Sketchbook, summer 1993.

Each year, the Clarion science fiction writing workshop hosts an online "write-a-thon" to raise funds that will support this important program for the next generation of speculative fiction authors, and this year's six-week effort kicks off on June 23. I've been a participant for several years, am proud to have been able to pay something forward for the outstanding experience I had. You can sponsor me as a writer here, or make a contribution to the Clarion Foundation. It's all tax deductible, and it supports this vital program.

In honor of our class's 20th anniversary (which hardly seems possible!), I'll be counting down and posting snippets from my 1993 writing sketchbook, day by day, which may be of most interest to fellow Clarionoids, but which will hopefully be marginally entertaining (and encourage you to sponsor me). So, here we go:

June 2, 1993:

"The sky outside the port was the color of Dan Rather's face, beaten to a bloody boneless pulp to learn the frequency."

Echolalia. See: echolalia. (See: echolalia).

"We always thought we knew the difference between dirt and viruses." - an evil virologist

An alternate history of TV?

It is the function of culture to imprint facticity. To make you aware of the Real and to dismiss the possibility of anything different -- ever -- having existed. This is what I'm struggling with as a writer. To be true to those aspects of the Real which are significant, but to mutate those which either repress, or mask, their mutability. Per mutandae ad esse.

That last bit -- yeah, that ended up nearly verbatim in the first story I wrote at Clarion a month later. This is why I always advise aspiring writers to keep a notebook handy.