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Elizabeth McDowell
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Excerpt
An excerpt from the novel I will work on, set in Poland, titled To Hel/Do Helu, from Chapter Nine:
People murmured that it was September. I’d lost track of time. We all had as we struggled daily to get fed and warm, as we drank firewater czysties and lived with fear of the murderer. I lived in a fog of hormones as well, longing for my next rendezvous with Lukasz.... Had three months really passed since I came to Hel?
It was easier to keep track of constants: the eternal blue gas flames of the kitchen fires, the Kaszubian fishermen hauling the catch off their boats, fish and chips, czysties, firecrackers, procesja, swimming, the rain. I survived on these constants.
Bio
Elizabeth McDowell’s great passion in life is story writing. It has been her aspiration since she was eight years old. At St. Lawrence University in New York, her Bachelor’s degree was in Creative Writing and Environmental Studies. At the University of Oregon, her Master’s degree was in Environmentalist Literature. She spent several years after college focusing on writing science fiction and fantasy stories, a novel, and novellas, and attending writer’s retreats, colonies, personal retreats, and travel adventures. In 1996 she attended Clarion West in Seattle, which provided her the first real writing guidance in science fiction and fantasy, as well as a community of like-veined writers. The Clarion West experience stimulated a new burst of writing. She started two new novels. In 2000, however, she started a business partnership--importing, wholesaling, and retailing handicrafts from Nepal. This led to love; marriage to a wonderful man and partner, Sanjay; and a more-than-full-time business career for the next eight years in order to make the business succeed. All the time she hoped to have for writing vanished. With a first baby due in late July, she wants to get back to writing for at least a few months.
Goals
My goal during the Clarion West Write-a-thon is to make time to get back into my writing and back into the mental space/world of at least one languishing but mostly drafted novel, To Hel/Do Helu, and to complete a “final” draft so that something can be done with it. My problem for the last 8 years of business is that novels take a lot of time and mental space to hold the details/sequence of events, as well as characters. It is not like a short story. An hour of concentration a day is not enough to gather all the threads. I left off writing because I could not find the big blocks of time necessary to grapple with the novel projects. My urgency in writing now is that my first baby will be born in July, and time, sleep, and mental clarity may disappear!
My fundraising goals: The Clarion West workshop I attended in 1996 was one of the most valuable experiences in my life as a speculative/fantastic fiction writer—-both for the professional guidance and for the stimulation of a like-minded community. It is a worthwhile program to support, helping other aspiring writers. There are few places in this country or the world that teach this genre. My main reason for looking for sponsors, though, is for an affirmation that my own writing is worthwhile and that my friends and family support my return to what I love doing.
