A great day on the writing front. Two notices of good news arrived today. The first was the sale of another short story. The second was news that I have been accepted to the Odyssey Writing Program this summer. I’m tingling with excitement.
First, the short story. It’s a little flash piece called “Red.” which is a humorous, bizarre twist on the Red Riding Hood fable. It will be published at Jersey Devil Press in July. I originally wrote it with an anthology of Twisted Fairy Tales in mind that was open to submissions. But after I wrote the piece, I reread the guidelines, and discovered the minium length requirements were two thousand words. The piece was under a thousand words, and there was no way to expand it (well, there probably was a way, but I didn’t want to, as it had a nice little comic one-two punch at its present length), so I just decided to shop it around elsewhere. Thankfully, it found a home on the first try.
Now...Odyssey. This is one of the big three writing programs in Sci Fi and Fantasy, the other two being Clarion and Clarion West. Odyssey is more fantasy oriented, so it has always been my first preference of the three. I have wanted to attend Odyssey for years (over a decade, actually) but work was always an obstacle. With retirement, this is no longer the case.
Odyssey is an intensive six week program of classes, workshopping, writing and critiquing. I am almost intimidated by it. Students are expected to work twelve hour days, every day, for the six weeks of the course. It is taught by an editor (Jeanne Cavelos) who has worked for years in the publishing industry, as well as won a World Fantasy Award for her work. In addition to Jeanne, guest lecturers include published and well known writers and another editor.
I’m looking forward to Odyssey, and have hopes that it will take my writing to the next level. I also feel I will learn a lot from the critiquing process, which I really haven’t done a lot of before. Odyssey should also be good for networking, both in meeting the published writers and editors, and also making connections with the up and coming writers that are the other students.
If possible, I will blog about my experiences at Odyssey as they happen. So look for more on this in the future.
Write On!
Congratulations on your Odyssey acceptance! I just saw the comment you left on my blog, Speak Coffee to Me, and hopped on over here. Glad you found my blog useful!
ReplyDeleteIt's tough but worth it. If you can, plan to take a box fan with you.
If you haven't already, you'll soon be asked to not blog about the workshop while it's going on. A precaution really to keep people from accidentally or intentionally posting about their classmates. I ended up writing six weeks worth of posts and forward-dating them so that my blog wouldn't die while I was gone, then on the weekends, posted generalizations about how exhausted I was. I'm certain you'll come up with your own best way to deal with the blog situation.
And perhaps I'll see you at the end of it! I'm returning to attend TNEO this year. And the alumni workshop overlaps with Odyssey proper for a one evening social event. Speaking of which, I have a story due to TNEO tomorrow at midnight ... I really should go do that now!
*that is, I wrote six weeks of posts before I left for Odyssey and forward dated them to appear while I was at workshop
ReplyDeleteHey Eileen,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the additional info. I probably wouldn't have time to blog anyway. I mainly created this blog as a way to network with the other writers like you that I'll be meeting in the next few months (and hopefully years to come).
Looking forward to meeting you at the end of Odyssey.
Chris