It’s almost time for the Clarion West Write-a-thon, and there is space for everyone at the table!
Clarion West is one of the world’s best and most highly regarded workshops for emerging writers of speculative fiction. Each year, the workshop receives submission applications from writers all over the world: each year, CW invites 18 of them to a six-week intensive residential workshop experience in Seattle. A different professional writer or editor serves as the instructor in residence each week. Stories are workshopped 5 days a week. Students are encouraged to write, write, write, and write some more as they stretch to embrace new ideas and internalize new skills. Clarion West writers reach for the stars, lose a lot of sleep, forge a strong community with their peers; many leave transformed by the experience.
The Write-a-thon is CW’s primary fundraising event, held in parallel with the workshop each year. Any writer anywhere can participate. Sign up; set a writing goal; find a sponsor (or several) to donate to Clarion West in support of your writing; and then join an astonishingly varied and vibrant community of Write-a-thon participants worldwide on Twitter and Facebook as everyone works hard, laughs a lot, shares their struggles, and offers each other support.
Come write. Come give to a writer. Come watch the writer and the work grow. And support a workshop that for more than 30 years has been changing writers lives.
And for those who have supported me in past Write-a-thons — thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am not currently signed up to participate, but I hope that you’ll pick a writer to support this year — maybe someone whose never had a sponsor before — so they too can experience how wonderful it feels when people have your back.
Thank you! And enjoy your day.