Weekly parties serve to introduce Clarion West students to this convivial atmosphere. Most students are hundreds, even thousands of miles from their normal support group. In addition, students have to deal with the emotional pain of honest, though usually constructive, critiques. Most of us learn to swallow our critiques as well as dish them out. Drama does ensue, though, and it can range from sudden, sobbing classroom exits to a midnight trip to the emergency room.
Writers are rivals, but they're also readers, and often quite appreciative ones.
And groups of like-minded writers, such as the cyberpunks, have changed the face of science fiction. By the fourth week, he'd given up writing. But the workshop was suicidal for my career. Out of 15 bylines in a recent volume of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine , I counted seven with Clarion West connections. Dozois' taught at Clarion West four times.