Hi! I'm Lynn, intermittent writer of speculative fiction; I attended Clarion South this year, which has made the intermittency slightly less so. At the moment I'm mostly finishing up fanfiction projects and toying with speculative poetry and short stories while trying to set more concrete goals.

Fantasy reading-wise: Michael Swanwick, M. John Harrison, and Michael Chabon are always somewhere at the top, and my speculative fiction preferences range from conventional to eclectic on any given day. I'm particularly fond of fantasy-of-manners (or possibly just Kushner and Jane Austen; the other fantasists-of-manners I find enjoyable but less compelling, although I'm very fond of Susanna Clarke).

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Ooh, Clarion. Those sound so fun.

I am developing a large amount of love for M John Harrison.

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Pardon me for jumping in - though I suppose this is an introductions post. Hi, I'm Dee, and I'm in Australia and dead curious about Clarion South. I attended an EnVision back when Fantastic Queensland still ran them, but I've avoided Clarion as I've never really been a short story reader/writer. This may not be the place for it, but I'd be really interested in hearing about your experience and whether you think it has benefits for someone solely interested in longer pieces. (Though with two years until the next one, it's a pretty academic question. Heh.)

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..the short answer is no; if you're exclusively a novel writer it may not be worth the time and expense, particularly if you're a) an experienced writer with existing sources of reliable critique b) already well-connected within the speculative fiction community. The friendships I formed with fellow writers were the best part of the workshop for me; the actual writing/critique less so, although my critiquing skills have certainly become much sharper as a result. (Note that mileage varies, and most others benefitted considerably more than I did; I write slowly at the best of times and write well below my best under pressure - none of which made me a candidate to get the most out of the Clarion experience.)

I do feel strongly that the short story and the novel are different things (a sentiment Jeff Vandermeer also expressed during the workshop) - and that within Australia something like Varuna or Hachette Livre may be the better way to go, especially if you've already got novels written.

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Thanks for that! And double thanks for the links - I'd never heard of the Hachette one before!

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