My latest InfoWeek column is online, “The Web Can Humiliate Dumb Companies. Can It Make Them Smarter?”
Dysfunctional consumer companies know only two modes of customer service: Abusive contempt, or slobbering, cringing remorse. Cory Doctorow describes how broken companies can make good customer service the standard.
Here’s part 9 — chapters 22-23 — of the reading of my novel Eastern Standard Tribe.
I did an interview with KRUU FM’s Sundar Raman about free software, DRM and sf:
The site went down — here are some mirrors:
This summer marks the first year that the venerable Clarion Writers’ Workshop will run at the University of California at San Diego. Previously, the legendary science fiction writers’ boot-camp was hosted at Michigan State, where I attended it in 1992 and taught in 2005.
I’m returning as an instructor this year, along with a truly superb line-up of teachers: Greg Frost, Jeff VanderMeer (he was one of my Clarion 1992 classmates!), Karen Joy Fowler, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. Each instructor teaches for a week (the last pair of instructors co-teach for two weeks). Every day, the small group of students (generally fewer than 20) critique each others’ manuscripts, with the instructor pitching in. The instructors give lectures and meet one-on-one with students, sometimes throwing in assignments. They’re available to chat with about the writing life, the business of writing, the creative process and so on — it’s an incredible opportunity for writers at the beginning of their careers to glean a wide range of industry contacts and perspective on what it means to be a professional science fiction writer.
Mostly, this is about the writing, though. Writing stories. Most students write a story every week of the workshop, and you will usually critique 3-5 stories on any given day. This is a lot of work — it’s not for the faint of heart. Clarion challenges its students to go beyond their limits and accomplish more than they ever knew they could. Writing that much, critiquing that much — you end up living and breathing the craft, thinking of nothing else for weeks on end. It changes you.
I’m the writer I am today because of my Clarion experiences. There isn’t a day that’s gone by in the past 15 years that I haven’t thought of some bit of wisdom I gleaned during my six weeks. It’s an honor to teach there, and to serve on the board of The Clarion Foundation, the nonprofit that administers Clarion.
I’m not the only one. Clarion’s roster of alumni include Bruce Sterling, Kelly Link, Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, Lucius Sheppard, Eileen Gunn, James Patrick Kelly, Kim Stanley Robinson, Tim Pratt and Gordon Van Gelder.
The application deadline is April 1, 2007 — you’ll need two complete short stories between 2,500 and 6,000 words, the willingness to give up six weeks of your life to writing, and the tuition money. I hope to see you there.
See also: Kate Wilhelm’s must-read writerly advice/history of Clarion
Today’s Vancouver Sun has a nice article on me on the front page of the Business section.
Webtoonist Neil Gorman has bessed me with a new toon in my honor — and it’s a good ‘un!
The British sf podcast “Yatterings” (produced by Iain Elmsley, proprietor of the brilliant Aust Gate bookseller) has a new interview up with me about sf writing and how it relates to the future.
A reminder: I’m coming to Toronto this coming weekend (Mar 2-4) to be a guest of honor at Ad Astra, the regional sf convention. It was my first-ever con — I volunteered as a gofer in exchange for free admission, and slept on the floor of the “gofer hole,” a shared hotel room — and it’s an incredible thrill to be asked back as Guest of Honor.
On that note, the British sf podcast “Yatterings” (produced by Iain Elmsley, proprietor of the brilliant Aust Gate bookseller) has a new interview up with me about sf writing and how it relates to the future.
See also:
Torontonians: win the right to name a character in my book
Jason Adams attended my lecture on privacy (From Myspace to Homeland Security: Privacy and the Totalitarian Urge) last week at Duke University and recorded it for his podcast. He’s just posted it — thanks, Jason!
Link,
