Clarion South: What comes first, the successful writer or the workshop? Part One

Welcome to the first of many Clarion South posts. The Clarion South Writers Workshop is the most intensive professional development program for speculative fiction writers in the southern hemisphere. Previous tutors at the Workshops include Sean Williams, Kelly Link, Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, Margo Lanagan and Marianne de Pierres. Past and future students of the program have agreed to answer a few questions on the Voyager blog which will hopefully give writers out there plenty of information on what Clarion is all about. The recent speculative fiction anthology, Dreaming Again (edited by Jack Dann) included a number of stand out stories from Clarion South graduates, and many have gone on to be published in prestigious publications.

Our first question to the Clarionites was to ask: why do you think Clarion has produced so many successful writers? Or, are successful writers attracted to Clarion?

Sean Williams: I think it’s a combination of several things. Clarion is an environment in which a focussed work ethic is both strongly encouraged and demonstrated to be effective. It provides a strong sense of community, and it also encourages critical thinking and a thick skin. All these things are crucial if you want to be a writer.

Lee Battersby: Clarion produces successful writers because it demands a massive commitment of time, energy, and sacrifice — it’s six weeks away from the world and the people you love, and that can be tough — as well as a significant expense, and that means that anybody who turns up on day one has already shown a huge amount of drive and dedication to their craft before they start the six week schedule. They don’t mess about when they call it a boot camp — it’s tough stuff, and the writers who come out the other side and go on to achieve success do so because they’ve learn to ally that dedication to a whole range of hard-nosed professional advice.

Jason Fischer: I’d say people who want to be successful are drawn to professional development workshops such as Clarion South. I can only really speak for the last course (2007) but Gardner Dozois told us that we were more-or-less doomed and that statistically speaking only three of us were likely to be heard of ever again. I think this spurred several of us onto various successes (with Writers of the Future, and sales to prozines like Realms of Fantasy) just to spite him. 🙂

Paul Haines: I think you need to have some standard of good writing to get into the course, a desire to succeed as a writer (or you wouldn’t be on the course), and a high level of determination to achieve whatever goals you set yourself to survive the bootcamp nature of the course. To answer those two questions: it’s both.

Six more Clarionites will answer the same question tomorrow. If you’d like more info on the Clarion South Writers Workshop, please visit www.clarionsouth.org and keep an eye on the Voyager blog for further posts.

Many thanks to Jason Fischer, author of (among many other stories) ‘Undead Camels Ate Their Flesh’, published in Dreaming Again, for gathering all these answers from the tutors, graduates and future students of Clarion South.