You wake up at 6:30am, bleary eyed. It’s hot outside and already your room feels like a sauna. You pull yourself out of bed, have a shower, start to clock over what will happen during the day. Last night you met one of the best (if not the best) science fiction editors in the world. He read your class the second worst sex scene he ever read in a novel manuscript. With 16 other students you laughed til your gut hurt. Not a bad start to the week.

For today you only had two stories to crit. But you were up til 1am anyway writing your story. You think, great, two stories, at least we’ll have a quiet day. Maybe you can catch up on sleep from the week before?

The crit sessions go well and quickly. You learn the biggest pitfalls in short story writing from your new tutor. The types of things that will make the difference between your story getting published and the slush pile. You take lots of notes.

Before you leave tthe crit at noon you pick up four new stories. You have to read them by tomorrow. There’s 25,000 words there. And your story is due tomorrow too. You’re feeling the last three weeks. They’re catching up with you - those late nights, a little too much junk food. When you look for words you sift through the haze or, worse, you come up blank. You start reading and your eyes are tired. You try to sleep in the afternoon, but it’s hot in your room, the Brisbane sun’s a flaming red ball in the sky, and sleep doesn’t come.

You have dinner with the gang in your apartment. Thank god someone else cooked! You talk about stories over pasta, the last weeks’ tutors and who’s coming up. I’m gonna miss this, you think.

That evening one of your class mates invite you and everyone else for a walk. The sun’s down. There’s a cool breeze as you do a lap of Ring Road on Nathan Campus. It feels good to do exercise, to clear your head. You’re going to do this more often, you think.

By 1:30am you’ve finished your story and your crits for the following day. You figure you’ll get up at 7am. Maybe you’ll get a chance to sleep tomorrow afternoon. You’re having the time of your life and want it to keep going but are feeling tired too. So you fight the fatigue so you can enjoy yourself and give it your best shot. Before you go to bed, you figure you’ll write your blog.

Welcome to Clarion, week 4.