Never!

So I shall work on my novel every day during the write-a-thon, plug away at the beasty regardless of other things that suck up my creative energy. This will be an inverse Clarion experience in many ways! At Clarion there is the amazing sensation of being in a place for one purpose and one purpose only. How often do you get to enjoy that? It felt wonderful to me. This year during the Clarion time slot I will be juggling multiple projects (from Indigenous mental health to website copywriting), travelling north and south, east and west, judging Comikaze 24 Hour Comics Challenge and I will be working on a novel, not short stories.

I’ll need your help. This novel is ambitious and a bit scary. I’m exploring many unknowns and taking a lot of creative risks.  During the write-a-thon I’m going to post every day, letting you know how I’m going. I need you to nag me, poke me, encourage me, ask questions, be provocative, whatever you will (say ….cash monies to the Clarion Foundation). Neglecting a novel is a terrible thing and I must persevere and push through somehow. Four days to prepare and then it’s Go on June 27.

Lots of love

Liz

Given the restrictions here’s some further reading. Some of these I encountered while I was preparing my talk and was sad not to be able to include them.

Creative Process

• The Artists Way – will get a brief mention in the talk.
• How to Get Things Done, by Robert Benchley – oh it is a delight, thank you Sara Ryan for introducing me to him.

Streams of Information

There is so much cool stuff out there. I find most of my new distractions I mean interesting links to articles and creative fuel via interesting twitter people, especially:

• Jason Thibault - a really interesting mix of writing, freelancing, comics and art process. The interstitial space is most satisfying.
• Meanjin – literary fuel and keeps me appraised of creative goings on in Australia
• SFWA - Science Fiction Writers of America. Interesting from links around the place and publishes a lot of free to all blog posts, touching on all aspects of the creative process. A SF and American bent to nicely round things out.

There’s a multitude of other fine people who post links to interesting places, but these three manage to syndicate a lot of interesting stuff on a regular basis.

Inspiring sources – eating good food

Nutrition for brain as well as body. I love my local library. Wandering the aisles, checking out books recommended by friends and slowly getting through my Clarion reading list. Reading good, better yet great, prose is important. Go for the good stuff, the stuff that inspires you and reminds you of why words are important.

Getting Stuff Done

I love these two tools to bits… though I am tempted to move my to do list into Basecamp, as I’ve been using Basecamp a lot with clients recently and I like things living together.

• Joe’s Goals – love it love it love it. Free habit development (or habit breaking) software, get a smiley face every time you do something. Easy and fast to tailor to whatever regular stuff you’re trying to do. Common goals I use, phasing in and out depending on my focus, create, creator logistics/paperwork, go to gym, read, eat regularly, drink water. I also use sad red faces to track my menstrual cycle! And a log book to note all sorts of variables.
• OnLine CEO – simple to do list with the added bonus you have to note how important each to do is and it provides a handy chart to make the decision making easy. To do lists free and having a clear sense of priorities clears up so much head-space.
• 750 words – I’ve just heard about it, an online journaling space and challenge. Looks pretty nifty if pen and paper do not appeal and you want that peer support. Thanks Mike for telling me about this one.

So that’s me, did I miss anything fantabulous? What are the tools and spaces you use?

It’s now 3am. Oh sleep, you mock me. May the words flow free and easy.

Liz

I’ve enjoyed thinking about how in 2010 and 2011 would be my years to chase the Campbell dream, to prove myself worthy, to aim high. In a strange twist of fate my first Campbell Award eligible work came out in December 2009, starting the clock a year earlier than I had dreamed (my Campbell bio is now up). I am delighted that Cracked Leather found a place to be published and has been so warmly received. I wouldn’t change it for the world (well maybe the world). It just means my tidy little fantasy of 2010 and 2011 to prove my worthiness for voting in 2012 has been truncated by a year.

The challenge is significant and I am not sure if I will prove my worthiness in time, but it is still worth striving for. I will throw myself as much as I can. This is a challenge to myself and not in competition. I plan to soar with my fellow nominees – we are in this crazy dream together. I will write, I will edit, I will send work to publishers, I will read, I will learn from my peers – as I do every year. But this year I will have an extra spur to my sides that I plan to use. This year will never come again.

2010 is my Campbell year. I’m going to enjoy the challenge.

I’m not sure if I’m in my first year of eligibility, though I am listed on the website! I open a terrible can of worms with Cracked Leather as it is a fairly interstitial piece. I’ve checked in with the moderators to make sure I fit, but I have not yet heard back from them. Lets focus on some other folks.

It is a pleasure to know some of the talented people who are eligible for nomination. These are the folks I know who are in their second year:

• Ken Schenyer - I must confess I love this guy like a brother. We did Clarion together and he was one of the smartest and most caring of us all. As a housemate he also got to experience me at my maddest states of sleep deprivation. Of all the bad luck most of his work is in unusual publications or coming out in 2010. He writes of what a Clarion short-listing would mean to him as well as ways to read more of his work. He writes with sensitivity, complexity and elegance.
• Camille Alexa – Funky, spunky, woman with attitude and writing to boot. Putting STUFF in fiction.
• Felicity Shoulders – Is also cursed by writing that is in print but you can’t check out online. Oh no melon! She is however a fabulous, insightful lass and lapsed paleontologist.
• Doselle Young – Comics creator and all around nice guy. He rescued me in LA after we’d only known each other for a few days and took these photos while feeding me good Mexican food.
• Ian McHugh – some Aussie writer dude ;-). I met him at Worldcon very briefly in 2008, he was constantly running away to hang out with his Clarion Buddies. Pffft, who’d want to do that?… (Clarion people at WFC’09, we traveled like this ALL THE TIME)

Those are the folks I know (have I missed anyone? am I bad person?). I’m going to to try to read a sampling from as many nominees as I can. I think we get five votes. Who do you know? Who do you recommend?

If you’re eligible for a Campbell Award and not listed let the Campbell crew know.

If you’re already an eligible voter, the online nomination ballot, which must be completed by March 13, is here:

www.aussiecon4.org.au/hugoawards/nominations.php

If you’d like to buy a supporting membership to be eligible to vote, the membership signup, which must be completed by January 31, is here:
www.aussiecon4.org.au/index.php?page=37

William Shunn and Geoffrey A. Landis have been added to the collection.

Other news

The skribit question (see right hand side of the webpage): How to find a comics artist? has been buzzing around in my head a lot. I’ve composed about 20 zillion answers, generally while trying to fall asleep or not wanting to get out of bed. I have finally found an approach that pleases me and a very rough draft has been written longhand (yep, I’m old school). I have a few other things I have to write before I’m allowed to indulge in finishing it off, but it is coming.

Italo Calvino talks engages with writing on a higher (and fundamental) level and writes about Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity. He died before he was able to write the final memo, Consistency.

He makes me want to read Lucretius and Ovid, he makes me want to reread Dante’s inferno. He inspires a kind of aspirational approach that is also humble. It is about striving, but not about ego. Five memos, five different lenses to apply to our craft, to improve the way in which we are servants to story.

I took a long time to read Six Memos. Although not literate in Italian I read the sections in Italian slowly for the sounds and rhythms of another language and to see how translation shapes that rhythm. Calvino quotes German authors, Italian authors, English authors as well as authors from ‘classical times’ (which might mean Greek into Latin into Arabic into Latin for all I know), convincing me yet again the doors to the mind that are opened when a person speaks more than one language.

Reading Six Memos felt like such a lively, personal experience that I feel a pang of sadness now as I read Cosmicomics, also by Italo Calvino. Now that I read Cosmicomics I feel the loss of this lovely author, that I am reading from a finite collection of his works of imagination. Calvino does not feel dead to me, he is too alive in his writing.

Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity and infer what he might have said on Consistency. Read, read the writers with big ideas, the writers that have grappled with the cosmos. Go forth and grapple.

Italo Calvino came up with his six phrases, six keywords to unlock deeper layers in his own work and the work of others. I wonder what my six phrases are. I think I’ll have to throw the ideas around for a while as I try different words on for size.

What are your six keywords today? What are your six keywords tomorrow?

An organically growing collection of blog posts, journals and interviews by people who have attended Clarion. To be included the posts must be specifically about the Clarion experience.

There are some additional links at the bottom for general Clarion stuff (including The Clarion Foundation’s new blog).

Please let me know if you have (or know of) a journal that should be added. If you add a comment with links and it does not appear within a day please e-mail me, it may have set off the spam filter.

You may wish to begin at the beginning, get cozy with Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop written by Clarion co-founder Kate Wilhelm. I love learning through examples, stories and anecdotes. I must sit down with it again, very practical, very lovely… and, this time round, a little nostalgic.

Direct links to journal entries (or tagged collections of entries)

5 Things I Learned at Clarion/Clarion West

• Andy Romine writes a full journal entry for each thing he learned.
• Part 1 - Grá Linnaea, Jim Kelly, Ken Schneyer, Megan Kurashige, Paul M Berger
• Part 2 – Adam Israel, Damien Walter, Dana Huber,Ferrett Steinmetz, Kat Howard, Liz Argall, Stefani Nellen, Tim Pratt
• Part 3 – Collin Piprell, Edd Vick, John Walters,Nicole Taylor, Philip Brewer, Sue Burke
• Part 4 – Emily Jiang, Matt London, Monica Byrne

Tiffani Angus – Clarion 2009

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• And a general Clarion tag, for pre-Clarion and post-Clarion briefings

Frank Ard – Clarion West 2010

• Interview from University of South Alabama – warning, it is a facebook link

Liz Argall –  Clarion 2009

• Congratulations and advice to the Class of 2010
• Post Clarion and moving to the USA reflections – We do it because it is hard

Mishell Baker – Clarion 2009

• Fantasy Magazine article on pregnantly preparing for Clarion

Lee Batersby hosts guest blogs and other juicy Clarion things – Clarion South 2009

• Clarion tagged thingies on Lee Battersby’s Blog

Gregory Norman Bossert – Clarion 2010

• Blog post … and a link to pretty pictures

Alessio Bresciani – Clarion South

• http://www.storiesofthefuture.com/category/clarion-south/

Keyan Bowes – Clarion 2007

• Keyan Bowes has created a lovely index page chronicling her Clarion experiences

Philip Brewer – Clarion 2001

• Launchpad for journals, essays (including one on the costs) and linkage love for the class of ’01
• What if you can’t go to Clarion? How to be your own writer’s workshop

Michael A. Burstein – Clarion 1994

• The Clarion Call

John Chu – Clarion 2010

• His Clarion Blog Post

Aidan Doyle – Clarion South

• What I Learned From Clarion South
• Aidan’s article in the Internet Review of Science Fiction

The Ferret – Clarion

• Collected Journal entries about Clarion (updated to a new and improved launchpad 1 April 09, thanks Mr Ferret)

Eugene Fischer – Clarion 2008

• Advice for those who didn’t get in, congratulations to the Class of 2009, reflections and links to Kathleen Howard‘s Clarion survival advice

Neile Graham – Clarion West 1996

• Neile shows us her journey by sharing e-mails she sent to a friend

Gavin J Grant – Clarion 2000

• On readings by the instructors

Kat Howard – Clarion

• http://strangeink.blogspot.com/search/label/Clarion

Random Jane – Clarion West 2005

• Short and sweet with some unusual metrics (I wonder how the yoga mat is)

Artemis Jones – Clarion West 2002

• Artemis’ journey starts here

James Wallace Harris – Clarion West 2002

• Satori Stories

Babel Krieg – Clarion West 2008

• A series of blog posts

Jordan Lapp – Clarion West 2009

• His tagged posts are here

Geoffrey A. Landis - Clarion 1985

• Survival tips (still relevant today), a few thoughts looking back, and where are they now statistics

David Levine – Clarion West 2000

• Journal entries plus lots of linkage love to other Clarion things

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz – Clarion West 2009

• In Fantasy Magazine she writes of her anticipation
• She wrote many blog posts in her Livejournal, this is when she arrives at Clarion and you can trace her steps from there

Maura McHugh – Clarion West 2006

• Maura’s posts tagged Clarion – go back a few pages if you want to read stuff written in the moment (though often reflections afterwards have interesting digestions).

Suzy McKee Charnas – A tutor’s perspective

• Clarion, Teaching the best fiction writers’ workshop for fantasy and science fiction

Steve Mitchell, Clarion South 2009

• With pretty pictures and everything

Kari O’Connor – Clarion 2007

• Many and varied blog posts about Clarion

John Remy – Clarion West 2010

• Week 0
• Framing the Clarion West Narrative
• My Clarion West Experience: No Conflict, No Story

Pamela Rentz – Clarion West 2008

• Overview
• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4 part 1 and? Week 4 part 2
• Week 5
• Week 6

Shauna Roberts – Clarion 2009

• Shauna reflects on the process on her personal blog
• Shauna writes about it in Novel Spaces

Andy Romine – Clarion West 2010

• Things learned and other stuff in his Clarion West tag.

Ben Rosenbaum – Clarion West

• http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/journal/2001_06_20.html
• http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/journal/2001_07_12.html
• http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/journal/2001_08_17.html

Allan Rousselle – Clarion West 2001

• Allan’s journey starts here

Rudy Rucker – Clarion West 2009

• Some sage words from an instructor How to write

Ken Schneyer – Clarion 2009

• Ken’s congratulations and advice to the Class of 2010
• Index of posts relating to Clarion (some of his posts even have pretty pictures!)

John Schoffstall – Clarion West 2004

• http://st-at-clarion.livejournal.com/

Wendy A. Shaffer – Clarion West 2002

• Read the whole shebang here

William Shunn – Clarion 1985

• Clarion My Wayward Son

Angela Slatter – Clarion South

• Overview of the full 6 weeks

Clarion South on Tor.com – an overview

• A lovely overview and interview with the administrators of Clarion South

Clarion South on WordPress, including interviews with tutors on the process.

• http://en.wordpress.com/tag/clarion-south-writers-workshop/

Clarion South Collective of 2007

• What comes first the successful writer or the workshop part one
• What comes first the successful writer or the workshop part two
• Getting creative part 1
• Getting creative aka the physics of unicorn horns part 2
• Quantity versus quality part one
• Quality over quantity part two
• Everything I need to know I learned at clarion south by laura e goodin
• Working-with-the-big-bad-bold-tutors

and the achievements of the 2007 class over the last two years

Clarion South Two years on

Dallas Taylor – Clarion 2010

• Looking back at Clarion 2010 – and why you should apply for 2011
• Process, application and who knows what else under his Clarion tag

Tom Undeberg – Clarion 2010

• Tom keeps it short and sweet.

Jeff VanderMeer, Clarion South 2009

• A teacher’s perspective

Tracie Welser (Clarion West 2010)

• Things tagged Clarion on her blog (including her Clarion Tattoo)

Alex Wilson – Clarion 2006

• On preparing himself for Clarion

Caroline M. Yoachim – Clarion West 2006

• Tagged collection of Clarion entries

Clarion related and more alumni

Tina Connolly maintains a lot of knowledge love and linkage love for Clarion West, her year and other years

General blogs and linkage love for Clarion class of 2006

Blog links for Clarion West class of 2006

David Barr Kirtley – After Clarion

The Clarion Actual

The Clarion Foundation, The Clarion Blog & Clarion (San Diego, USA)

Clarion West (Seattle, USA)

Clarion South (????, Australia) – on hiatus indefinitely until they find an affordable venue. If you know somewhere that might be suitable for hosting a 6 week residential workshop please contact the organizers.

And down below, that’s my Clarion – 2009, San Diego

A zombie love story, a seed that breaks through and changes the world, the quest to be cool through the power of snake skins or the disillusionment of of a nuclear physicist are a few of Liz’s tales. Dark and macabre or playful and delicious – she writes stories about hope, strength, survival and change. Liz writes across many media and genres, but comics are her major passion.

Liz carves out a diverse career as a freelancer, frequently working in educational comics as a writer, editor, project manager, talent scout and artist liaison. She has run creative workshops for a range of organisations, including the National Museum of Australia, Conflux and the Young Music Society. She even gets paid for writing creative works and essays, on spec or by commission. She has worked on and off as a Life Model for nine years. Prior to become a freelancer she worked as researcher, union organiser, refuge worker, circus manager and providing consulting and support to the community sector.

Her comics have been published in an array of publications, including Meanjin, The Girl’s Guide to Guy Stuff, Eat Comics, Something Wicked and in the collection Songs Dreams and Nightmares. She has supported and written for lip magazine since its inception. Her work is often psychological, poignant and she loves gritty urban fantasy. Her anthology, Dreams of Tomorrow, won a Bronze Ledger Award for Small Press of the Year. On Boxing Day she appeared nude in the Canberra Times to support the Parisian Life Model Strike and in January 2009 her musical Comic Book Opera, written with composer Michael Sollis, was performed for the first time.

If you want to find out more check out www.lizargall.com , drop her a line or say hi.

What do you think? Does it interest you? Does it inspire you to come along to something I’m running? Does it inspire you to employ me?

Bio:

Liz’s stories often take people to dark places and then bring them out the other side. Stories about hope, strength, survival and change. Never one to hang out in the dark too long her stories can also be playful and delicious. She writes across many media and genres, but comics are her major passion.

In June 2008 she put the management of Warehouse Circus into new hands and plunged into the life of a freelancer. She works in educational comics as a writer, editor, project manager, talent scout and artist liaison. She has run creative workshops for a range of organisations, including the National Museum of Australia, U-Turn and the Young Music Society. She even gets paid for writing creative works and essays, on spec or by commission. She has worked on and off as a Life Model for nine years. Prior to taking the plunge she has worked as researcher, union organiser, refuge worker, circus manager, consulting and supporting for not for profit organisations to have better practices and be more prepared for emergencies.

Her comics have been published in an array of publications, including Meanjin, The Girl’s Guide to Guy Stuff, Eat Comics, Something Wicked and in the collection Songs Dreams and Nightmares. She has supported lip magazine since its inception. Her work is often psychological, poignant and she loves gritty urban fantasy. She’s even has won an award or two. On Boxing Day she appeared nude in the Canberra Times to support the Parisian Life Model Strike and in January 2009 her musical Comic Book Opera, written with composer Michael Sollis, was performed for the first time.

If you want to find out more check out www.lizargall.com , drop her a line or say hi.

Serious, silly, gritty, funny, bizarre or poignant. One panel to 300 page sagas and beyond. Stick figures, photo realism or crazy collage. The world of comics is an amazing place.

An informal comics creation session for experienced hands and those who’ve never tried it before. Liz Argall will tailor the drop in session to what you want to learn and where you’d like to take the craft – draw, doodle, write and where to after that? Lets make some awesome comics.

When: 2.30 – 5.30 Tuesday 17 February

For: People aged 12-25

Where: U-Turn
Corner Chandler Street and Swanson Court
Belconnen ACT 2616

This workshop is free, thanks to the great folks at U-Turn who are all about:

Supporting young people aged 12 to 25 years, through recreational, educational, and health promotional activities, programs and community-based projects.

U-Turn organise a whole range of activites for young people in the Belconnen region – http://www.bcsact.com.au/