Wednesday, 07 March 2001

Clarion it is! I got the word last week that I had been accepted to Clarion in East Lansing. There were several reasons that I had applied to Clarion about a month earlier than I applied to Clarion West, but one big one was simply that the location made more sense for me. East Lansing is within a couple hours drive of my dad's house, which makes the transportation logistics easier. My plan had been to go to Clarion if they offered me a place, so (after taking a day or two to think about it), that's what I decided. I sent my application form and check in about a week ago.

On the writing front I've been struggling just a bit. I had been working on the island village story, but it seems to be pretty well stuck. I don't see any way to work through the kinds of conflicts I see in the situation in anything shorter than a novel. I'll save what I've got in the folder where other short stories that threatened to become novels got stuck. I like the setting, characters, and situation. I just can't make the conflicts work themselves out in a dramatic fashion in something of short-story length.

Jackie and I have been getting to the Fitness Center on a pretty good schedule so far this month. I never get enough aerobic exercise in the winter. In the summer I mostly do, mostly by bicycling. But I won't be bringing a bicycle to Clarion. Anyway, to get my aerobic exercise as efficiently as possible, I figure running is the way to go. The only problem is that in the spring I'm rarely in good enough shape that I can get a good workout running--I can't run even a couple of miles. So, I've started running on the treadmill at the Fitness Center. I've been doing 12 minutes of mixed walking and running. I'll work my way up to 12 minutes of all running in another week or two, which is just about the time that the weather will start permitting running outdoors. Baring accidents or illness I should be able to run 20 minutes or more by the end of April in plenty of time for running to be a regular part of my Clarion workout.

Got a rejection from F&SF. There are several other markets where I want to try that story. And I need to get something else out to F&SF.