Martha's Vineyard

I’m incredibly grateful to have attended Viable Paradise, a one week speculative fiction writing workshop on Martha’s Vineyard that took place October 16-21, 2022. This is an attempt to summarize my experience, because I found reading others’ thoughts to be interesting and helpful.

The Application

I’m not entirely sure how I found out about the workshop, but I think I stumbled across it while looking up Clarion/Clarion West. There was no way I, a PhD student, would be able to take off work for six weeks, so Viable Paradise immediately caught my attention.

When I applied, I’d been writing for about 1.5 years. I’d just started the fourth draft of my first novel, and submitted the first two chapters along with a synopsis. I was very not confident about my work, but the application fee wasn’t too steep and I decided it was worth submitting for the practice. I assumed I would not be accepted, and actually shelved the novel because I thought it had too many “first novel problems” that I didn’t feel equipped to fix (yet), and started work on a second novel that was simpler, both in plot and themes.

The Acceptance

My acceptance email ALMOST GOT LOST because Gmail decided to put it in some category that was not my main inbox (and I think this happened to a few other poeple too). Luckily I got the notification on my phone and proceeded to stare dumbfoundedly at the email for a while. One of my first thoughts was: “Shit, I’d rather go some future year when I have work that’s more polished than the thing I actually submitted.” Luckily I caught my own irrationality (it was irrational - there’s no guarantee that an acceptance one year means you’ll get accepted again another year). After clearing it with my advisor, I registered for the workshop.

The Anticipation

The cohort of 24 students all got added to the VP Slack, where we worked out travel and housing and deluged the staff with many questions that they were very, very patient with. I didn’t interact much over Slack because I was kind of shy/overwhelmed, but this did not detract from the experience at all. Many other students were also inactive in the lead-up period, and certainly no cliques were formed before the workshop even began.

I did not attempt to read works by all the instructors and this was totally fine. (I did, however, leave the workshop with a giant reading list, having been incredibly impressed by the instructors whose work I was not yet familiar with).

The Workshop

Getting There

This is rough pretty much for anyone not from the northeast. I took a red-eye from the west coast that arrived Sunday morning before the workshop started, followed by a 2 hour bus and a 45 minute ferry. I thought the red-eye would be the best option to avoid having to catch the last ferry of Saturday night, but in hindsight, I wished I’d just flown to Boston the day before and stayed in a hotel. If you can afford an extra night in a hotel, I would definitely recommend that. I am someone who can sleep on planes, but there was a crying baby close to my seat so I only got 1.5 hours on the plane, which is not a great state to arrive to the workshop in.

Lectures

Lectures (both scheduled and optional) ranged from writing craft (mostly this) to ecological worldbuilding to practical writerly stuff (like how to keep healthy mindsets and deal with social media). The craft lectures were often very cerebral and dense. There’s a lot that I’ll still be stewing over for months to come, but I think my main takeaway is a better understanding of the density and depth of consciously-made artistic choices that it’s possible to have in a piece.

Critiques

I got to read and critique a bunch of short stories and novel excerpts by other students, and holy crap, everyone there was so talented!!!

The environment was really constructive. It felt like people genuinely enjoyed reading each others’ work and gave critiques with the goal of making it better.

I learned that people like my prose way more than I expected. I wouldn’t have said prose was my strong suit before, and now I wonder if it’s one of those cases where you pick on yourself the most for stuff you have a good eye (ear?) for. I think I got the most useful feedback in a 1-on-1 session with an instructor who completely dissected my plot and themes. I vaguely knew the story arc wasn’t working as a whole, but it wasn’t until that conversation that I was able to identify all the different ways it didn’t work. I basically had A connects to B and another facet of B connects to C and another facet of C connects to D, but A is actually unrelated to D (etc.), so the story as a whole is not as cohesive as it could be. I still don’t feel ready to address any of these issues, but I’ll keep them in my pocket for when I do come back around.

Short Story

I wrote my first short story ever! I’m an extremely slow writer, but luckily the story idea I’d had a week prior and had been sitting on ended up almost fitting the prompt I was given (I did have to make some tweaks to make it work, but those tweaks ended up adding a layer of nuance to the piece that wouldn’t have been here otherwise). Even still, I personally pulled an almost all-nighter Wednesday night to finish my story (note: this is not something you have to do), but I ended up pretty happy with how it turned out.

Making Friends

Everyone says this, but my cohort was honestly the highlight of the experience. I showed up and was so nervous because everyone was a stranger. Then, somehow, by the second day, it felt like we were all suddenly friends. We spanned a wide age range and all sorts of fascinating backgrounds and day jobs. Nevertheless, we got along really well and it feels like I’ve known them for way longer.

I don’t have that many friends who are really into SFF in my day-to-day life, so it was incredible suddenly having 23 other people to talk to, who are all avid SFF readers and writers. And also, nerds in the best way possible? On Friday, a group of us started talking about anime and I managed to get some very specific recommendations based on my personal taste, and I’m really excited to have a bunch of new anime to watch.

I felt like one of the least experienced writers in the cohort, since I never got a full manuscript to the queryable stage and had never written a short story before. Many other students had already published short stories or were querying novels, and one student even had a book deal. But they all made me feel really welcome. If anything, I felt like I could turn to all of them to ask questions and for mentorship about the industry. (Sorry cohort, I only have object-level thoughts and critiques to offer in exchange for all your wonderful guidance.)

Living and Miscellaneous

You are provided with lunch and dinner most days, and in general, you probably need less food than you think you do (unless you eat a lot of snacks and are particular about what they are). There were apparently a lot of vegans this year (I only consider myself a pseudo-vegan because I’d rather break veganism than go hungry), so there were decent vegan options at every meal (sometimes the lunch option was just PB&J and sides, but I love PB&J and had it every day in middle and high school, so that was completely fine with me).

The staff are fantastic. They feed you. They make snacks appear. They tell you about the island, they pick you up and drop you off, they give you advice and hugs if you want them. I wish I got to talk to them more, but the week was so intense and busy that when I wasn’t doing something scheduled, I was either writing or vegetating in bed with my eyes closed to recover stamina.

The week is intense, but you do get some control over the level of intensity. You can choose how many extra 1-on-1s you want to do. You can choose if you want to attend the optional lunchtime lectures. You can choose how much time and effort you’re willing to put into your short story. I want to say the goal is to push yourself because it is a very special week and you want to get the most out of it while you can, but also take care of yourself, because your physical and mental well-being are important. There is a balance somewhere. I think I’m happy with where I ended up, but I definitely couldn’t sustain what I was doing for even a couple more days.

After

And then it was over! I caught some kind of cold traveling back home, so ended up in recovery mode for the next week. Physically, this was not great, but mentally, it gave me a chance to decompress before returning to “normal life.”

I considered taking a break from writing immediately, but my VP roommate told me about a 10/31 submission deadline for the Apex Magazine API Special Issue and I decided to try to whip my VP short story into shape for it. Several other writers in my cohort also had 10/31 deadlines and we were all trying to read and critique each others’ stuff this week. I just submitted my story. Now I’m sitting here feeling touched at how helpful everyone was and how willing they were to read our stories and offer up their thoughts. This also goes for people from my online writing group as well as my personal friends - they also gave me wonderful critiques with a really fast turnaround time. Writing communities are wonderful to have.

Now that that’s over, I will now try to take at least a week or two off from writing. Afterwards, I’m not sure if I want to jump back to working on my novel, or take some time to write more short stories. I’d never written short stories before VP, but I think appreciate them a lot more now - both as something to actively seek out to read, and as a way to practice writing at the scene and line level without having to face the weight and complexity of an entire novel.

Final Thoughts

Viable Paradise was a mind-blowing and powerful experience.

Was it life-changing in a career kind of way? I think it’s too early to tell. It certainly plugged me into a network of writers I was not previously in touch with, but maybe I would have gotten there through other means eventually.

Was it life-changing in a personal kind of way? Definitely. I’m so excited to move forward in life with my jellyfish horde around me.