Sarah Kanning

Just picked up a copy of Kate Wilhelm’s book, Storyteller, and I really like it. It’s a sort of memoir/writing guide that recounts the history of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and provides a lot of useful writing advice.

I especially liked her description of what she calls Silent Partner (SP for short), which is what I’ve always referred to as “the gremlins that live in the back of my head.” If you were a Jungian, you might call SP your unconscious, the nonverbal, mysterious part of you that you can’t access with logic or reason that is nevertheless essential for writing stories (and really, anything except business reports or technical specifications). She spends a few pages on how to cultivate your relationship to SP, its care and feeding, and so on. (If you have the book handy, it’s on page 137.)

Her description of the semi-controlled chaos of the early years reminds me of residencies at Bennington Writing Seminars, which are ten-day exercises in sleep deprivation, with nonstop conversation poured around about ten hours a day of scheduled workshops, readings, and lectures. I always felt like an overstimulated toddler on the verge of a meltdown by about day 8, but it was worth it.