Arts Council Grants

Recently I decided that it would be beneficial to take a novel writing workshop in Kansas this summer, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. http://www2.ku.edu/~sfcenter/novel-workshop.htm It's a two-week concentrated effort on brainstorming, smoothing out and progressing to a saleable outline and/or chapters. The setting is with a small group of people so it allows for uninterrupted time on the masterpiece in bud.

The workshop itself is not that expensive but by the time you add lodging, food and transportation it isn't necessarily cheap. I decided to apply for a Canada Council grant and a BC Arts Council grant. The last time I even entertained applying for any sort of travel grant I didn't have enough credentials to make it into the process.

I started with the BC Arts Council grant as it had a tighter deadline. This one required a related CV, letter of acceptance, two reference letters, description of the project, letter outlining what I would be doing and how it would benefit me and my career, sample of written work, and a list of published credits, which means title, publisher, date, number of pages and that it must be in a legitimate publication for which there is a review process and payment. The council asked for 120 pages of published fiction, or 40 pages of published poetry. I have many many poems published but since I'm applying in a fiction field I thought it best to include as many fiction credits as possible.

This meant I had to go through all the copies of my published works that I have at home. Luckily I have always kept a list which had title, publication and publisher, editor and date. So what I really needed was to confirm the volume or publication numbers and the number of pages. It took a couple of nights to go through this and some searching on the internet but I completed it all. The very helpful Walter Quan at BC Arts also answered all my questions, including that I could combine poetry and fiction to get the full amount and even use my erotic fiction if it went through the proper review process, which it did.

Next was getting the letters of recommendation which also assess the study project and its worth. Sure I've been published but I'm still fairly unknown so who would know my work enough to comment on it and the workshop? Friend and famously bad communicator Ed Bryant could have done it but trying to get him to send me something on time would have been nigh impossible. Luckily Kij Johnson, who leads the workshop is an astoundingly good writer and a friend. So that was one letter but I needed the second. I finally thought back to my story that received the most recognition, "Hold Back the Night" in the Open Space anthology. Claude Lalumiere had been an amazing editor, working with me and getting me through two rewrites to bring out the best potential of the story. He's since rejected a story of mine but I felt he might be willing and he was. They both gave encouraging support in their letters.

By far the hardest part was writing up how the workshop would benefit my career and what it would give me. I took the longest on that and submitted everything before the March 15 deadline. BC Arts will only pay half of the total budget of the project so I then focused on Canada Council. It was interesting, and I noted to the BC Arts contact, that more writing was required by BC Arts than Canada Council (CC requires about 40 pages of published writing). He said this was because BC Arts has less money to go around and therefore must raise the bar.

For Canada Council I didn't apply for a study assistance as for BC Arts, but for a travel grant. They say travel grants can't be used for a host of things including workshops where their primary purpose is training. It becomes a gray area as this workshop is more brainstorming and concentrating on revision (darn, wish I'd said that in the application) so I had to word my letter carefully. Although no letters of recommendation were required I added the two I had received. I had to also add a budget and place of publication for all of my credits, so it was back to the bookcase again to get that information. I found one poem not even listed on my CV and now I have all my information in a consistent form for any further needs.

The Canada Council application went off at the end of March. Now I wait to see if I received one or both of the applications. It's an interesting process especially in comparison of the two application processes. There are larger grants, which if I'm successful I might apply for to finish the novel. The requirements become more stringent at that level. For now, I work on the novel outline for the workshop.

Clarion Daze I

Clarion is a six-week intensive writing workshop for writers of SF or fantasy. It started some time in the 80s and there was (may still be) Clarion East and Clarion West, which happens in Seattle.

I was accepted into Clarion (you had to submit several pieces of writing) more years ago than I care to think about. I went down to Clarion with one of two other Canadians (and Vancouverites) that year, Janet Waters and Clelie Rich. We were the three Canucks out of twenty-one people.

People ranged in age from the youngest who I think was just out of high school to a couple of people in their forties. We were about two-thirds women to one-third men. Most people stayed in the dorms on Capitol Hill. Our six weeks consisted of going into the classes every day and critiquing stories, back to the dorms to write and read stories for the next day, sleep if you could fit it in and on Fridays there was a party for the guest instructor of the week. I ended up surviving on about four hours sleep a night for six weeks.

Clarion was set up with five authors, one per week and one editor. Our year we had Ed Bryant (short story writer, mostly, and one-time protege of Harlan Ellison), the extremely intelligent and diverse Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Connie Willis, editor Tappan King and Samuel Delaney. This is close to the order in which they taught but I'm not completely sure anymore.

The first week, Ed set the tone by saying, "We're taking bets to see who sleeps with each other." It seems marriages went up like firecrackers at Clarion workshops where the stress/closeness caused people to cozy up with those they may not normally have thought twice about. I'm not sure if Ed intended it but perhaps it put a damper on what might have happened. All I know is that there were only two people who did sleep together and they were pretty discreet. Most of the others to this day wouldn't even be able to guess.

Suffice to say we had to take our frustrations out in other ways and there were some monumental water fights that had the halls of the dorms soaked and a few people put into the showers. I still have a Princess Leia like picture of me sporting a realistic water gun. We've even took it to the campus but had to be careful that we didn't look like we had real guns on the street (this was pre-9/11 by years).

By our second week, we were somehow into slugs. Ursula Le Guin had made some comment about them, Octavia Butler had a phobia of them and there were slug races (this was the summer) in Seattle. Yes, the Pacific Northwest boasts the gigantic banana slug, which can get to at least one and a half feet in length (the biggest ones I ever saw--gross!)Long slimy monstrosities that range in colour from brown with spots, anemic white, pale yellow with new-shoot green, blackish and bright yellow with brown spots, just like a banana. I ended up drawing Cyril the cyber slug, complete with mohawk, earrings, mirrorshades and a bolted, metal body. He became the image on our Clarion T-shirts, along with all the best/worst bits from our stories.

Of people, we had a range, no one yet that famous in their careers. There were a few needy princesses, the quiet shy ones, the nerdy ones, the confident ones, grass roots cowgirls and nature lovers and I think at that time, only one of each sex who were parents.There was also the name dropper, the obnoxious person who never read peoples' stories and barely wrote anything the whole time. Clarion critiques are set up thus.

(Tomorrow--Part II)

My Harlan Ellison Story

For those who don't know Harlan Ellison is a short (he sometimes has had the Napoleonic syndrome) vocal man who was the darling of the SF community when science fiction started to really take off in the 70s (maybe also the 60s for Harlan). He came onto the scene with a different style of story and was soon crowned king of the genre. Over the years other people have shared that title, such as Neil Gaiman but Harlan remains an iconic, nearly a god in the field. What he says, people listen to. He's rich, he's written various movies and he's not afraid to say what he thinks.

Back when I was in Clarion West (a writers 6-week intensive writing workshop) one of our instructors was Ed Bryant. He's not that well known unless you know the ins and outs of the genre. Once a protege of Harlan's Ed sold a lot of short stories and one, maybe two novels. These days he's a reviewer for Locus but Ed always has his finger in a few pies. We became friends from Clarion and though I see Ed rarely we get together when we can. Ed's a terrible communicator and often suffers from complications of his diabetes. I see him once a year or two.

Anyway, he told this story at Clarion and though he didn't say it was the esteemed Mr. Ellison who did this there was certainly an innuendo that who else but he would have done this. Supposedly Harlan was invited to a garden party in California (where he lives) and he did not particularly like the people organizing it. So he scooped up some lovely west coast slugs from his garden, tossed them on a plate and stuck them in the fridge until they were moribund. He took them out and covered them in whipping cream. At the party he put them on the table with all the other foods and left before they started to crawl.

It was also said that Harlan had once autographed a woman's breast. So now we move forward to a World Fantasy Convention. This is the professional convention for writers, editors and publishers. Everyone who attends is pretty much in the biz from some aspect. There is no fan track and no people in costumes. One night they hold the author signing and pretty much it's a huge room with almost everyone who's published anything sitting at tables to people can get their books signed. It could easily be 50-100 authors. Even my name was put at a table but since I'm an almost no-name Canadian (sold poetry and a few stories mostly to Canadian publications)it was pointless to sit at the table because few people would know me. So I wandered around.

I also don't believe in getting autographs and don't really see the point. I consider the author and not the signature important. So I started going up to the authors and asked them to sign my arms. As I said, the autograph would last a while and then be washed off and therefore no lasting signature. Everyone pretty much got into the swing of it, with female and male authors signing my arms. Harlan was there but I hadn't got to him yet. At one point Jack Cady was signing my arm and Harlan came up to the water cooler, mouthing loudly to someone, What's she doing? Why is she doing that?

So eventually I got around to Harlan and asked him if he would sign. Succinctly, he said, no. If you have a piece of paper or a book, I'll sign that. I then told him how I felt about autographs to which he replied you're cute. But he didn't sign.

I believe that if I had gone to him first as the prince of SF then he would have signed. After all it was there in his history. The next morning I was having breakfast with Ed when Harlan approached to check something with Ed. Then he turned to me and said, Why did you do that last night? That was very strange.

A compliment? Jealousy? Amnesia of one's own past? I have no idea but I found it amusing coming from Harlan after the antics I'd heard he's done.