Clarion South: Quality over quantity – Part Two

This week’s question was: How many short stories would you recommend being published prior to applying for Clarion?

Christopher Green: I don’t think it matters how many stories you’ve published prior to Clarion. I think your ability, drive, and passion for what the art (as pretentious as it sounds) matter far more than how many stories you’ve sold at the time of your application.

Paul Haines: I don’t think you need any published. You need to have written short stories, and the more the better, unless you’re naturally brilliant, and you of course need to submit work to get into the course. It helps if you understand short stories, what they do, how they work, how to write them.

Brenn McDibble: A few successes would help. I think the main thing is to have had a reasonable amount of feedback from peers etc prior to Clarion and to have your writing reach a high quality and a point where you have no idea how to improve it. The principle behind Clarion, as I understood it, was to take the good writers and give them that last final push over the finish line to where all the publishable writers are battling it out for those few prizes.

Margo Lanagan: Nah, you don’t have to have had any published – I hadn’t. Oh, okay, a novel here and there. But it’s more about how Clarion aligns with what you want for yourself, than how it aligns with what you’ve achieved so far. You just need to have banged your head against a brick wall or two, writing-wise. You need to have seen an illusion or two crumble, probably. If you come in cocky, you have to crumble in public. You don’t want that.

Deborah Kalin: I had a grand total of no published stories. Others I know go to Clarion with a slew of publishing credits under their belts. Like so much of writing, it’s very individual, and basically a case of whatever path you take gets you where you’re going. Clarion is not for those just starting out and, by the same token, you can be at a place in your writing where Clarion can’t teach you anything you don’t already know.

Jason Fischer: It doesn’t matter. If you’ve got talent and the desire to improve yourself, apply. From what I understand it goes against the quality of the sample writing you include in your submission. You gotta be in it to win it.

Tune in for more next week from the Clarion South crew.

Check out the earlier posts about Clarion South

Find out more about Clarion South (intake is closed for the next Australian session, which will take place in Brisbane from Jan 4 to Feb 14)