Instructor: Susan Palwick

My Story: The Aviators, novel excerpt (application sample)

Because it was the first week and the group hadn’t yet written stories for critique, Susan put together an entire English lit/creative writing curriculum to fill our mornings.

In addition to examinations of how parts of speech and valenced language create poetic effects in prose, I particularly appreciated two things Susan shared:

• A touching moment during a Star Trek convention in the 80’s that inspired her and a colleague to become professional artists

• A vulnerable admission that impostor syndrome never disappears, that there are always losses and folks more successful than you, but that joy can be found in the creative life, if you look for it in the right places.

Instructor: P. Djeli Clark

My Story: “The Oddest Thing About the Folks on Grove Point Road”

Djeli encouraged us to put ourselves and our work out there, and to expect the unexpected, recounting how his own publishing journey began with a serendipitous Facebook connection. His insights into Black history and its use in speculative fiction were fun too, especially knowing they’re informed by his academic work at UConn.

I wrote 12,000 words in 5 days, and still didn’t finish my story. But Grove Point Road was so well-received by the group that I’ve decided to expand it into a book. Djeli said, “Takim … what have you wrought here!?” (positive)

Instructor: Fonda Lee

My Story: “$12k for 0 K”

Fonda combined her martial arts experience with her fantasy writing prowess to deliver a lesson on fight scenes. Hint: if aiming for realism, fights should typically be quick and dirty. Also, focus on the narrative flow of a fight, and its stakes for character and story (granular blow-by-blow is fun, but often unnecessary).

The real headline of this week was the discovery of my shared career background with Fonda. I attended the workshop between finishing my MBA and starting my job at BCG, while Fonda had gotten her MBA and worked at BCG over a decade prior. She said that my story, a near-future extrapolation of the business model of for-profit prisons, “slapped so hard for me on every level.” I’m still hoping to have her as an early podcast guest, to discuss the transition from corporate careers to professional writing, and how business and econ knowledge can inform worldbuilding (e.g., scarcity, supply and demand of jade in her Greenbone Saga).

Instructor: Tobias Buckell

My Story: “Five Love Languages for Inter-Specific Couples”

Toby encouraged us not to “hide our cool.” By which he meant lead with whatever makes your story most unique, even put it explicitly in the first line if possible. We as writers often get coy or shy with our stories’ central conceits, believing we need more setup or foreshadowing than we actually do.

Somehow I wrote two stories this week by accident:

• A couples counseling session for a human/alien relationship, now titled “Poly-morphic Monogamy”

• A separate story originally meant to be an anecdote from the couples counselor’s book, about a woman in a far-future Earth discovering a sexual connection with a deadly interstellar virus.

By this point I had developed a bit of a brand within the cohort. Kerstin Hall, a writer whose work I had admired before the workshop, said, “It’s cool that you have such a distinct voice/palette of preoccupations across multiple very different projects.” Sam said that beneath my professional demeanor I’m a surprisingly “sick fuck” (with a “heart of gold”).

I felt seen.

Instructor: Bill Campbell

My Story: “Red Clocks”

Bill brought a publisher’s perspective to the workshop, from his experience founding and running Rosarium Publishing. Bill also described navigating the fluctuating reception of his own work, as the appetite for “Black” books explicitly addressing racism ebbs and flows in the mostly white world of publishing.

My story dove into deeply sensitive and controversial subjective matter, and failed to stick the landing. The cohort nonetheless engaged with the story on its own terms, and delivered a fair, firm, gracious critique. For that I am forever grateful.

Instructor: Charlie Jane Anders & Annalee Newitz

My Story: Four Alien Analogues of 1 Corinthians 13

What a dynamic duo to close out the workshop! Charlie and Annalee are partners, and on the first night they shared what it’s like to live with a professional artist in the same field (going well so far!). Later in the week, they gave us the sex talk—advice on writing the hanky-panky in fiction, informed by Charlie’s years of writing erotica. The talk was well-received by the group; our collective output over the course of the workshop was fairly horny, including alien sex, robot sex, demon sex, and even sex with the universe itself.

My own final story was no exception. “Four Alien Analogues” features a lunar orgy of rebel insect drones, and some young parents of an amphibious species whose early years are spent in simulation as their bodies instinctively make love.