

The Strangely Competitive World of Sci-Fi Writing Workshops - mparramon
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/geeks-guide-sci-fi-workshop/

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StoneTable
I attended one of those workshops back in 2010. Their not understating the
competitiveness of getting in to one, especially if you have a commercially-
successful writer as one of that year's instructors. You can end up with
several hundred applications, and a class size of 17-18.

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Osmium
> Their not understating

;) I wouldn't usually point it out, but since we're discussing writing
workshops...

Clarion always sounded fantastic. I wonder how much of it is simply that it
gives you the opportunity to live-and-breathe something, day-in, day-out, for
six weeks. Regardless of what you're trying to do, if you manage to do it
solidly for six weeks, you'll become good (or at least markedly better) at it.
For most of us, even if we had that time, I imagine the biggest hurdle would
be motivation and becoming discouraged if we tried it on our own. So I wonder
how much of the success of these programmes is perhaps not the expert advice
_per se_ but more the creation of a healthy space where people are able to
throw themselves into their work like that. (Is this not fairly similar to Y
Combinator's model?)

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shanusmagnus
Clarion West grad here.

You're half right -- the immersion is important, and it's critical to have
other people on the same quest. Many of us go from being okay to hyper-
productive in that environment. The hard thing is translating that to the real
world. It's like having scurvy, then getting enough vitamin C for a while,
then going back to having scurvy. You realize what a huge, huge thing it is to
have all the infrastructure in place. Through skill or accident, some people
are better at putting themselves in the right circumstances to thrive.

It shouldn't be underestimated, though, how important the instructors are. It
felt like I imagine an old-timey apprenticeship might have felt, where a
respected craftsman of watches shows you things about watchmaking that it
would take decades to learn on your own.

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marktangotango
That read like you have had scurvy, multiple times. Surely not?

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shanusmagnus
Haha, no, never had scurvy. Was trying to think of a metaphor that would
capture the profundity of the experience.

