clarion write-a-thon

 

The biggest mistake my mother made in raising me was teaching me how to read when I was three years old. She wrote down every new word I learned on an index card, then quizzed me on them. When I had collected enough words, I started stringing them together into sentences across the family room floor. My first short story was a twenty-some-odd word run-on sentence. I sulked afterward, complaining that if I just had one more ‘and’ I could finish my story. (She hadn’t taught me punctuation yet. And I still have a penchant for run-on sentences.) She compounded her mistake by getting me involved in summer reading programs at the library. Somewhere in my filing cabinet, I still have an award certificate for having read over 50 books for one of these programs.

Salten‘s Bambi, Sewell‘s Beauty, and Farley‘s Black were some early favorites. I learned about tesseracts with Meg in A Wrinkle in Time. I learned about compassion, faith, and secret worlds with Jess in Bridge to Terabithia. I learned about Ray Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes well before he was high school required reading. I bounced off of Hemingway and Fitzgerald by trying to read them when I was too young to appreciate them, but Shakespeare and Poe stuck. I wasn’t much interested in my dad’s collection of paperbacks, but their covers entranced me, introducing me to both Edgar Rice Burroughs and Frank Frazetta at the same time.

It should be no surprise that I now work with words. They were my closest friends while I was growing up. No matter how many times we moved or how many times I changed schools, I always had words. When my classes became boring and grades started slipping, I knew I could count on my words to come through with As on my reports and lift the grades back up. I escaped to books when navigating peer pressure and the social minefields at school became too confusing and stressful. When I ran out of books or became bored with them, I wrote my own. For years, I stopped reading voraciously, and wrote instead. When I came back to reading, I was romanced by the likes of David Eddings and Stephen R. Donaldson, but Marion Zimmer Bradley and Terri Windling are largely responsible for my love of fantasy. My freelance work with Baen led me to David Weber‘s Honor Harrington and Lois McMaster Bujold‘s Miles Vorkosigan who re-ignited my old love affair with sf. (Han Solo was my first love.)

It’s been very discouraging to me that my attempts at sf/f often fall flat. When I put my pen to paper, what comes out is contemporary fiction, poetry, or essays — which are good for what they are, but they aren’t speculative fiction. I’ve many times considered sf/f writing workshops, such as Clarion, Odyssey, or Viable Paradise. There always seems to be something in the way though, starting with an inability to justify leaving my family, my dayjob, and my freelancing for anywhere from a week to over a month “just to write.” (I could spend an entire blog post debating that phrase and where my priorities lie in life, but that’s not why I’m writing this right now.)

I’m writing this because I’ve found a way to participate in Clarion. All three Clarions (Clarion UCSD, Clarion West, and Clarion South) are holding a write-a-thon to raise money for the workshops. A write-a-thon works similar to a charity walk-a-thon, except rather than walking, participants like me will be writing — and we’ll be asking people like you to sponsor us.

You can sponsor me however you like: donate a flat sum, donate so many dollars per words, donate so many dollars per week. It’s all up to you. I chose to do my write-a-thon for Clarion UCSD (which used to be located in Michigan, but moved to California just two years after we moved to Wisconsin — from California, no less).

The write-a-thon will run from June 25 to August 7, coinciding with this year’s Clarion workshop. If you choose to sponsor me, you will receive the following:

• A thank-you letter from the Clarion Foundation which can be used as a receipt for tax purposes (they are a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization)
• Frequent updates on my progress here on my blog
• Weekly updates on my blog (they may not be so short, or sweet for that matter)
• Weekly updates and snippets via email
• A haiku of thanks from me

If you choose to sponsor me for $50 or more, in addition to the above, you may also choose any one of the following:

• A free critique for your short story (under 7,500 words) or web site
• A free WordPress site hosted at yourname.kimberlycreative.com
• A poem written just for you

If you choose to sponsor me for $100 or more, you may also choose any of one of the following:

• A free proofread for your short story (under 7,500 words)
• A flash (under 2,000 words) written just for you
• Something special just for you personally made by me

If you choose to sponsor me for $500 or more, you may also choose any one of the following:

• A free copyedit for your short story (under 7,500 words)
• A character in my book named for you (and I promise not to kill him/her off … at least not right away)
• A short story (under 7,500 words) written just for you

If you sponsor me for any amount, please leave a comment here to let me know! Be sure to let me know what kind of gift you would like to receive for your sponsorship as well.