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| They teach you about symbolism, too. |
While I was in the hospital, submissions opened for the Viable Paradise workshop. It's run by the incomparable James Macdonald and
Debra Doyle, and attracts superstar staff-authors like Scott Lynch and Elizabeth
Bear. If you're a beginning or emerging writer, you want to go to VP. It's held
every October in Martha's Vineyard, a week in a cozy hotel space with a couple
dozen other aspiring authors, and a host of professionals who critique your
work and educate on the underpinnings of storytelling and the publishing
industry. I learned more in one week at VP than any year of college. If you
take your craft seriously, you could not ask for a better week.
But that's not why you want to go to Viable Paradise.
There's something more.
Through shared interest and mutual support, some classmates came to feel like family. The workshop improved our game through insights and streamlining. In the year after my class, I sold my first pro-rate short story. Many classmates sold their first pro shorts, too, or pro flashes. One friend giddily explained to me that she was paid more for one anthology acceptance than everything she'd ever made in writing before.
That's not why you want to go to Viable Paradise, either.
If you fast-forwarded a year after VP17, you'd find that my
body turned on me. Close friends, including some VP alums, were rightly scared
for me. My health has always been poor, but over the course of nine months my
body rejected the meds I'd always relied on, and then four new experimental
courses of medication. The pain became so disorienting that my ability to
multitask disappeared. I spent two hours writing symptoms on a piece of paper
so I could read them at the doctor, because I was incapable of having a casual
discussion about them. My ability to write, and finish stories, dwindled.
And if you care about writing, then this is why you want to
go to Viable Paradise.
Because a month ago I was lost in the wilderness of
illness, completely unable to edit my work anymore, despite having what I'm
sure was the best short story I've ever written. It was a promising first draft,
and became a phenomenal third draft, and in December I could tell it just needed its
science rigorously checked. The story is about a sympathetic, even funny,
protagonist with albinism, one attempt to counter the Evil Albino trope. And
while I'd done a lot of legwork to depict albinism accurately, I could not
check my own science further. Paragraphs felt insurmountable. The pain, and the
brain-fog that chronic pain brings on, were winning. Having your best work just
outside your grasp is purgatorial.
Leigh Wallace, one of my classmates from Viable Paradise,
e-mailed me an offer. She'd check the science of the story for me. She'd read
up on albinism and ocular disorders, and flag whatever I'd gotten wrong or left
confusing. She'd point out my problems and then all I'd have to do was fix
them.
She turned the story back over to me in days. The way she marked
it up? It was so accessible that I corrected the entire story in a weekend. And
it was a hard weekend on the health front, my friends. Leigh was my gosh-darned
hero.
Now the story is out to markets, and I am on a sixth course
of medication. At least for today, I'm thinking clearer and making the most of
that clarity. I'm beta reading a classmate's novel.
That's why you want to go Viable Paradise. The greatest gift
a workshop can give is supportive relationships with other smart writers who
can have your back when your back gives out.