Damien G. Walter » san diego

World Fantasy Convention – diary entry 1

damiengwalter — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 02:14:53 +0000

Being in a foreign city alone is faintly terrifying. It’s the fourth time I’ve done this now, although on the third of those I stayed with a friend, which held its own terrors. Between times I look back on the last trip with a rose tinted desire for freedom. It’s only on the plane, once it is far too late to turn back, that I remember the slowly rising tide of fear that accompanies each flight in to the unknown. This time the thought that I would be abducted by a mexican street gang teased and taunted me from two thirds of the way across the atlantic. Why would a mexican street gang abduct me? What would they want with an English writer of weird fictions of just slightly below average height? Was it my scarf, perhaps, that would make me a target? Should I stow it well away on arrival for fear of attracting unwanted attention?

(I am recording these thoughts while still on the flight, which raises the ironic possibility that I will actually be abducted by a mexican street gang. This note will be read, from my pawned iPad, by a young American woman who will briefly consider seeking down its author, before thinking better of it.)

The seeds of such fears are always small. A brief conversation with a friend about San Diego’s high, although falling, levels of street crime. Glimpsed statistics that Ocean Beach where I have chosen to spend my first night, actually has amongst the highest crime rates in the city! The image of it burning white from the Google generated data map. At 10 kilometres above the earth, encouraged perhaps by the low air pressure, those seeds bloom to full fledged fears. Writing seems to dig out the weeds of worry. Hence this note.

I am staying at the International Hostel in Ocean Beach, San Diego for the next three nights, followed by the Town and Country hotel for the World Fantasy Convention itself. Plans after that yet to be confirmed. Should I fail to Tweet for any length of time greater than six hours please name the Kickstarter campaign ‘Damien G Walter Hostage Ransom Fund’ and spread the word far and wide.

(Even as I write I am picturing the streets of Ocean Beach descended in to post-apocalypse chaos. Roving bands of cannibal vigilantes man flaming barbed wire barricades topped with the heads of tourists. My taxi driver seems unpeturbed. It’s just another day on the mean streets of the USA.)

UPDATE : Ocean Beach exceptionally nice and friendly. Hostel good. Have eaten sushi for dinner.

Filed under: Writing Journal Tagged: Ocean Beach, san diego, WFC2011, World Fantasy

Clarion applicants…batten down the hatches!

damiengwalter — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:26:29 +0000

Clarion classmate E J Fischer recounts his last minute application to the worlds greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy writing workshop @ UC San Diego. If its any encouragement to those of you who barely scrapped the deadline, it seemed that almost everyone in the class of 2008 applied at the last minute (and now of course I’m discouraging those of you who applied in good time…)

I had written two stories in the months before Clarion. My Lovesick Zombie Boy Band, a teenage witch story, and The Great Western Pile, a steampunk tale about a clockwork super-computer. (Both currently unpublished and awaiting revision per notes from Kelly Link and Jim Kelly. I need to spend more time on revising things.) Clarion had been buzzing away at the back of my head for months by then, but I only realised I had to good stories ready a few days before. At which point I realised The Great Western Pile was 2k too long, so spent the twenty-four hours before hand giving it a serious trim. My application went in a few hours before the deadline, and I told my self to forget about it.

Over the next few weeks I came to realise how very, very much I wanted to go to Clarion. I prepared for rejection, but dreamed of acceptance. And now you, who have just made your Clarion application and are scouring the blogosphere for succour, are doing the very same. Its a tense time of waiting, but don’t worry, you’ll get through it. If you don’t get in it will be a bummer, but dust yourself down and carry on. If you do…oh boy..start getting ready now.

Buying the plane ticket and packing your bags are the easy part. Leaving your life for six weeks for any reason is tough. Leaving your life for six weeks to write science fiction and fantasy is even tougher. You are pursuing a great ambition, and that always comes at a cost. Clarion is a whirlwind. A wonderful, delirious whirlwind, but a whirlwind none the less. You need to batten down the hatches before it hits (or alternatively just go and stand in a field and come what may…) Start persuading your work that you are so essential that they will need you back, or get used to the idea of looking for a new job when Clarion is done. Tell the people you love that you love them. Lots. They are going to need to know this. And have a real think about what you want to write and why. Clarion will test your assumptions about yourself as a writer every day for six weeks. Be prepared.

Oh…and take some comffy sandals. The beach is lovely…

Posted in Clarion UCSD Tagged: Blacks Beach, san diego

Kelly’s Crows

damiengwalter — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:10:32 +0000

Today I finished two weeks at Clarion. It feels like much longer. There is a consensus that one week of Clarion world time is about three weeks of real world time (or should that be the other way around?). One of my fellow clarionites has observed that we are living in strange environment. The weather is the same every day. There are lizards and rabbits and crows leaping all over the UCSD campus, and eucalyptus trees everywhere with flaky bark that looks like skin. Its possible that the crows have been sent to watch over us, and conceivable that we are all living in a Kelly Link story (in which case dear reader, please don’t stop!)

Clarion is very hard work. You critique all morning. You write all day. You read all night. Sleep is scarce, but deep. Like intense, structured exercise, this kind of exertion has the effect of stretching the muscles being exercised. I can feel myself arriving at new revelations about story writing everyday. The combination of hours of writing, reading and deconstructing up to 20k words of story every day, discussing those stories, talking almost non-stop about story and being around one very skilled professional writer after another is filtering so many concepts into my head that I will still be processing all the details years after Clarion has finished.

Last weeks story, ‘Ocean Beach’ got all the experiences I’ve been absorbing from California and San Diego out of my system. Its very far from finished, but I’m really happy about the ideas I developed in the story, and its likely to be first on my list to complete when I get back. I hope I don’t lose the thread of it when Kalifornia is no longer looming all around me, being weird in ways that I think only this strange environment can be. I did a flash piece last week as well called ‘String Music’ which I will polish and submit when I have a spare few hours. This week I’m working on a high fantasy story, complete with Elves and magic rings. Its going v.well and is a good change of pace and style as the other pieces were very dense, this is much more exciting. I’m not expecting to walk away from my six weeks here with any finished drafts, but do want to generate as much material and absorb as many insights into the craft as possible.

Take-off

damiengwalter — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:59:32 +0000

Right then people. In just over twelve hours I will be zooming down the runway at Stansted, ready to hurl myself over the Atlantic with the help of American Airlines. I’ll be touching down in San Diego at 6pm local time, or 2am British time. I have three days to get over the jet lag, or as Mr Bill Gibson says, for my soul to chart a slower route over the ocean and finally reconnect with my body. Wish me luck.