Hi All:

Some of last year's Clarionites contacted me and asked me to put this advice for you on this blog.

Here we go!

See you soon,
Shelley

From Ghislaine Lai:

- Go to the 99 Ranch across the bookstore. It is so close. The food is so cheap. The small bits of control are so precious.

- Sleep a lot. It saves lives.

From Karen Osborne:

- Leave every single expectation you have at at the door. 

- Go to the beach as much as you can.

- Pull at least one all-nighter, but not too many.

- Don't shirk while critiquing your classmates' work, even if it's late and you're tired. You will learn the most through seeing what they do and recognizing it in your own work. 

- Earplugs. Noise-cancelling headphones. The sports teens are many, and they are loud.

- Have your friends at home send you care packages and encouraging letters -- they will feel AMAZING when it's week four and you're exhausted!

- Don't stay safe with your writing. Experiment. Do something new. Don't aim to sell these stories; aim to write the most gonzo, beautiful, stories-of-your-heart that you possibly can. You will never have this chance again. 

- Your story starts on page 6. Trust us. We know.

- Sit together as a class for every meal.

- It's fine to say to your friends and family: "Guys, I'm just not going to deal with this problem right now, I'm in California doing this thing I've wanted to do my entire life, if the house isn't burning down I'm not listening to you lalalalalaaaaa." Live in the liminal space for as long as you can. 

From Ma. Christina Cruz:

Clarion 2018! This workshop changed my entire relationship with Story for good. I hope it does this for you, too. Here are some notes from the random Pinoy (Filipino) from last year's Clarion:

• First, trust the process.
• Second, enjoy it. This will never happen again. That is a good thing. If you feel you're too stressed to enjoy it, then just remember to breathe. 
• There will be seagulls. Sometimes squawking at the seagulls will result in seagulls squawking back. Do not approach baby seagulls. They are bait.
• Drop everything when you see dogs. Pet them.
• There will be, from time to time, murderous screams from kids and adults near the dorms. Do not be afraid unless they are directly screaming at you. Plan accordingly. Ear plugs, good heaphones, etc.
• For my fellow people from the tropics, there will be very cold nights and nice warm days. Bring appropriate clothing. Moisturize. Sunscreen. When you finally break and need rice there is some at the complex with the snazzy bookstore inside the campus. There is also Panda Express. Possibly sushi. 
• Raid the salad bar everyday. Stay healthy!
• Buy a SIM, it's just easier that way (unless your phone's locked to your network, in which case bring a dumb phone AND buy a SIM). You will need it for emergency purposes at least one time during the workshop.
• Chair in room not that comfy. Sit on your pillow, see if that helps. 
• Stretch, walk, do something physical everyday.
• Get to know your roommates, they will see you at your best and at your worst. Be there when they need you, ask them how they're doing, support their process, declare your own.
• You will, at the end of it all, have to find a way to ship reams of paper (copies of your stories with handwritten crits on them) to your house. Consider just taking a picture of each page with crits using Evernote (it has an auto-scan mode) if shipping cost will be a problem. Do it early enough and you can spend your last day chilling instead of frantically taking photos of paper. 
• If you all go digital with the critiquing, great, but do not assume at the onset that everybody is comfortable with purely online commenting--you will grow to love the hearts and enthusiastic check marks people draw on parts of your story.
• Be kind but be yourself with your workshop mates. They are yours now. For life.

From Nina Niskanen:

A few things I wish I'd known before Clarion:

- Doing the critiques for others is even more important than getting critiqued. I had so many lightbulb moments because of the critiques I gave.

- It is okay not to do everything. You do not need to submit a story every week.

- Being unable to language is common.

- The California Sun is a Thing. Sunscreen is your friend. SPF50 and up.

- Mysterious Galaxy is an amazing place with wonderful people who will do their best to make it into nerd haven.

- Use the pre-workshop nervous energy to brainstorm some ideas. 

- Your classmates are also your secret weapon, not just during the six weeks, but later as well. They'll be there to cheer you on and share resources of places to submit your stories.

- Organize an ice-breaker as soon as possible. Start talking to each other immediately, if not sooner.

- Do at least a little exercise daily! Seriously! I am not one prone to exercise normally, but became fanatical about it during those six weeks. Stretching, yoga, walking, or even get a "membership" at the gym/pool. The chairs in the class are murder on your back and the mattresses aren't much better. Exercise to make sure that you can keep working because pain is a terrific killer of creativity!

- Walk to the beach to watch the sunset as often as possible. It takes 20-30 minutes of your evening but it's also a good chance to step out and remind your brain that your body exists.

- Find a way to talk to each other digitally. Our class has a slack and we still talk to each other over it, but it was also a wonderful way to keep track of everyone during our time at UCSD.

- Clean up after yourself in the common room! There is no one to clean after you but your classmates and they're also busy with all the same stuff you're busy with! Don't leave one or two people as the responsible ones who have to organize everyone else as well!

- Steal ice cream and popsicles from the cafe! 

- Fill the common room walls with silly drawings and encouraging or funny sentences!

Dear Clarionites:

I’m writing to introduce myself to you all and add a few last words of advice before you head off to Clarion.

First of all, I’m greatly looking forward to meeting you all this Sunday! I’ve been Clarion’s Faculty Director since 2010 and am a UCSD Professor with a joint appointment in Literature and Ethnic Studies. I teach classes on science fiction and other topics at the undergraduate and graduate levels here. One of my specialties is archival research and I’d love to help you take a look at the Clarion archives housed at UCSD if you’d like—they include almost all of the stories ever written by Clarion students.

My new book, Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making through Science Fiction and Activism, was recently published in the University of California Press’s American Studies Now! series.  Part of that book has grown out of the part of my research I am most excited about these days, which is the work I’ve been doing with the Octavia E. Butler Papers at the Huntington Library in San Marino. If any of you is interested in Butler and/or her papers, I would love to talk to you more about that as well.

Second, I want to tell you a little more about my role at Clarion. I serve on the Admissions Committee and read a lot of application stories each year, so I always look forward to seeing the class take shape and witnessing each writer’s pathway through the program each summer. I will also be in the classroom with you two days a week, usually on Mondays and either Thursday or Friday. I read all the stories that are being critiqued each day, participate in the round robins from wherever I am sitting in the circle, and give writers written feedback on their stories.

I also hold office hours at least once a week after lunch and will leave some time at the beginning of each session in case anyone wants to just stop by to chat. I’d like to have a quick (10minutes or so) check-in meeting with everyone during the first two weeks and then meet once again for a longer time (half hour) weeks 4-6. For the second meeting, I always offer to read an extra story and give you feedback—whether it is a trunk story, one I missed in workshop, something that is too long for the workshop, or something else it would be helpful to have discussed. That also gives me a chance to find out how things are going. You should come to me during the workshop if you have questions or issues and I will try to help out.

If you have any questions now, feel free to email me at sstreeby@ucsd.edu. I’ll also be attending the weekly readings at Mysterious Galaxy with you all as well as many other activities that come up. I’m on Facebook and Twitter and happy to connect those ways: https://www.facebook.com/shelley.streeby

https://twitter.com/ShelleyStreeby

Finally, I’m writing to advise you to take a second look at a couple of the documents I believe Patrick sent out earlier: Chris Barzak’s “The Dynamics of Workshopping” and Nalo Hopkinson’s Letter. I am sending them out to you again in a minute over email, so be sure to look for them if you don't have them Because people have a wide range of experiences before coming to Clarion, I find Chris’s handout, which he composed when working as first-week instructor for the stellar 2015 class, the most useful explanation of how the round-robin works and what kind of feedback is most helpful. That class did the round robin beautifully and they were an amazing group. Giving feedback is an art and it’s one I’ve been happy to see many writers hone while at Clarion in ways that benefit others and themselves. Each instructor will likely make small changes in response to their own needs and based on what they think is best for this group.

Nalo Hopkinson’s Letter is also a good thing to reread and take to heart while at Clarion.

OK, that’s all for now, but please feel free to email me or reach out on social media before you come or anytime once you’re here. This is going to be a great summer! Here’s my first try ever at answering some of those questions:

Do I have a nickname? Not really, though my little brother Victor used to call me Blot because I got ink all over everything. My sister-in-law used to call me Ice Pick trying to imagine what it would have been like being me growing up with five rowdy brothers.

What do you like to read?  Some favorites are Octavia E. Butler, Ursula K. LeGuin, Ted Chiang, Kim Stanley Robinson, Philip K. Dick, Nora Jemisin, Nalo Hopkinson, James Tiptree, Jr, Lynda Barry, Samuel Delany, Karen Joy Fowler. Also love recent work by recent Clarionites such as Sam Miller, Carmen Machado, Lisa Bolekaja, Alyssa Wong, and many many more. 

What kinds of things do you write? I am currently writing a book on female science fiction writers and the memory-work they did by organizing and leaving large archival collections to research libraries and other institutions—so far this has involved research on Octavia Butler, James Tiptree, Jr., and Judith Merrill, but I am also digging deeper into archives at the University of Oregon and finding more. Throughout my career I’ve been a scholar of popular literature and culture from the 19^th century to the present. My first book was on class and empire in dime novels and best-selling 19^th century sensational fiction and my second was on how radical social movements used culture to organize transnationally from the 1880s-1920s. I’ve also written a recent article on reading the work of the great cartoonist Jaime Hernandez as queer speculative fiction. And I also write science fiction short stories from time to time.

What do you to relax or for recreation? San Diego is a great place to get outside. You all are within walking distance from a beautiful stretch of coast that includes a gorgeous beach and cliffs overlooking the ocean. I love beach-hopping down this part of the coast, especially at low tide, with particular favorites being Beacon’s Beach and Moonlight Beach in Encinitas and Silver Strand on Coronado Island. I also love the marsh and the beach at the Tijuana Estuary at the border.  Torrey Pines a few miles up I-5 from UCSD is an incredibly beautiful place. I also love walking in my neighborhood in South Park/Golden Hill on the border of Balboa Park—I highly recommend visiting the park and the little neighborhoods around it, many of which have craft beer and good restaurants. I’m also into gardening, especially growing vines and succulents.

See you soon!

Shelley Streeby