Roast Beef (or A Perspective on Writer's Day)

7:50 a.m. There is nothing quite like a college campus on a spring morning...

Here I am in the fieldhouse, sitting alone at a round table that holds eight. I'm not the only one. There are probably thirty tables set up in here, and something like 150 people milling about - picking up their blue folders, perusing the banquet tables against the walls where local authors are selling their books - but almost every table has exactly one person seated, pretty much at the same position. Eventually everyone else will have to take a seat and this is how introverts meet each other. I'm guessing they are mostly introverts. The buzz in the room is pretty muted for having been generated by a few hundred people.

My blue folder contains my agenda for the day. Apparently I chose something called "Moments of Illumination" and something else called "Cliff Diving" and something this afternoon called "Zen and the Writing Marathon." "...Illumination" starts at 10:00.

Here's a flyer for NHWP summer workshops. Slim pickings, I'm sorry to report, although there is one juicy offering that is sure to be sold out by the time I can configure my life to be able to attend it.

My table is filling up, so I must close the notebook now.

1:46 p.m. A free hour until I get Zen.

"Illumination" lived up to its name. I'm always bowled over by the brilliant and specific ideas that other people can come up with. We used a quick prompt to start a story with the memory of hearing some song for the first time. Seeing as I practically can't hear any song at all without being flooded with some sort of memories, this seemed like a rich opportunity. Or so I thought. My fellow workshopmates whipped up lyrical sensory experiences sprung from showtunes I didn't know, a 1930s ballad I'd never heard of, an early punk rock song that I think I used to know. What did I come up with? Frosting Miss S.'s hair in a beach house on a hot summer day while listening to Paul Simon's Graceland. Why, of all things, did that memory spring up?

(More importantly: remember when girls frosted their hair?)

"Cliff Diving" was okay, though the facilitator's decision to sit cross-legged on top of the desk didn't really do it for me. She did offer a most intriguing reading recommendation, so there's that.

Back in the fieldhouse for lunch, I met two lovely gentlemen. In typical female fashion, the women at the table I chose made themselves completely unapproachable, and anyway didn't stick around. My two male lunchmates, however, were most engaging. I learned quite a bit about them - not only at that table but here, in front of this building clear on the other side of campus where I ventured alone to write and get some sun before the last session starts, and where they both turned up moments later. Ask me something about life in Korea or employee benefits law, I probably know the answer now. Seriously, they are both very nice in a fatherly kind of way and it's good to know that I am approachable.

I made some inquiries at lunch about local writing groups and got nowhere. That was discouraging. But this is no time to get discouraged. Not when I need to get Zen in forty minutes.

8:32 p.m. The conference officially ended for me at 4:00 and it's 8:30 at night before I am back to writing. Do you think I have become Zen? I think not.

I very much enjoyed the final session. The facilitator was a marvelous woman who took eight years to finish her first novel and four years to finish the second, and who is now struggling to complete her third while holding down two day jobs. Hello, early bedtime? You are so over. It's sessions like these that make me get back to work. And behold, it's dark out right now and I'm not only still awake, I'm writing. So there.

I haven't forgotten about my promise of a jury duty post, by the way.