theatre. In the evening we had a delicious feast of Indian food and pizza.

Man, I wish I could do that just about every day.

I woke way too early and ate reheated leftover nachos. It was like those parties I used to go to when I was in my mid-twenties, except I hadn’t been up all night and I hadn’t been drinking.

I name my files after the protagonist, or a key theme in the story, or a keyword from the title if I already know it when I start the story. Here’s the list of file names in reverse alphabetical order.

yeti, willow, terraform, swamp, spellsketching, shift, sacrifice, roadtrip, rapture, peacocks, ni, necklace, monstrocracy, jinsook, indigo, high, fireworks, feast, dreambreak, buildings, brand, antarctica, anais, american, amaterasu, alhambra, abduction, abby.

I don’t know why there are so many A’s. I think it’s coincidence.

Some of these I remember, and others I have no clue what they are. It’ll be fun when I open them up and “discover” them.

Shannon had to help me remove a splinter which I got from… my pajamas.  Yes, really.  A bit of fiberglass or something from the apartment dryers.  At least it was in my finger and not somewhere worse.

When your pajamas give you splinters, it’s time to go back to bed. Wearing different pajamas.

I will finish one new story each week for the next 8 weeks.  Probably ones from the write-a-thon, but if inspired I might draft something brand new.

I’ll put updates here.

Better late than never.

Launchpad was incredible. Thirteen sf writers, gathered at Laramie, WY, to learn about astronomy. The days were packed and intense. Most days had class from 10-6 or so, and the class activities varied from astronomy lecture to labs. Lectures included basic topics like what causes the seasons as well as more advanced topics like the composition of distant galaxies. We learned about planets, star formation, the expanding universe, neutron stars, lunar phases, exoplanets, and cosmology. Mike Brotherton is a funny and well-spoken instructor, so the lectures were never boring (although occasionally overwhelming and brain-filling.) Jim Verley did labs where we built a spectroscope and visited a planetarium. Jerry Oltion talked about the telescopes he’d built and helped us think about how to use astronomy accurately in fiction. All three instructors had very different styles, which was great for appealing to different learning styles.

In the evenings, we had various activities. We stood on top of the science building and looked at planets and stars with small telescopes. I saw the Andromeda Galaxy through some IR goggles, which was very sobering–I was seeing something enormous and light-years away while I was standing on my own two feet on the earth. A whole galaxy–and it was barely bigger than a star, from this distance. We also went to two observatories: Red Buttes and WIRO. At WIRO, the class took a picture of the Pelican Nebula, which we put on our class t-shirt. Here it is:

We took a hike in Vedauwoo, which was striking and lovely. I miss the desert. I had no trouble with the altitude and dryness in Laramie, but some of my classmates did.

Other highlights: We had a writing party on Tuesday night. About 12 of us sat in two rooms and worked on our own projects. Some people had margaritas. On Friday, some of us visited the farmers’ market, which was nice. On Saturday night, we had a party at Mike’s place, at which we played some great games of Thing.

I know I’ll be writing some astronomy stories in the next year or two. I absolutely recommend the experience for anyone who wants to write about astronomy.

For more details, try Eugie Foster’s or Jeffrey Carver’s blog. Scroll back to July 15 – 22. They were both a lot faster than I was about posting. And they have pictures.

All right, here’s a moment.

Total stories started: 28. Quality varies, but I’m reasonably sure that about 20 are worth exploring and perhaps 10-15 of them will eventually be finished. (At that point, I’ll decide based on the finished story whether it’s worth circulating.)

Total stories completed: 2. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, but I worked my tail off and finally got them done. I chose the peacock story–partly because I had the most words on it, and partly because some of you said you wanted to read it. I also did the fireworks story because I knew it would be short.

Total words written: 22,850. And some of them are in BLOOD.

Funds raised for Clarion West: I haven’t gotten a final count yet, but I think it’s somewhere around $300. If anyone still needs to pay their pledge, you can make a donation here. You can also donate even if you didn’t officially sponsor me. All donations support the Clarion West Writers Workshop.

What I learned: A bunch of things!
1. It’s true that writing encourages writing. The more consistently I did it, the easier it became.
2. My health, mental readiness, and mood do affect the quality of the work… but not nearly as much as I thought they did. Some of the best work happened when I had no idea, no plan, and didn’t really care. Some of the not-so-good work happened when I thought I had a great plan and was working really hard.
3. Often I don’t know what the story is about until I explore it on the page… and no amount of pre-planning or thinking will save me from the frustration of writing that first draft.
4. I can’t wait to explore over the next few months and see which of these beginnings become stories.
5. If I do something like this again, I’d schedule a week of “continuing” stories: 500 words on an already-established start, rather than a new one. It’d be nice to have some stories closer to done at this point.

Thank you, everyone, for your support and encouragement during the Write-a-Thon. It helped me a ton to know that my friends and family cared about what I was working on. You guys rock.

Launchpad comments coming when I have time…

I have only enough energy left to go play videogames.

15 hour days at Launchpad + 15 hour workdays = tired Vylar.

After a mad scramble today, I completed two of the stories I started in the Write-a-thon. The one about the peacocks, and the one about fireworks.  More will follow.

Absolutely insane workweek, but hopefully tomorrow I can post more. I just wanted to say…

I did it.  HOORAY.

Headed straight into 15-hour days with my part-time editing gig.  I’ll post as soon as I can!  Right now, I’m scrambling to meet my Write-a-Thon goals.  I still think I can pull off two completed stories this week…