Luc Reid

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(By the way, much more conscientious people than myself have posted journals on the Web of their Writers of the Future experience. By contrast, I'm just slapping this account together on the plane home, when I really should be catching up on my sleep after a late night and an early morning.) (Later addition: Having slapped together what I could on the plane home, I then took a well-deserved, five-month break from this very arduous memoir before finally finishing it at a time when I really should be catching up on my sleep. Or editing my novel, take your pick.) In August of 2003, I attended the Writers of the Future workshop in Los Angeles. If you're not already familiar with it, Writers of the Future is a quarterly contest for unpublished and slightly-published writers of science fiction, fantasy, and other kinds of fiction where things that just don't happen in everyday life go ahead and happen. Three winners each quarter receive a significant cash prize, publication in the annual anthology, a generous payment for use of the story in the anthology, and a week-long writers workshop with well-known fantasy and science fiction writers. The same folks who run the Writers of the Future contest also run the Illustrators of the Future contest, which is a very similar event for illustrators. Fortunately for all of us, they run the writers' and illustrators' events at the same time, so the writers and illustrators get to spend time with one another. Prior to the event, the illustrators create one illustration per story to include in the anthology. Writers of the Future was started in 1983 by L. Ron Hubbard, a celebrated and extremely prolific writer of (among other things) science fiction and fantasy. In his spare time, Ron flew, captained ships, explored the remote corners of the world, became a Blackfoot blood brother, founded a worldwide system of drug rehabilitation centers, invented Dianetics, and founded the religion of Scientology. Before I go further with this, let me address what seems to be one of the most popular questions about Writers of the Future: When you go to the workshop, do the people who run it try to convert you to Scientology?

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