Advice to Future Writers

A good friend and Clarion alumni, Isa Yap, came up with a set of questions for people that are interested in attending Clarion in the future. (This has also been addressed by Marie (another Clarion Alum) as well.) In answering these I attempt to construct insightful and creative responses that people will undoubtedly disagree with. Take them at face value. 

1. Any advice for people applying to Clarion in future years?

Write what you want to write and (more importantly) finish your drafts. 

There is a lot to write about, and very little time to write all of it. Don't waste your time writing things that you think you should be writing, spend your time writing stuff you want to write. Better yet, write the things you want to read. If an idea floats into your head and you think that it would make a good story, don't be afraid to write it. An amazing number of silly ideas become moving stories with the right wit and presumption behind them. 

With that thought in mind, never be upset about how your first draft is coming out. Never stop writing and say "this is stupid" because despite your best efforts, your first draft will suck. Your first draft will be the biggest most plot hole-y, hokey thing that you have ever read. With that in mind, you will never improve if you never finish anything. The best pieces of writing take many edits to polish so don't worry if your draft is a little off or doesn't read well. Alternately, if you think you've finished something perfect, you need to sit on it for a while and then read it to see what you are simply overlooking.

2. What's the best advice you heard/read about workshop, prior to coming?

Get sleep, and don't ignore your fellow students.
You think better if you sleep. If you have to cut back on the depth of critiques for a day in order to get a reasonable amount of sleep, do so. Sleep deprivation will kill you slowly and degrades both your writing and your reading. There is no reason that you need to write at 3 in the morning (unless it's due in the morning, and then it's your own damn fault.)
If you only read and write, by the end of the workshop you'll only have six shitty first drafts. You are going to be with ~17 extremely gifted writers that are going to write things that are completely different from anything you might normally read and write in a way that may be completely foreign to you. Take breaks. Have fun. These people and your relationship with them will last far longer than any drafts that you might finish. Cherish them. Keep in touch.

3. 3-5 biggest takeaways from workshop?

Write what you want to read.
I've already said this, but I want to hit this home. Do not write things that people say you should write. Do not write things because you think that they are more commercial. Do not write to the lowest denominator. Do not write things that bore you.
Write what you want to read and write what excites you. There are stories that only you can tell and these are the stories that only you can write. Even if you don't think you have anything to say, I promise that if you write what interests you, it will interest other people.

If writing is running, reading is eating.
You can only really write what you know. Reading expands what you know, so read everything. Fiction is great and helps you to write fiction, but non-fiction helps you write too. Read things you think are good so you can steal ideas off them, and read some select things that are bad so you know what to avoid. If you write science fiction, read fantasy. If you write fantasy, read science fiction. If you write both, read literary. If you write anything, read non-fiction because the real world is far stranger than anything that we could ever dream up.

Don't submit work to a publication that you don't enjoy reading.
When you are trying to submit work, work that you love and you have poured your soul into, don't settle for shitty publications. If you don't enjoy reading it, people won't enjoy it either. The people that share your interest in what you are writing will share your interest in what you are reading. If you absolutely love a publication, send it there.
Second part to this, go from the top to the bottom. Send it to the big names first. Asimov's, F&SF, Tor.com, and the list goes on and on. Never sell your work short, because the worst that these publications can do is say "no." Dream big or go home. Writers need a thick skin and a bigger ego.

Never be afraid to kill your darlings.
This goes for your prose, this goes for your characters, and this especially goes for your plots. Nothing you write is ever above being cut. The more that you love a phrase, the more likely that someone else will hate it. Your lovely, flowery adjectives must die, your precious adverbs must be brutally burned, and every noun that can be replaced by "said" and "asked" must be unceremoniously ripped out. Strip your prose down the the barest structure and then read what you have written. This is what you are actually saying. If you want to say more, think carefully about it.
Don't pull punches and don't think death is the worse thing you can put a character through. No character is ever above being brutally beaten to within an inch of their life, letting them barely live, and then letting it haunt them for the rest of their lives. Always remember that killing them off is far cheaper than making them suffer. If they need to die, make it sudden and thoughtless (because that is often what death is) and make it hurt to everyone else.
Nothing you do is ever clever enough. Your well intentioned, carefully planned, meticulously outlined plots will drown to death on the page. Your characters will have no trouble gleefully forgetting about what you had intended them to do and are content to be quite contrary to anything you had in store. Never let your cleverness get in the way of the story that is trying to be told.

Writing is hard and thankless.
Anyone that tells you that you can make a career of writing is probably lying to you. Unintentional, but true never the less. Writing is not something you should do if you are expecting to be famous from it. Writing is not something that will come easily or naturally every day. Writing is not something that will make a steady or sizeable income. Do not expect your book to be famous. Keep your day job and make it one you find tolerable. If you romanticize the idea of publishing something, it is going to be very bad news once you get into the grit of what it actually means to produce publishable work.
Writers are masochists. They do not care if they type deep into the night fueled by some strange fancy. They do not care how many people hate their work and take the time to write them long letters informing them of such. They do not care how many rejection letters they have already gotten from every publication house under the sun.
They didn't all start that way, but that's what you have to become. In becoming a writer, many people have become very kind, understanding, and generous. They understand that rejection is normal, and they ignore it for the people that genuinely care about the story they are trying to tell. Write because you love writing. Write because you love people reading your work. Write because you cannot think about doing anything else with your time. Write because you love writing, and know that it won't always love you back.

4. If we were maybe wondering, "oooh, I wonder what -your name- considers his/her biggest 

influences," what would you tell us?

This is going to be kind of sad and embarrassing. As a kid I read a lot of stuff, and a lot of it got lost somewhere down the dark passages of my grey matter. Instead of thinking long and hard and impressing you with the  I will write a short list of names that have gotten me through my awkward teenage years and into my awkward early-twenties.

Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Isaac Asimov, Douglas Adams, Anne McCaffrey, and JRR Tolkien.

These are the authors I read growing up as a kid. These are the worlds that I traveled through during middle school and high school. They are staples of fantasy and science fiction, but they are the people that brought me the greatest joy when I was trying to figure out life in all its complexities.

5. Best book you read this year?

This is the part that is going to get me into a lot of trouble. I actually have only read probably four or five books this year, and while I have enjoyed all of them I struggle to think of which would be the best. I think I will settle for the strangest one that I would recommend.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski was a very strange and compelling book. I personally think that some of the theatrics of the formatting are a bit over the top (which many people will either fiercely agree or disagree with), but the premise and the general oddity of the construction make it very entertaining to both read and think about.

That is almost everything that I want to say about these subjects for the moment.
G'night folks.