“You should sign up for our creative writing classes,” he said. “I think you might get something out of them.” I ended up attending so many during my time there that I was later able to receive a minor in English.
But even more than the writing classes, Kessel’s methodical and patient classroom examination of both science fiction and fantasy allowed me to see what really could be done in a piece of speculative writing. What had been merely a fun hobby became a passion, and a burst of writing flowed from my fingertips into the word processing program on my secondhand 8088 DOS personal computer. I started cranking out stories, mindful of Kessel’s advice that any beginning writer has to churn forth lots of wordage in order to get to the good stuff. I aped the techniques of the writers I enjoyed the most, and then moved beyond them to begin developing my own style (nascent though it still was).
It was the most exciting time of my life thus far, which university is supposed to be, largely fueled by the knowledge that writing speculative fiction was not just something for which I had a passing talent, but was something to be consistently nurtured and improved. To my current dismay, I never switched my major to English, but preferred something more practical for which I could find ready employment after graduation. This is one of the great regrets of my life.
Rather than embracing my strange, as I had done as a boy, I instead chose to stick to a discipline that I thought would lead to a good job later, with the result that I ended up failing a class in Differential Equations (higher math that is a requisite for a Mechanical Engineering degree) because I hoped I could just push through it. Because of that F on my transcript, my final grade point average once I graduated was a 2.97, just three-hundredths shy of a 3.0, or a B grade. At the time, this did not bother me overmuch, but it would later become a problem when I was accepted to graduate school. At the time, however, I graduated with a major in Graphic Communications (which largely consisted of engineering-based drafting, something I actually could have accomplished with a two-year technical degree at a community college), and a minor in English.
When I decided to go for my Master’s degree in Creative Writing, I applied for a teaching assistantship, which normally would have paid my tuition in full for the two years I was there, and provided a monthly stipend so that I wouldn’t have to work elsewhere during my studies. However, the basic requirement to receive a TA position was a 3.0 GPA, and without that bare minimum, I had to pay my full way through grad school; no matter how much I begged and pleaded with the English Department Head, he wouldn’t budge, as it was a university-wide regulation. Those three-hundredths of a point, caused by failing a class that I wouldn’t even need later, meant that I had to take out US$32,000 worth of student loans that I am still paying off, and likely will be for at least the next ten years. That pragmatic path saddled me with long-term debt.
Now, it’s true, I could have just not attended grad school at all in the face of that financial challenge, but had I not, I would likely still be stuck behind an electronic drafting table, creating architectural or electrical or piping plans for the same clients year after year, my soul slowly withering away amongst the banality of such work. In short, I would have been miserable. Not that this was how I felt at first after graduation, but over the years, the tedium of doing the same type of job again and again wore on me; I didn’t feel challenged, as though my potential were being squandered. It was an easy job, and I was very good at it, but I came to dread it.
So in 2003, at the urging of my good friend Christopher James “Jamie” Bishop, I took out my student loans and returned to NC State, choosing John Kessel to be my thesis advisor. Those two years zipped by far too fast, yet I further broadened my study of literature and writing, and at the end of it held a Master of Arts degree in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing. Unlike many writing teachers in the USA, Kessel encouraged me to continue writing science fiction and fantasy, although because that is his specialty, he was especially tough in his criticism, a fact for which I am forever grateful. I learned more from him in those two years about improving my craft and finding my voice (which included searching for what I really wanted to say in my writing), than I had in the previous twenty. His love for speculative fiction and for the importance of treating it as a valid literary genre were infectious, and I have tried to transmit this communicable sentiment ever since.
~
Chapter Six
At the mouth of the Cave of Endless Hamsters stood two squat dumpy smoke-colored creatures, each the shape of a bowling pin. The one on left was slightly taller, and it shook with mild internal tremors. Both creatures seemed to waver in and out of existence, as if simultaneously there and not there, and their eyes glowed redly. They held short wicked-looking spears.
“Toll,” said the shorter one on the right.
Anya slid down from the back of the Turtle (who had promptly fallen asleep after they stopped moving), and her feline paternal companion leapt down smoothly to land beside her feet.
“Toll for what?” Anya asked.
“Whatchu mean? For passage through the cave o’course.”
“Is this cave really so important that it needs a toll?”
“Um.” The shorter one scratched its head and the taller one shivered where it stood.
“Do you enjoy your job?”
“What? Why you ask that?”
“It seems to me,” Anya said, “standing at the mouth of a cave in the middle of a forest waiting for people to come by so you can take money from them would be quite boring. Right?”
“Being punished,” said the taller shivery creature.
“By who?”
“The Green Empress. She’s still sore at us.”
“Why? What did you do?”
Neither creature answered, and their body postures indicated sheepishness.
“Look, my name is Anya.” She motioned to the cat. “This is my father. He’s a cat right now. We’re just looking for a way to get home. If I can give you payment, will you be protect us?”
“What? Us?” The two creatures turned toward each other and appeared to communicate, whether subvocally or telepathically, Anya could not tell. After a moment they turned back and the shorter creature said, “What about the Empress?”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“What payment you got?”
Anya reached into the pocket on her jumper and pulled out the black tri-cornered tooth she had extracted from behind the ear of the Olifanz. Previously dull, it now glinted in the filtered light of the forest. The two creatures started forward, their forms abruptly shifting completely into reality, the tooth somehow solidifying their existence after exposure to the light.
She held the tooth behind her back and said, “Payment after we’ve found the way home. Deal?”
“Yes, yes, o’course,” the creatures said in unison.
“Great. So what are your names?”
“Mister Hopeless,” the shorter creature said. “He’s Mister Shiftless.”
“Right,” Anya said, scratching the Turtle underneath the chin to wake it up. “So, are you excited to see the Cave of Endless Hamsters?”
“Dunno,” said Mister Shiftless. “Never been in.”
“Well, now is a good time, right?”
The Cave of Endless Hamsters was, in fact, a supreme disappointment, clearly a case of false advertising. Guided by the Turtle, who glowed a pale green in the darkness, the fellowship proceeded through the cramped passage, occasionally bumping a head on the cave’s ceiling, avoiding stalactites and stalagmites, edging around pools of fetid orange water, and not seeing one single solitary hamster.
No hamsters. In the Cave of Endless Hamsters.
Twenty minutes later, they emerged through the other side of the cave, back into the harsh light of the Land of Grey Dusk. For Anya, it had been the single least interesting experience of her seven-year-old existence.
“So where were all the hamsters?”
Mister Shiftless and Mister Hop
eless shrugged. The Turtle wandered over to a bush and munched on the yellowish foliage. Her father the cat sat down next to a dead anthill and began licking his shoulder.
“Something is wrong here.” Anya sat down on the ground next to her father. “I really wanted to see the hamsters.”
“Desire is an outgrowth of attachment,” said the Turtle with a full mouth. “It only leads to dissatisfaction.”
“Oh, be quiet and eat your leaves.”
Anya’s father the cat suddenly stopped his impromptu bath, and began scratching at the anthill. Digging and delving and destroying, inverting the hill into a dale, skritching and skrotching and skrutching until the ground gave an abrupt thump and rumble and lurch, as if a great beast beneath the earth had humped itself up and then back down again. The cat edged backward and pressed itself into Anya’s side, and then the both of them jumped at the same time as the pit violently inverted once again, erupting in a bursting stream of furry grey, white, black, and mottled, spewing out of the hole as if a hidden oil reserve, a Vesuvius of squeaking fuzziness.
“Wow!” Anya shouted as hamsters landed on her and all around her, Winter Whites and Roborovskis and Campbells and Ladaks and Tibetans and Sokolovs, fur and whiskers and wet little noses tickling her face and making her giggle. She reached down and hugged the cat, who patiently endured the flood of hamsters crawling over his head and body, and who purred softly, a miniature engine in her arms. “Thanks, Daddy!”
~
Chapter Seven
The year before I attended graduate school, I was accepted to the Clarion Writers Workshop, the most prestigious residential workshop in the country for writers of speculative fiction. It currently runs for six weeks on the campus of the University of California at San Diego (although when I went, in 2002, it was still located at Michigan State University in East Lansing, where it had been run since 1972), and is commonly called a boot camp for writers. All the attendees reside in a dorm on campus, and are expected to remain for the length of the workshop. Every week is led by a different instructor, a notable writer in the field who can bring something unique to the critical process; as such, the twenty or so students are encouraged to write a new story each week, so as to gain the benefit of critique from each instructor. For my year, the instructors were Patricia C. Wrede, Terry Bisson, Leslie What, Geoff Ryman, and Karen Joy Fowler & Tim Powers (who team-taught the final two weeks); Patrick Nielsen Hayden, one of the chief editors at Tor Books, the largest publisher of science fiction in the world, also dropped by during a period that overlapped two instructors, and contributed his input.
The daily schedule went thusly: mornings were spent in a large room with all the chairs arranged in a circle, where we would critique the three or four pieces ready for that day, each person taking about two minutes to voice their criticisms and impressions of the story up on the block, with the author remaining in the “Cone of Silence” until the very end, when he or she could answer questions or provide clarifications or simply thank everyone for their feedback; afterwards, lunch and very likely a nap; those who wanted their stories to be critiqued would drop their printed manuscripts into a box at the director’s office for the program assistants to photocopy; then the afternoon was often spent socializing with the other students or writing; then, once word went around that the photocopies were ready for distribution, we could head down and collect one copy of each story; and then the rest of the day would be spent critiquing the stories on the block for the next day, and/or working on one’s own fiction, and/or reading the books recommended by the instructors or other attendees, with breaks for dinner and the occasional movie or water gun fight or game of Mafia. This was more or less the pattern, five days a week, for six weeks straight; we got weekends off.
How much one contributed their own writing for critique was up to each attendee, but everyone was required to comment at length on each manuscript to brave the critique circle. This for me, in fact, more than having my stories torn apart by my peers, was the most valuable part of Clarion. Taking an average of three stories to critique each day, it meant that I read almost a hundred works of fiction in manuscript over those six weeks, applying my critical faculties to each of them. Breaking down a story in this way, into its component parts of character and plot and setting and so on, as well the language sometimes down the sentence level, enabled me to do the same, both consciously and unconsciously, in my own writing. Even better, mistakes I perennially made in my own fiction were glaringly obvious in others’, and so I began to recognize them more readily.
The workshop was an extended immersive retreat, a month and a half to do nothing but work on my writing (I actually quit my job so that I could attend), and to do so within a community of like-minded peers. I had not considered this community of such importance when I first applied to the program, but it was nearly as crucial as the writing itself. Having nineteen other passionate writers with which to talk shop, or geek out about movies and books and music, or write together in cafés, provided a close-knit sense of belonging, that we were all in this together. I’m still in contact with most of my Clarion classmates, first through blogs and now through Facebook. Although I had known fellow writers both online and in person up to that point, I still felt largely alone in my endeavors, but for those six weeks I was profoundly connected to my peers.
One of those peers was Janet Chui, who had flown all the way from Singapore to attend the workshop. In addition to being a writer, she was also a wonderfully talented visual artist; prior to the workshop, I’d checked out her website, and was impressed with her delicate watercolor illustrations, many of which incorporated fantastical themes. Her written work, I would come to find out, similarly employed a light touch of the fantastic to stories that were both compelling and heartbreaking. I tried to sit next to her as often as I could during our critique sessions and when the group went out to eat, and at around the midway point of the workshop we began a romantic relationship.
When I’d made the announcement on my blog that I’d been accepted to Clarion, a writer friend of mine named Andy Duncan emailed me some advice that he’d learned during his own stint at Clarion years earlier, one piece of which went (and I’m paraphrasing here): Be open to new relationships; don’t expect them to happen, but welcome them if they’re lucky enough to occur. Keeping Andy’s words in mind, I threw myself into the romance, mindful of the fact that I hadn’t had a steady girlfriend in a long time, and didn’t want to screw up a good thing.
One afternoon, she told me about a notorious horribly-written story called “The Eye of Argon,” which, we would discover, was quite popular within SF fandom, mostly as a game where the “players” would try to last as long as possible reading sections aloud without bursting into laughter or falling off their chairs. I googled the text on my laptop, and began my own dramatic recitation, failing to keep a straight face after only one paragraph. Janet stood behind me, laughing along, and at one point she reached forward and enfolded me in a hug, her arms crossing over my chest. I remember tingling with contentment at the embrace, the smile on my face no longer the result of laughable prose but of such a tender unconscious gesture, and it was at that moment that I strongly suspected that I was falling in love.
Needless to say, my productivity dipped slightly with the new focus in my attention, but I was still able to write, and have critiqued, five complete short stories during my time at Clarion, which was an astonishing feat for me; normally, it would have taken me a full month, at the very least, to write just one. This was another benefit of the experience, in that it allowed me to put aside my self-conscious worries about how “good” a story might be and just write it; Anne Lamott offers very similar advice in her excellent book Bird by Bird, in which she urges all writers to give themselves the freedom to write a “shitty first draft.” For someone who had belabored his writing, both mentally and then by the word on paper, this was a revelation, and it enabled me to write much faster, yet with improved quality, than before.
Having that brief respite from the real world—in a setting where my work was treated with the same seriousness and respect as any piece of literature, where speculative fiction was viewed not only as a valid literary genre, but one to be celebrated, where the intense focus on craft enabled me address the weaknesses and shore up the strengths in my own writing, where I was given the encouragement that what I was doing was both worthwhile and noble, where I was able to meet the woman who, two years later, would become my wife and, three years after that, would convince me to move halfway around the world to her homeland—being there at that place and that time was an irreplaceable gift.
~
Chapter Eight
A kilometer outside the fortress of the Green Empress, a small white rabbit huddled naked against a dirty concrete shed cracked with age and bombardment, clutching in her small arms a miniature version of herself: her shivering baby, the only one left alive after the incessant aerial bombings of the Dragonflies over the past four weeks.
The skies were the ever-slate of the Land of Grey Dusk, but the Dragonflies’ explosive ordnance threw up smoke incarnadine and lavender. Overhead, the massive insects droned, searching out any remaining warrens or burrows not yet annihilated by their patrols. The rabbit squeezed her eyes shut and held her little one tight as she dared, her entire body ajitter, anticipating the descending whistle of the ball of light and noise that would destroy her completely.
The Alchemy of Happiness: Three Stories and a Hybrid-Essay Page 10