101 Ways to Get Me to Clarion

15

Okay. So as pretty much anyone reading this blog knows, I’m a full time writer.  A neo-pro full time writer, which means that writing income is spotty at best.  My wonderful husband pays the rent (and health insurance) but we live on the line between broke and poor in order for me to have the time to work on my craft and build my writing into a real career.

So now I have an amazing opportunity to pursue another learning experience that will help build my career: Clarion.  Clarion is not free, however.  I have to pay the workshop fee (no word yet on scholarship monies, I applied though, so hopefully I’ll hear something soon) and I have to get airfare to go to San Diego and home again six weeks later (airfare shouldn’t be too bad, since I live in PDX.  I am fortunate not to be someone coming in from the East Coast or overseas).  We’ve been saving some money, but if I have to pay the full Clarion tuition fee plus airfare, I’m doomed.

I won’t let doomed stop me.  It’s a state I’m used to.  But I will take (non-illegal!) suggestions for how to raise money quickly.  Be as zany as you want.  I’m willing to try anything that doesn’t break the law or compromise my personal health or safety (or anyone else’s, for that matter).

I also have some e-books for sale.  Please consider getting one if it catches your interest or recommending them to others who might enjoy science fiction or fantasy.  Here’s the link: http://overactive.wordpress.com/read-my-fiction/

So how about it, blog readers? What suggestions for making money quickly do you have for me? Bring it on in the comments.  Let’s see if we can get to 101.

15 Responses to “101 Ways to Get Me to Clarion”

  1. Maus

    Bake sale! (omfg those rice krispie treats with skittles…)

    Writeathon? I know you write ANYWAY but you can do it like a jogathon or whatever, see if you can get ppl to pledge a per-word or per-page for ONE DAY of output?

    Car wash (as soon as the weather gets nicer – April/May? I’ll coms scrub. In a bikini.)

    Coffee stand – like a lemonade stand, but with delicious hot beverage. I have a LARGE thermal carafe you can borrow.

    Hotties I Know calendar sale

  2. Steve Lewis

    Here are a few ideas, Annie:

    1) Tip jar, it couldn’t hurt.

    2) Yardsale of some sort or other.

    3) Car wash!! It totally worked for those guys in “Dodgeball.” Oh, wait…

  3. Brooke

    Do you have any way of taking out a loan with the bank or something? I know it’s not the best option, but in a worst-case scenario it might be all you’ve got. Just a thought.

  4. A.M. Kuska

    What does Clarion have to offer that is so valuable? Holly Lisle’s online workshop has a lot to offer fiction writers, no airfare, and while it isn’t cheap I’m quite sure it’s less expensive than a six week intensive.

    • izanobu

      Well, it’s different to workshop with people in person. Clarion also has prestige and history behind it (not that Lisle doesn’t, her online workshops are great from what I’ve heard, but they aren’t the same sort of thing as Clarion…).

      Also, getting to spend 6 weeks intensively networking and working on craft with 17 other like-minded folk and http://clarion.ucsd.edu/faculty.html that line-up of instructors? Pretty invaluable. Not something easily replicated in an online experience. Having done both online and in person workshops, I can tell you that the in person ones are far, far more useful. There’s just too much extra stuff that happens in the “off” hours of in person workshops that you can’t get from online interaction.

      Is Clarion useful to everyone? Probably not. But I think (hope!) it is one of those experiences where you get out what you put in, and I intend to put my all into it. 🙂

      • A.M. Kuska

        Great response! I guess I’m kind of a cranky writer. When I go to workshops I find myself so annoyed by what feels like a whole slew of people endlessly yapping about writing, and no one picking up a pencil. >.< I could have banged out a first draft in the time they spent chatting.

  5. D.M. Bonanno

    I tried posting earlier, but the system had some hiccups.

    Have you considered asking people to sponsor you? In return, they could get your next print publication, autographed of course. Having something to show for their contribution will bring them satisfaction that they helped someone, especially if they care about you.

    • izanobu

      Hmm. I have been kicking around doing something with a novel on Kickstarter. Maybe this is a good time for that… I’ll have to do more investigating. 🙂

      And WordPress has been having a few issues today. Sigh.

  6. David Barron

    If I knew how to make money fast, I wouldn’t be living in SE Asia. Still, I like the sponsorship idea above, with a signature loan as backup. I agree that this will be a valuable experience, so it’ll be worth the ardours of fund-raising.

    I look on online workshops the same as online university classes, a pale shade of the real thing. I’d be going at least in half to network and I’d want to leave with my peers and profs knowing what I look like and how my voice sounds in person.

    • izanobu

      Yeah, so much happens around the actual scheduled workshop that being in person is necessary. It’s hard to mingle and bond and have real experiences with an online sort of environment.

      I did a one week Shakespeare “bootcamp” in college. We lived in a dorm, went a play every night (at the festival in Ashland, OR) and had 4 hours of class each day. For the workshop we read five plays and also had to write a paper and write/produce/act in our own 1-act play based around a theme from one of the plays we read/saw. By the end of that week, we were all pretty much friends just from the shared experience of working that hard all together. It was pretty neat.

  7. Marina J. Lostetter

    I think taking out a personal loan is a good idea if all else fails. Of course, it still equals you paying for the workshop entirely yourself (plus a little interest), but surely it should be easier to pay it off little by little than have to have the whole big chunk up front.

    But… Do you have any physical, printed up copies of the works you’ve pubbed? You could try to find a craft show or weekend market to set a table up at. I’ve always found people in Portland to be pretty supportive of people trying to make their own way in the arts, you could probably hock a fair few copies, enough to make a little profit, at least.

    Of course, that’s time you could be writing, but it’s time you’re spending marketing yourself, right?

    Hmm, lets see… offer local businesses advertising on your website? Local biz, local writer…might attract similar customers?

    And, of course, you could probably find a part time job you could do for a few months. That definitely takes time away from writing, but being able to attend the workshop may outweigh what you would learn on your own in that time. So, it might be an acceptable trade off.

    That’s all I’ve got for now 🙂

    • izanobu

      I don’t have paper copies yet, I need to take the time to figure out layout etc for Createspace. It’s on my to-do list.

      I’m investigating loan options, I’m just super debt adverse so that will be option of final resort.

      A part time job probably wouldn’t help at this point. It would take me 2-4 weeks to even get one (if I could, the economy in PDX at the moment isn’t great and I have a two-year gap in my work history plus a mohawk :P) and then I’d only have less than two months to actually work the job before I’d have to quit. I think my time can be better served with writing. I’m planning on busting my butt in April getting some romances up online and getting another book out under Annie Bellet.

      Keep the suggestions coming in people! 🙂 I imagine that it will be a combination of things that finally allow me to send off that giant check (I don’t know how much or when I have to send it yet, as they haven’t told me.)

  8. A.M. Kuska

    How are you doing on this? I checked back in on ya, but I don’t see any updates?

    • izanobu

      I’m waiting to hear on how much I need to come up with. I also have a couple ideas in the works, but nothing ready for the final reveal yet 🙂 Hopefully I’ll know and have things in motion at some point this week.

  9. Carroll

    Babysitting? I always used to go back to my profile on Sittercity.com when I was dead broke. You can make $10/hour or more on very short notice.

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