As I am writing this, we are experiencing turbulence on the Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Chicago, and it occurs to me that despite having flown an average of seven times a year for the past four years, this is my very first independently undertaken domestic U.S. flight.  I don't know why that matters, except that I am keenly aware that the American midwest is an unforgiving place over which to fall from the sky, unless your craft has been primed for sudden impact and you are a superbaby, neither of which is true in my case.

Only a few hours ago, I bid farewell-for-now to my fellow graduates of this year's Clarion West class.  It is strange to think that I won't be waking up tomorrow in a house full of people.  I've grown so accustomed to the ambient noise of animated conversation, clinking flatware, rustling papers, and wee plastic tiles scattering across a tabletop that the very notion of silence is deeply unnerving. 

The past six weeks

I've left the cursor blinking at the end of the above line for a few solid minutes, which I'm taking as fair indication that I'm not yet up to the task of trying to encapsulate the past six weeks.  Instead I'll g'wan a bit about the people who helped make the past six weeks possible for me, personally.

First of all, the folks who both ran and participated in the Clarion West Write-a-thon last year, earning enough in sponsorships to allow a number of us, including myself, to be awarded scholarships. Y'all rock.

You may recall that I tried my hand at running a tiny online fundraising event a couple months ago; John Coyne, Sanko Lewis, Joe Cullin, Ken Schneyer, and the inestimable An Owomoyela exhibited jaw-dropping generosity and faith in my burgeoning writerly skillz by contributing to my ChipIn project. Some of them were good friends to begin with, but others I had yet to meet -- this served as one of my first tastes of how long the reach of the SFF community can be.

To my Seoul crit group, including Clarion West graduates Gord Sellar and Ben Burgis, and Clarion 'Diego grad Nick Stenner, for giving me practical advice, workshopping the story that ultimately wound up as part of my application bundle, and being generally awesome and touchstony when I might have let my writing muscles atrophy. 

And a richly deserved if ridiculously understated shout-out to friend and former instructor Rachel Swirsky, who told me about Clarion West five years ago when I was but a tiny mewling undergraduate thing, and encouraged me to apply until I finally managed to screw up the courage to do so this year.

And now the overgenerous flight attendants have returned with a second round of complimentary beverages, so I shall put my laptop away, for lo, I am in the aisle seat, and should a brimming cup overflow onto my keyboard, I will have a heart attack and die. (Sleep deprivation: a leading cause of hyperbole.)



post title taken from "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel