The Clarion and Clarion West writers' workshops are science-fiction writers' boot-camps, which run for six weeks every summer. I was a student in 1992 at Clarion, in East Lansing, MI. The experience is intense — more than intense. Six weeks of permission to write, permission to experiment, permission to suck. It's a rare and radiant treasure for fledgling writers, and between the excellent writer-instructors and the wonderful fellow students, Clarion amounts to a life-changing experience for many of the attendees.
When I attended, in 1992, I kept notes on the workshop on GEnie (Cynthia Ward, at Clarion West, also took notes). It was either the first or second year that Clarion "leaked" — that non-attendees got a window into the experience while it occurred (when Harlan Ellison, one of our instructors, got wind of this fact, he sharply advised us to cut it out, told us that the Internet was a mindless distraction and worse, and that it would do nothing good for us as writers — not all the instructors' advice is worth following).
In subsequent years, Clarion has leaked like a sieve. The Clarionites keep online journals, their instructors read them, the instructors respond to them, the Clarionites post about it to the online journal, and the snake enthusiastically eats its tail. After all, these are writers, which means that 1) they write, and 2) they procrastinate by writing.
The Clarion and Clarion West students are at it again. The six weeks are almost over, and the workshop journals of nearly a dozen talented new writers are nearly complete. Reading through these journals is like watching a very intense drama from many points of view, a character study of bright people in a hothouse. My friend and editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden leaves to teach Clarion West in a couple days — I'm looking forward to reading what his students have to say about him.
