CLASS OF 2018
Odyssey Class of 2018
| Front Row (bottom) | J.M. Plumbley, Julian K. Jarboe, Molly Etta, Valerie San Filippo, Sabrina N. Balmick | |
| Middle Row | Ann Latham Cudworth, Elaine McIonyn, Janea Schimmel, Odyssey Director Jeanne Cavelos, A. Katherine Black | |
| Back Row (top) | Keith Proctor, Rachel Morris, P.R. Doyle, N.M. Billon, Matt Maloney, Kaja Holzheimer | |
| Photo taken by Resident Supervisor Zoe Zygmunt |
Sabrina N. Balmick
Odyssey has been a life-changing experience—a true journey into becoming the writer I’ve always wanted to be. I have struggled physically, mentally, and emotionally against escalating obstacles the whole time not sure if I’d succeed, but finally emerging as a changed person and a better writer. Jeanne is the best writing instructor I’ve ever had. Her method of deconstructing difficult concepts helps make them clear. Her comments on my writing have been insightful, and the key to some of the breakthroughs I’ve had at Odyssey.
N.M. Billon
Jeanne is a wonderful teacher. The six weeks I’ve spent at Odyssey made me a better writer, and the memories will stay with me a long time.
A. Katherine Black
Ann Latham Cudworth
I am impressed by the wealth of ideas presented at Odyssey as well as the status this workshop has in the fantastic fiction world.
P.R. Doyle
Molly Etta
Odyssey is indeed an odyssey—it can be exhausting and it takes your all, but it is so satisfying! I’m so grateful I got to have this experience and expect I’ll be referring back to my Odyssey notebook constantly as I continue to improve as a writer.
Kaja Holzheimer
I so enjoyed my time at Odyssey. I’ve learned far more than I thought possible and have been given the tools to continue learning and experimenting into the future.
Jeanne, as a writer and editor, has incredible insights into the craft of writing—and she is willing and able to critique pretty much anything. She also has a wonderful ability to encourage students. She helped me find my writing strengths and then helped me work out how to use them to improve my weaknesses.
Julian K. Jarboe
Learning to improve weak areas of my writing on an element-by-element level allowed me to try approaches I either didn’t know about or was afraid to attempt.
Giving critiques helped me gain an editor’s eye, and receiving them granted me insight into the ideas I cared to turn into stories and why.
Elaine McIonyn
I crossed the Atlantic to come to Odyssey—and I’m glad I did. I enjoyed every minute of it, even the moments of extreme exhaustion, because I knew this was what it was going to take to level-up in my writing abilities. Odyssey was the perfect environment for making the improvements I wanted to make, thanks in large part to Jeanne’s excellent lectures. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone who is willing to put in the effort to make the magic happen.
Keith Proctor
Odyssey is more than a workshop. It’s a six-week hero’s journey (also a boot camp, a monastic community—choose your metaphor). Writers hone their craft through trials, deaths, rebirths (often multiple times a week). It’s a harrowing voyage. Luckily they have a brilliant guide: wise woman / drill instructor / mother superior Jeanne Cavelos.
Valerie San Filippo
Before Odyssey, writing felt nebulous and mysterious. Both my strengths and my weaknesses were abstract, incalculable, and I couldn’t get a grip on what I needed to improve. Odyssey made everything tangible. Now I’m in control of my strengths as a writer, and I know what I have to do to grow. The most valuable part of the Odyssey experience is the realization that any writer can meet their full potential, so long as they’re willing to put in the work and check their ego at the door.
Jeanne is like a saint. Like a saint with a chainsaw.
J.M. Plumbley
I had built up Odyssey in my head for two years before I was able to attend. When I got accepted, I started a countdown until the first day of class, and thought about how great it was going to be–about how much I would learn and how it would be a turning point in my life and all of the other things you read about in those student quotes–every day, almost every hour. My friends looked at my askance, worried that I was in for a letdown. I worried I was in for a letdown. How could I not be, with my expectations built so dangerously high?
Have you guessed where this is going yet? If you’ve read the other quotes, I bet you have.
Odyssey blew my expectations OUT OF THE FRAKKING WATER. Jeanne is full of even more knowledge than people say. She is also kinder about doling out that knowledge than I would have imagined. I learned in days what would have otherwise taken me years, and all the other things I had been promised and was worried couldn’t be possible.
We came here to learn about how to paint worlds with words, but sometimes, words are not enough to express what something is really like. Build your expectations as high as you want. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Memorable Quotes from the Class of 2018
“Why is there foil on the grill?”
—Everyone
“I googled abscesses and afterward regretted it.”
—Elaine
“This is the fun part of giving yourself brain damage.”
—Matt
“I drew a smiley face in the margin; yea, dead Dave.”
—Jessica
“I want the cake to have more of a character arc.”
—Janea
“What about edible books? If you don’t like it at least you can get a decent meal out of it.”
—Matt
“I want to see some competency porn.”
—Nic
Janea: “Why is he wearing black in a hot desert?”
Valerie: “Because he’s mysterious.”
“I would like to see the cake defend itself.”
—Nic
“Sometimes your characters just want to do it.”
—Zoe
“It’s very mysterious, like math.”
—Julian
Jeanne: “What price must be paid for the magic?”
Valerie: “At least $100.”
“Who hasn’t drunk alcohol out of cow entrails?”
—Keith
“I would be vaguely concerned, and I know nothing about anything.”
—Valerie
“I want you to up the dental care angle.”
—Kaja
“And now I’d like to talk about the economics of man flesh.”
—Jessica
“Big haunches of man-flesh.”
—Matt
“I feel like there’s an impending series of sex scenes coming.”
—Valerie
Matt: “I don’t like 2nd person telling me how to feel.”
Keith: “You don’t mean that.”
“I like how the arm found meaningful work at the end of the story”
—Kaja
“I hate humanity, let’s become a tree.”
—Jessica
“The Odyssey was the Buffy of its time.”
—Julian
“I liked the poop detail.”
—Valerie
“I like readers that aren’t that well-read.”
—Matt
“You’re right on track for your latest writing crisis.”
—Zoe
“Keith is my rock.”
—Nic
“Pooping down the pillar.”
—Jessica
“Be clear about what happened, but not necessarily about what it means.”
—Nisi Shawl
“Dead people happen.”
—Nisi Shawl
“I do research until I find a person in a place with a problem.”
—E. C. Ambrose
“The character seems to breathe a lot.”
—Keith
“The prose is as impenetrable as the wall.”
—Valerie
“I could swim in a vat of her language forever.”
—Valerie
“I loved the exploding eyeball trees.”
—Jessica
“Title it ‘The Great Rex-cue.’”
—Nic
“This is the weirdest retelling of Icarus I have ever seen.”
—Julian
“Everybody is dying, I have no sympathy.”
—Keith
“I am a big fan of ritual heart eating.”
—Rachel
“I like how she’s crazy. She’s my kind of girl.”
—Matt
“I wanted to know what she looked like. Perhaps she could glance in a mirror, or see her reflection in his blue eyes.”
—Molly
“Ditto on kicking him in the nuts.”
—Valerie
“She’s like a medieval Kathy Bates the way she stalks him.”
—Julian
“My brand is chaos!”
—Valerie
“I told you we should start a cult.”
—Valerie
“Is she able to write the letter while in house form?”
—Molly
Jeanne: “Is the magic rational, irrational or mysterious?”
Kaja: “It’s accounting magic. Of course it’s rational!”
Jeanne: “So we have to get the time machine up to a certain speed, rather than we get inside the refrigerator and…”
Kaja: “Wait for it to defrost.”
Keith: “Or get it up to 88 miles an hour.”
“Your sentences took off on a glorious runaway blaze.”
—Julian
“I feel like he’s about to sell me some I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-butter.” —Julian
Jeanne: “I feel like you were in some other dimension where I couldn’t quite see you.”
Kaja: “That would explain a lot of yesterday.”
Jeanne: “So if the person who’s a werewolf no longer wants to…”
Kaja: “Fluff up?”
“I need some more Moms. Mean Moms.”
—Amy
“Ah! Tension is rising. I hope the person… does the… thing.”
—Molly
“I could not unsee the cute red muppet shambling between the headstones.”
—Elaine
“When will our characters learn not to sign Faerie contracts?”
—Rachel
Jeanne: “Did anyone choose a story because of the plot?”
Silence.
Kaja: “Does that show, Jeanne?”
“I typically write stories where people are routinely destroyed.”
—Keith
“That little issue of killing your sidekick.”
—Amy
“God, I can’t swing this sword like I used to due to the osteoporosis.”—Elaine
“I could really relate to her urgent need for sleep.”
—Molly
“I appreciated the sprinkling of elephants throughout.”
—Molly
“Because robots punching each other is cool.”
—Patrick
“I wondered about the methodology for skinning somebody.”
—Ann
Nic to Keith: “It’s my turn now.”
Keith to Nic: “I’ll cede you ten seconds tomorrow.”
Elaine (Irish) to Kaja (Australian), before they were each made to eat a S’more: “So, are you ready to be photographed consuming unruly foodstuffs?”
Kaja: “I think we’re the climax to ‘The Smoring of The Aliens.’”
“Excellent use of flip flops.”
—Molly
“It came across as, ‘As you should be able to work out for yourself, Bob.’”
—Elaine
“This made blood and guts pretty!”
—Jessica
“I loved all the silver and blood red goodness.”
—Molly
“I didn’t know why they didn’t just… go through the front door.”
—Patrick
“I was a fan of the killer plants.”
—Keith
“There was a lot of space-shuttling to the story.”
—Nic
“I love that she stabs him in the brain through the eye.”
—Julian
“The more creepy her obsession got, the more I rooted for her.”
—Amy
“I loved the toting around in a wheelbarrow. Is she just circling?”
—Molly
“I very much hope homunculi feature prominently elsewhere in the novel.”
—Molly
“I really needed to go to the bathroom while reading it, but couldn’t.”
—Elaine
“Before I can commit surgery, I need to have a body.”
—Rachel
“If he had to put the spiked mask on his face, that would make me happy.”
—Jeanne
“I think your story should be called Fist of Vengeance.”
—Matt
“There is no fool-less person here.”
—Rachel
“Just put a potato in your book.”
—Jeanne
“It’s a very memorable eye bulge.”
—Jeanne
“Title of the novel to vicariously enjoy second-hand smoke will be ‘Sniff the Wind.’ It will have a scratch and sniff cover.”
—Jeanne
“You’re the writer, get your character out of trouble or kill them.”
—Jeanne
“We like that, so we can kill more children.”
—Jeanne
“I have not thought a lot about the internal conflict of the Terminator.”
—Jeanne
“I want some kind of farting and gambling.”
—Jeanne
“You made me very uneasy about cows.”
—Jeanne
“It’s either brilliant or very very bad.”
—Jeanne
“He was cute, but you know, we can’t all be Elijah Wood.”
—Jeanne
“You’ve opened up a can of birds here.”
—Jeanne
“Somewhere in between brilliant and awful is where you are.”
—Jeanne
“Or, they have sex. And afterward, a piece of toast comes out of her vagina, but it’s soggy, and not done… because, it takes two to make a piece of toast.”
—Jeanne
“I can imagine the cake growing snakelike and going right down his throat, growing through his digestive tract and coming out the other end, whipping him through the air, and perhaps making him into an ornament on top of the cake.”
—Jeanne
“He could still eat her, even though she’s dead.”
—Jeanne
“It’s a waste of a meal for her to use her heart for some other purpose.”
—Jeanne
“Here’s a writing rule I never told you: if you’re going to have a cat with an eye patch in the story, the eye patch needs to come off before the end and little rods need to shoot out of its eyeball or something.”
—Jeanne
“The werewolf just stops and breathes on her. “—Jeanne
“Gotta have the feels.”
—Matt
“The feels are kind of missing.”
—Jeanne
“I wasn’t sure that I found Lucas’s desperate attachment to the screwdriver entirely credible.”
—Molly
“So maybe all the screwdrivers in the world are useless against this monster. Something to think about.”
—Jeanne
“So I have some comments about the plot.”
—Jeanne
“I feel forty years older but in a good way.” —Jessica
“I want to feel the serenity of the bookshelves.”
—Julian
“I burst out laughing when he ate the tiny woman.”
—Theodora Goss
“I had trouble with the peas.”
—Ann
“I found his listlessness oddly engrossing.”
—Molly
“Maybe it could become a biting satire.”
—Elaine
Keith admires Jeanne’s Hello Kitty lunchbox.
Jeanne: “I should have a gun in here.”
Keith: “Then it would be Goodbye Kitty.”
“You disturbed me greatly.”
—Janea
“I nearly flipped the desk over.”
—Jessica
“The dark side of the cake coma.”
—Elaine
“A cake god.”
—Sabrina
“Wow, they really don’t like this cake.”
—Nic
“He saw the world through the lens of cakes.”
—Patrick
“Constant mirror moment.”
—Valerie
“Seats upholstered with kitten skins.”
—Elaine
“I want a little cruelty. I want to see a Widget cooked every once in a while.”
—Keith
“A dog’s dinner of emotions.”
—Keith
“Toilet sprites.”
—Jeanne
“I think you deserve some sort of award for all the raising and lowering of eyebrows.”
—Molly
Keith: “But maybe I’m just fussy and old . . .”
Nic: “Yes.”
Beat.
Nic: “I made fun of Keith but I’m fussier and older than he is.”
“I’m super into poisoning.”
—Rachel
“Obviously I sympathize with her; she’s being entombed in stone.”
—Janea
Jeanne: “Panic!”
Valerie: “You’re already the voice in my head.”
Jeanne: “Now I’m in stereo.”
“I’m assuming this hypothetical person didn’t write such a good story.”
—Elaine
“Kudzu of the mind.”
—Ann
“It was a real page turner—after page 5.”
—Elaine
“I’m a little torn on the mini-chainsaw.”
—Keith
“Flaw him up.”
—Zoe
“If you have a vampire, you can’t have a mirror moment.”
—Ann
“Just take the toaster with you.”
—Kaja
“I’m glad you didn’t think it was totally crackpot. … I had that thought when it was coming out of the printer at 3 AM.”
—Elaine