Eschewed Obfuscation

ALPHA Writers Workshop Debriefing
Panelists: Ann Cecil, John Schmid, Thomas Seay, Wen Spencer, Diane Turnshek (M), Michail Velichansky
The ALPHA SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers is over. Here's how it went this year, and what the plans are for the future of ALPHA.

I have no idea why Alpha is capitalized as ALPHA, and it's F/SF/H (not SF/F/H). Very fun panel, though. The audience was maybe 80% current Alphans, 10% former Alphans, and 10% parents/friends of Alpha people. So we mostly just had great fun reminiscing. A semi-transcript follows; assume everything is paraphrased unless otherwise noted. Very disjointed, as I'm terrible at reconstruction of full sentences from notes. Please note that I was 15 minutes late, so I missed the beginning.


Ann: Alpha doesn't teach basic writing skills; it makes your writing better and pushes genre tropes.

Wen: Anecdote about meeting Ann at age 19 and needing help from other people to make the jump from self-taught to saleable.

John: High school English often can't help with genre writing, only with the basic things like spelling, grammar, etc. Or with the market aspect.

Wen: Another anecdote about her awesome high school English teacher who didn't know anything about genre but neverthless invited her to her house after school for one-on-one help.

Michail: Alpha focuses on eventually building a real writing career, whereas University creative writing programs often aren't.

Thomas: Cookies! [reference to Ann, our resident cookie lady] Anecdote about people in the U of Kansas MFA program who still aren't ready to submit their work.

John: The social aspect of Alpha is really important--sense of community and the beginnings of a network. [the last bit about networking may be my mind making false associations; not sure]

Diane: prompting various audience cross-intros and discussion

Audience (Julia P.): Horrow writing is dangerous in school. Anecdote about students getting suspended, ordered to counseling.

Thomas: After ascertaining that no newcomers were present, "continue with the in-jokes"! [of which there were plenty]

General mocking of Paolini and Eye of Argon, both of which were...negatively portrayed...in Alpha activities.

Thomas: What did the Alphans learn this year? (at audience)

Audience (Rebecca M.): Loved being able to just hand a manuscript to someone and knowing they'll read it and give critique. [that was the vague idea, I think--notes are kind of confusing]

Ann: Critique="constructive ripping."

Audience (Julia P.): "All my friends are related to Alpha..."

John: "It's not a cult."

Thomas: "Community is such a huge part of Alpha." Then, urging us to make use of almuni contacts.

[other stuff I didn't write down]

Thomas: Talking about the constant need to recruit more guys.

Audience: Men often write plot-driven stories, versus women and character-driven stories. Maybe more male/male-appealing guest authors would help?

Audience (Julia P.): Daunted as a female horror writer--"girls can write scary stuff too."

[more discussion on Eye of Argon, I think]

Ann: Eye of Argon could maybe be saved if rewritten from the girl's point of view.


And then we ran out of time.