Insert Eye-grabbing title here
Hail,
Day Nine of the Clarion South experience, and I do not know if I have been this tired in years.
Seriously. The term “sleep debt” is actually one that contains several deep truths. I have had around about four or five hours sleep a night for the last week. In sleep debt terms, this means I have been living off what I imagine is some kind of oneiric credit card. Like all instances of excess, this has consequences, and the recent drop in interest rates seems not to have reached the Kingdom of Morpheus. I am paying badly - or rather, I am failing badly to pay. I think some kind of limit is being reached, and around about midnight I suspect there will be a knock on the door, and it will be a psychopomp with a pickaxe handle, who will explain my obligations to me in considerable and distressing detail.
And if that doesn’t work, they’ll come around and repossess my hypothalamus.
Honestly - so.
tired.
words.
drip.
out.
in.
little.
dropsandmakepuddlesonthefloorbeneathmydesk.
My train of thought has become more like the Montoglfier balloon, drifting erratically over the cityscape while concerned onlookers in top hats grab each other and point. Like the Montgolfier balloon my brain continues to function only due to the frantic application of copious amounts of hot fluids - not heated air, in this case, but hogsheads of weapons grade coffee. Unlike the Montgolfier balloon, it does not actually contain a sheep called Montauciel.
And today I have to start my new story, because my second one was critted today, which means ars longus, vita brevis, so I have to get off my ars and get on with it, because the next one is due in Monday, and I have rung around, and the million monkeys plus keyboards won’t be delivered until Wednesay.
Critting goes well. We are still relatively courteous, and the good thing about Clarion South is the worse your story is, the more benefit you get from the critting process - I have been raking in the insights. Each session is sortof like literary electro-convulsive therapy. I suspect this niceness will fall away soon, and we will become less courteous, and conversations will be more like this:
Critter: “I couldn’t believe your character’s motivation…”
Crittee: “Yeah? Well, I can’t believe… YOUR FACE!”
Critter: “Right. I didn’t really feel the tension…”
Crittee: “YOUR MUM felt the tension!”
Or perhaps this:
Critter: “And you’ve changed from pluperfect to simple past at the top of page eight…”
Crittee: (stares for a long moment) And do you think with this bauble to buy your life? It will avail you naught (shift to Gothic font, underlined and bold, progressively increasing font size every three words until entire page obscured). Because I say unto you that nothing, nothing, not riches, not power, not all the trappings and gewgaws and shiny things of this world will subtract in any way from the aeons of suffering you will suffer as you suffer in your… sufferitude, as you writhe and plead and beg in the pits of hellfire I created in the beginning of time for the eternal and everlasting, - everlasting, I say! - punishment of Those Who Do Offend Mine Eye And Richly Deserve My Wrath in Time and In Eternity! Bwa hahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr…..” (repeat to fade as dragged from the room by campus security).
Yes, well. And in fifteen minutes I will be meeting with our tutor. I have been careful to respect Sean Williams’ requests for anonymity in cases like this, so throughout this passage I will refer to Sean Williams as “John”, and not as Sean Williams, author of some thirty novels, countless short stories and recipient of more awards than Stalin.
“John” (not his real name) is superlative. If you do what he says - and it’s not even that, it’s him showing you how to look at text, how to see stuff, and then once you’ve seen it you go off and fix it - you write better. He’s a bit like one of those artefacts you used to find in AD&D, a Goblet of Writeryness or Ee’s Perceptive Biro of the Protagonist. It is fortunate that he has sworn only to use his vast powers for good. He is remarkably knowledgeable, his understanding of the field is wide and deep, he has an almost Yodan ability to discern the story you feel and believe and want to tell under the halting, stuttering, bolted-together-from-leftovers farrago you handed in the day before.
He’s funny, and approachable, and hard-working, and polite, and deeply decent, so much so that in the real world he’d be a serial killer. The benefit of having John as a tutor stems as much from what he is as much as what he says - he shows, he doesn’t tell, what a professional writer should be. I suspect he would be embarrassed by further praise, but as he knows, suffering for the art and audience - even him suffering for mine - is part of being a writer. It if anyone reading this wants anyone to teach anyone anything about writing, start with… John. He’s bloody brilliant.
Anyway - time passes. I’d better go off and attempt to talk face to face with him, and see if I can save the Zombie Nun story. At the moment I am still loving this. Next week’s post, of course, may just be a faltering transcriptions of my sobs, or a whispered webcam confession as I crouch beneath my desk, a bloodied biro in my mouth and wearing only a loincloth made from shredded pages from Strunk and White, but we will see.
See you soon,
BDC
This post left me ROTFL, Brendan, but I feel for you in your lack of sleep. It’s probably unavoidable, though. Don’t forget that the true psychopomp is Hermes, patron of thieves and writers. You’re just stealing a few wakeful hours, that’s all. Get Hermes to speak to Morpheus on your behalf. He’ll understand.
And Sleep be fought back, but momentarily C Milly’s Gram with Vigil, in Moda’s eye. Remember the creed of the Bipolar Count, when he got to minus one?
Benedict
highly readable and, in part, quite entertaining….the website is certainly worth a visit