Early this morning, Neil Gaiman said something on twitter:
https://t.co/KxqDo9CY9y is where you apply to go to Clarion. If you want to be a writer, you want to go to Clarion, NEED to go to Clarion.
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 15, 2016
Which is, of course, false. I won’t get into whether he was being hyperbolic or not, because it’s irrelevant (EDIT: Since writing this post Neil has woken up, seen the firestorm, and said himself that you don’t need Clarion). The important thing is he said it, some people believe it, and lots of people on twitter are pointing out that Clarion and other workshops are exclusively for the privileged.
Full disclosure before moving on: I went to Clarion West. Neil was actually one of my instructors! I absolutely adored him. I still adore him. But this isn’t about Neil, it’s about Clarion. And this conversation happens every year, but it’s a GOOD conversation to have because new people are entering the field every day.
Clarion/Clarion West (for the three or four people who don’t know this already) are 6 week workshops for which you pay a fuckton of money ($4,957 and $3800 respectively) to hang out with 17 other writers and 6 instructors.
[More disclosure/context: The Tin House workshop is basically the literary equivalent of Clarion/Clarion West. It’s cost? $1,695 for one week. I say this only because Cecily Kane on twitter has been asking questions about financials, which I think are good questions to ask, but my observations and other knowledge tend to indicate that Clarion/Clarion West manage to do a whole lot with relatively little and have VERY slim margins.]
It was an absolutely incredible experience and I would go again in a heartbeat if given the chance. It improved my writing, gave me invaluable experiences, and when I left I had a whole bunch of new best friends.
For some of my classmates, Clarion West WAS the path to publishing. I say this because I was there and I sat one of my classmates down and made him send out his first story. That one wasn’t accepted, but he did sell one of his workshop stories less than a year later. Would he have gotten published without Clarion West? Sure. He was a good writer before he got to the workshop; he just wasn’t very good about submitting to magazines. Maybe attending the workshop gave him a psychological push, but honestly the mental shift to do more with his writing happened long before he got there.
But yeah, it’s a good workshop and a great experience. But that’s not the point. The point is, Clarion/Clarion West (and Odyssey and Viable Paradise and OSC’s Bootcamp and MFA programs and Tin House and Sewanee) are NEITHER SUFFICIENT NOR NECESSARY CONDITIONS FOR A WRITING CAREER.
They’re just not.
First: To get into one of the workshops, you already have to know how to write a story. If you know how to do that, and you have a decent work ethic, there’s not a whole lot separating you from publication except time.
By the time I got to Clarion West I had published 8 stories (with a few more accepted), three of which had been published at Clarkesworld and one of which had been nominated for the Nebula Award.
And I wasn’t the only member of my class to have been published before attending. If memory serves, almost half of my classmates had been published before, and one of them had sold a novel to Tor. Now, was Clarion West still valuable to all of these people? Yes! Very much so! But kindof hard to argue that we needed Clarion when we’d already figured out so much on our own. If none of us had gone, our careers now would certainly be different (maybe better, maybe worse, maybe neither), but hard to argue that they’d be nonexistent.
Second: To attend the workshop, you have to have a certain amount of privilege.
Yes, there are scholarships. These scholarships have allowed people to attend who would otherwise be barred financially (the Carl Brandon society funds two scholarships, one for UCSD and one for Clarion West, specifically for a writer of color). But as was pointed out by numerous people on twitter, one of the biggest “costs” of Clarion is the 6 weeks you have to take off work. One of the only reasons I was able to go was because I was unemployed. Other people quit their jobs on the hope that they could get them back.
And once you get past the financial hardship, there’s physical access. The house at which we stayed for Clarion West was not handicapped accessible in the least (I don’t know what it’s like for Clarion UCSD but I doubt it’s much better). This isn’t exactly their “fault” but if you organize a workshop that severely restricts access to certain populations and claim that in order to be a real writer you need to attend, well… you’re just all sorts of foul.
And to be clear, I don’t think anyone has said that explicitly, but words and implications and context matter! These workshops ARE wonderful but they are also SEVERELY RESTRICTIVE. In a perfect world, the Clarions would finally get their long-dreamed-of online workshops up and running (incidentally, I think Odyssey already does this). But even then, they still wouldn’t be the one true path. Why?
Because third: Workshops are not for everyone. I’m admittedly a bit weird about workshops. I really love them because I love seeing what everyone else is writing, but I find critiques on a particular story to be more or less useless. When a critique is valuable, it’s usually because it helps me see something in my writing that I can apply to the next story. And I don’t think I’m alone in this. But there’s definitely an entrenched camp of ‘BETA READERS ARE THE ONLY WAY TO IMPROVE A STORY!’ which is just… silly.
Some people really do need (or more accurately, like) feedback on their particular stories. And for THOSE people, then maybe Clarion/Clarion West really does get their writing to the “next level.” 17 classmate critiques and one instructor’s feedback may really help them. For me? I got a lot of good things from the workshop experience, but I was really only able to do so because I went in knowing that the workshop wasn’t necessary. It gave me the psychological distance I needed to take what I found useful, and dismiss the rest.
Many years ago I went to a different workshop. That particular workshop paralyzed my writing for up to 3 years because I took it way too seriously. I tried to internalize every lesson, every bit of advice, every suggestion, and it nearly broke me. Fortunately that workshop was less than a week and therefore I had a lot less to cling to. If it had been 6 weeks? If it had been Clarion? If I’d internalized the voices of 17 strangers and 6 perceived writing gods? It could have been disastrous. Maybe it would’ve been great–maybe I’d be three years ahead right now, but I also could be one of those sad stories you hear about someone who goes to Clarion and never writes again. Who knows.
And that’s the point: NO ONE knows. All writers are different. All Clarions are different. Not just UCSD versus West, but year to year because classes and instructors change.
Anyway, this post is long enough already. I just wanted to throw my voice in with the others and emphasize that while I LOVED the workshop, I really, really, really don’t think it’s necessary. I would encourage anyone to go but I would also give them a long list of caveats reminiscent of that fake SNL commercial (hence the title of this post). Because in order to go, you need to be able to afford it: financially, physically, emotionally, personally, health-wise, writing-wise, all-the-other-wise. And that sucks. A lot. So to end, I’m going to plug two other things.
The first is an essay by Benjanun Sriduangkaew:
Writing Workshops Are Not For Me, And That’s Okay
The second is the book Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm. It’s a book about the history of the Clarion Workshop. It’s not a book with a lot of writing advice, but I think it provides interesting context for the workshop both in terms of why it exists, and why there’s almost a cult-like atmosphere surrounding it. …But that’s it’s own post.
