See what this residency does to us?

Actually, this is the faculty. I am not going to name names, because I don't want googlers to be able to find poets doing crazy stuff. (And I'm pretty sure these are all poets except one.) But if you were in the audience or on the stage last night, you know who they are.

Last night Doriann Laux and Pete Fromm read to us. We all melted into puddles on the floor by our chairs at the amazing nature of the art we were witnessing. This is not a lie. As my husband has been known to say on such occasions, "We're all going to drown."

There were a lot more than four people in the audience, by the way. It's just that, well, it's school, and we seem unwilling or unable to get everyone to sit all the way down by the stage.

Ms. Laux made her debut to the new among us. She's been at another residency in Colorado and only arrived last evening. She was tired and at some point couldn't find the poem she wanted to read. Abby whipped open her book and ran up on stage to give it to her. Ms. Laux said, You want me to read this one? And Abby said, Yes. Since I had the balls to come up here, I get to pick the poem. Ms. Laux said, You're right. This seems to me to be an auspicious way for them to meet, since Abby is one of Ms. Laux's students and hadn't been able to talk to her yet. Her poems were beautiful and applause spattered between them, the first time this has happened at any of the readings.

I was especially excited to hear Pete Fromm's reading, since he is my advisor this semester. I was not disappointed. He read a new story, one that he claimed to still be working on. It was told from the point of view of a twenty-seven year old woman. It was gorgeous and I started thinking right away that it could be a performance, a one woman show. I even started thinking about how I might be able to get it in front of Jeff Daniels at the Purple Rose. Not that I know him, but I know someone who has worked with the P.R. before and that might be a channel. The only difficulty--where to get an actress who can play 27 who will be up to this piece.

It's crazy how, after hearing them read their work, you start to feel like these people are not of this world. Or maybe it's that really, they are totally and completely of this world in a way that most people never achieve.

I'm a little too tired to write, having set my alarm for 5 so I could make sure I got up in time to call Marc. I goofed up last night and forgot that we only talked for a few minutes after my nap because he had people over when I called. I told him I would call when I got back from the reading, and then I was all worked up and sat down to write, not remembering that I was supposed to call him until too late.

It's our last day of residency. Tomorrow morning I will be leaving for the airport at 6 am with two of the other students. I'll spend the entire day traveling and a couple of days recovering and getting my evaluations done.

My first packet is due July 20th, so right after I get home, I am going to be working my ass off.

Picture this

So finally I am uploading a photo. This is from lunch the first day. Next to me on the left are Abby and Debi, my roommates. Linda is next, but you can only see the top of her head. Then there is Shelley Washburn, the program director, followed by Valerie Miner, one of the faculty. I'm not sure who is next. It might be Laura, a poetry student, and then Jon Anderson, from my worshop group. This was taken at the new student table, a thing that only existed at lunch the first day. It's so funny that when it was taken, I didn't know that Valerie and Shelley were at the table with us. I assumed they were students.

Now that I have the camera hooked up, I can take a lot of pictures. In particular, I want to take one of Abby looking like a post-modern Rosie the Riveter.

Yesterday I met with my advisor, Pete Fromm. We had a very good discussion, and my plan was essentially unchanged. This came as a surprise to me, since I really thougt when I wrote it that it was a useless plan. Apparently it wasn't that useless. I like Pete. He's interesting and funny. I think it will be good to work with him. Incidentally, I revealed the underlying plot of my novel to him. It's the first time I've told anyone. He didn't say, this sucks, so I think it's going to be ok.

He tried to talk me out of writing a novel as my thesis project, but I told him I had been working on it for a year and that last summerI had committed myself to finishing it . I said I didn't want to put it aside becase it would drive me crazy. He agreed tat it wasn't good to set a novel aside for too long and said that was why he wasn't pushing me harder to do so. He did say, though, that if after a couple of exchanges, he thought it wasn't going to work, he would tell me.

Yesterday morning I went to a craft talk by David Long, the writer of The Inhabited World. Incidentally, the night before, he gave a reading, along with Ellen Bass, one of the poets that I rode up with. David Long's talk was entitled A Writer is a Reader Moved to Emulation. He said at the outset that it was less a craft talk than a pep talk. He told us all the reasons to read and gave a us a list of his favorite 100 books. I was rather amazed by the book list, which also included a list of books by decade and by foreign country--different books than his favorite hundred. He told us that most of us didn't read enough, that we were not careful enough about the books we chose to read and that we did not read carefully enough. Then he went through each of these and talked about them. For example, the reasons people give why they don't read: lack of time, reluctance to read, and others (tis is off te top of jy head-- I have a list written down.) Then he refuted each of the reasons. Whatever.

Later that day, I went back to my room after meeting with my advisor. I decided to take the elevator because I was tired. I had been running in the morning, because I couldn't remember having unplugged my flat iron. After Mr. Long's talk, I took off running to the dorms carrying my book bag on my shoulder because I only had ten minutes to get to workshop. I ran both ways. Anyway, by the time I headed back to my room that afternoon, it was time for my nap and for once I didn't feel like climbing stairs. So, although my default was the stairs, I called the elevator and climbed in when its doors opened. As the door was sliding shut, I saw through the front glassed in section David Long returning to the building. I held the door for him and when he approached I poked my head out and asked, "Need a ride?" I suppose I am a little star struck by all these well-known writers, but not as starstruck as if they were movie stars. I still remember many years ago when Jeff Daniels walked into the store where I worked. I didn't speak to him and tried to act normal, but I got a metallic taste in my mouth just like when I went upside down on the corkscrew at Cedar Point for the first time. This was not like that. I just admire his writing.

So I ask him what floor and he says four. I am going to three. On the way up, I tell him I enjoyed his talk that morning and I say I was impressed by his book lists (or maybe I said amazed). And really, my favorite hundred books????? I can't even remember reading a hundred books, although I'm sure I have. And actually when looking over his list, I realized that I had read a lot of them, but I could never compile such a list. It was totally impressive. I don't know whether this made him think I was an illiterate idiot or just a socially inept idiot for saying it, but he then said, "I have other lists." His eyebrows wee raised in a way that made me think he felt slightly insulted. So this was a somewhat awkward moment, and right then the elevator arrived at the third floor. I was speechless, which anyone who knows me will wish they had been there to see and mark down as a rare event. I got out of the elevator and looked back at him, opened my mouth to say something--e.g, bye or nice chatting with you, something, but instead no words came out and as the elevator door was about to close, I just walked away. Of course, in the awkwardness of that moment, my brain reset to its default settings, and although I was already on my floor, I started up the stairs. I realized my mistake quickly and thought, "I'll just wait until the elevator door closes and then I'll go back down." But what should happen, but Mr. Long sees me going up stairs and he says, "I'll get off here, too." And he gets out and starts going upstairs. Awkwarder and awkwarder. So, because I really am socially inept (and I'm a writer--what did you expect), I blurt out, "Have I gone crazy? See what happens? I ride in the elevator with you and then I start going to te fourth floor for no reason." I kind of laugh, but David Long doesn't. He just looks down at the floor. I take off down the stairs feeling like a moron.

I'm sure he thinks I'm a stalker now.The only way this will be a good story is if in two years I get to introduce him at a reading.Then I can tell the story in public and he will know I am not a stalker. Obviously I can never speak to him again because if I do he will think he needs a restraining order. Crazy. Probably he doesn't really think I am a stalker. That would be rather pretentious of him. No, he probably thinks I'm an idiot. I don't know which is worse. I think stalkerdom is easier to disprove than idiocy. At any rate, I think I can probably forget ever working with him.

Last night, Pattiann Rogers and John Rember did the faculty readings. I really enjoyed them I wanted to buy Pattiann's book but Linda wanted to go to Safeway, so I had to hurry. I'll buy it tonight and ask her to sign it. John Rember read a new short story which I really liked. I also liked the way he read it best of all the ones I've heard so far. He did a good job of creating characters with his voice and varying the tone and inflection in a way that made it easier to understand what was going on in the story. Those are the best kind of readings in my opinion. As I've said, a bad reading of even the best work is like Chinese water torture.

Catch up

The last time I blogged was on Sunday, and now it's Wednesday. I say this not because you can't tell on your own, but just so you know what I think has happened, so if actually something else happened entirely, you won't be confused.

Fatigue is finally catching up with me. I had discovered this great working pattern of going to bed at midnight or 12:30, getting up at 5:30 or six and ten taking a two hour nap around 3 in the afternoon. Yesterday I broke the pattern and instead of sleeping in the afternoon, I went to the sauna with my roomies. So in addition to getting no sleep, I got dehydrated. I went to bed at 9:40 last night and still couldn't wake up until almost seven. No more missing naps!!

I think I am the only one in my apartment who has actually cooked anything. And not one of us has used the microwave. We just eat cheese and yogurt, nuts and fruit and peanut butter, bread and butter, and, of course, chocolate. I haven't eaten a speck of wheat, in spite of the big table of desserts available everyday at lunch.

Talk about school, will you??? Is that what you are thinking?

OK.

I don't think I have talked about Claire Davis' craft talk entitled Sex: How Far Do We Go and Will You Still Respect Me After the Story. This took place on Sunday, which makes me realize that the last time I blogged was just past midnight on Saturday.

I went to the sex talk expecting it to be nuts and bolts, limits and suggestions. Well, it was and it wasn't. It was multimedia. Ms. Davis used slides of art to exemplify various types of sex in writing. She compared the cover of a romance novel to the Gustav Klimt's The Kiss. And then she read to us, first examples of bad romance novel sex and then amazing examples of sex in literature. Bad sex, she pointed out, is there for its own sake, to titillate. It does not move the story along, which should be the primary purpose of anything you put in a story or book. It does not really show character development. It is superficial, about body parts.

Good sex is the opposite. She read examples from a number of sources. Some of them made me want to read the books. Not because they were sexy, but because it was so obvious that the writer could write. And that Claire Davis' knows how to give a great craft talk. I mean she started out with the story of walking her dogs and coming across this little pick up truck with a six foot inflatable penis in the back. I knew I wasn't going to sleep through it.

My roommate, Linda, was taking notes and at some point I looked over at her and she was sitting on her hands. There was a moment when I thought I was going to have to leave the room because a passage that Ms. Davis was reading was so disturbing. And yet there was not one graphic bit of physical description in it. There was just enough that the reader knew what was going on. The rest was internal. This was a rape scene. I need to find out what book it was in. She also read from Lolita and now I think I have to read Lolita.

After this craft talk, we went to workshop. It was our first workshop with John Rember and Linda's memoir chapter was being workshopped along with Gary's memoir chapter about PTSD. Linda has written about something that happened in her childhood that led her on a long journey. I think we were both expecting the kind of workshop that we had the day before with Valerie and Craig, but John Rember actually conducted the workshop like a class, calling on random people to see what answers they could provide. It was exciting, but also confusing. I think because a lot of us are beginners at studying writing, we don't always have a clue about all the terms and concepts. He started talking about using third person technique in the first person, and he also talked about using different 'I's'. I had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded interesting. Later, Linda and I caught him at lunch and asked him a hundred questions.

When we workshopped the other piece, John at some point told Gary that he needed to think about me when he was writing. This is because I had said I couldn't focus on the piece from the front end and so after reading the first page, skipped to the end and read it from there. Gary said he didn't care about me since I wasn't his intended audience. Linda thought this would upset me. "I don't care about Adrianna!" I thought it was kind of funny being talked about in the abstract like that. Anyway, it felt almost like an acting class where you go deep into some feelings in order to change the intensity of the work.

After lunch we went to a talk called, Publishers and Publishing: What you need to know, by Christopher Howell, an editor of numerous literary magazines. I took copious notes. It's the only time I have really taken pages of notes.

After a nap and a long break, I went with my roommates to hear Valerie Miner and Peter Sears give readings. Probably owing to my severe fatigue that night, I remember not that much about the reading, except talking to Valerie afterwards. I also remember that she read in a fairly normal speaking voice, which I thought was a good thing. Oh, and I remember that Mr. Sears' voice reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield's. This should prove how tired I really was.

On Monday, the morning craft talk was Pattiann Rogers, a poet, talking about the creative in creative writing. She talked about poetic topics that have been done to death, including the roadkill poem and the poem about a visit to a dying loved one's hospital room. This has become the punchline to a lot of jokes, other writers saying when they stand up that they were going to read a roadkill poem, but thank goodness Pattiann had warned them not to. Ms. Rogers used a number of paintings of the Annunciation to show how artists can do the same subject in the same way over and over. She talked about different perspectives and read some work that used them.

Then it was time for workshop. My piece was workshopped. I had submitted the devil chapter of my book, which had had a lot of work done on it already. I was hoping for more. Mostly I got positive feedback. Everyone seemed to like it including Valerie and Craig, who used parts of it as examples when he talked about scene. On my comments sheet, he wrote that he wanted to read more and said it was a good sign. WE did two other fiction pieces that day, John's and Ryan's. I was really pleased with the comments I got and I realized I need to do something about the blindfold. People keep be confused about it. I need to make it more clear that the blindfold is not there, that he has led her to believe it's there. Also, people seem to think that the Lord of Mendes could be a giant, which I had not intended. The tips I got from Valerie and Craig involved more interstitial action and Craig suggested that I comb the manuscript for words that alluded to sight and blindness which were ironic in case I had not intended the irony.

Just to skip ahead a bit, yesterday we got our faculty assignments for the semester. I was paired with Pete Fromm. I am not unhappy about that. He asked me when I saw him at the reading if it was OK and I told him that I had put him on my advisor preference sheet. He said they don't see those. He's really nice. On Monday night all the students and faculty had a pizza dinner get together and he came over to our table and introduced himself to the four of us. I think all of us except Abby have a little crush on him because he's outspoken and funny and he laughs a lot and teases the other faculty members, espccially the ones he is most friendly with. Abby likes him fine, but says he reminds her of her dad, and EW! How could we have crushes on him?

I have read a bit of one of his books, and liked it (exept for the baseball part, which was far too much like actual baseball for me to like it.)

Finding out my faculty assignment made me so nervous that I didn't feel like sleeping when I came back to the room. Instead Debbie and I sat in the living room and talked about girl stuff. Thus I missed my nap.

Anyway, I finished my micro-fiction the day before yesterday and today we are going to read them all in class. I love Linda's, a little non-fiction piece. It is hilarious and riveting. After hearing it, I didn't feel as good about mine, but then I read mine to them and realized that it isn't that bad. It feels like a poem almost, which is what one of the Johns from our class told me yesterday at lunch--that he felt like he was writing a poem.

OK. Need to stop now. Apparently my dad made the comment, "How can anyone write so much?" when checking out my blog. So if I write any more, he will just shake his head at me. :)

Present Tense

I think it means I am rummy from lack of sleep. I woke up this morning thinking of lines from a narrative in present tense. I have never wanted to write in present tense before, but after hearing a number of readings in present tense, I am now dreaming stories in the moment. I tell you this as a warning. There is just no telling what I am going to write.

Yesterday my workshop group met for the first time. Our group rotates between Valerie Miner and Craig Lesley in one session and John Rember in the next. Yesterday we worked with Valerie Miner and Craig Lesley. I felt ill-prepared and found that my discomfort with knowing that I hadn't completely read the stories of the two other writers, thanks to the events of the previous night, made it less productive for me than it might otherwise ave been.

We actually did some work in the class in general terms. We talked about flash fiction and were given an assignment. Yes, we were asked to write a micro fiction (or non-fiction--some of the students in our group are non-fiction) of 250 words involving work. We read an example of such a story in the group and were given another one to read on our own.

Then we started workshopping. (Linda think it's funny that I made a verb out of work shop, but this is America and that's the way we got away from the King's English, for better or worse.) We do two or three people's work shop submissions, called worksheets, in each session. Yesterday we workshopped one fiction writer and one non-fiction writer's pieces.

We were given guidelines at the beginning, which we read aloud, each student reading one and going around the room. Things to do and things not to do when critiquing. I realized how helpful this was when I got back to my room and talked to Abby, my poetry , about her workshop group where apparently they all ripped each other's poems apart.

After the workshop we went to lunch and several of my workshop members, including me, ate with the two faculty members. I discovered in the workshop introductions that another one of the workshop members, Mindie, came from Ann Arbor. She works for Pfizer. She will only be around a few more months. She said she it as an opportunity to do something different. She lives not far from Marc and me, somewhere around Ellsworth and Hewitt.

There was a weird moment when we were walking to the University Center where lunches take place. I was walking next to Valerie Miner and she asked me how I was settling in. I said fine, that I was tired. And then, because I am a moron, one of those annoying people who answers polite social questions with too much information, I let drop that I had been to the emergency room the night before. I realized my error immediately, though too late. Of course she asked me what had happened and my sleep deprived brain realized I could not simply say, I stepped on a thistle bush. Without considering the consequences, I said I had a puncture wound--which would have been enough maybe, but instead I followed it up with something about being diabetic. Ms. Miner had already started tuning me out. She looked around and I stoped talking. She mumbled something about insulin. In fact, I think she just said "insulin," and continued to scan the room, probably looking for someone she absolutely had to talk to right then so that she could walk away from me. Apparently she didn't see anyone, because then she turned back to me and mumbled, "How does it affect your...?" Then she started scanning again. Then she just walked away, or tried to, but I had to go in that direction as well and it seemed as if we were in mid-sentence of a conversation, although one that we both wished was not happening. I took a step in the same direction and she turned back to me and said, "You don't have to follow me. I'm just going to put something down. " Then she noticed that other people from the workshop were still walking behind us and she asked whether we would all like to eat together. We found a table and left our things there, and I only felt a little like a moron. I joked about it with Abby later, telling her that it was the last conversation I would have with Valerie Miner--except that she was my workshop leader. This doesn't really look much like joke on paper, but when I said it, I did it in the Amanda Dallo style--I won't be talking to Valerie Miner again EXCEPT THAT SHE'S MY WORKSHOP LEADER." Then we both cracked up.

Actually later when my roomies and I were walking into the amphitheatre where the faculty readings were being held, Ms. Miner was there. The room where our workshop took place had a loud air conditioning vent which made a lot of noise the entire time we were in class. Ms. Miner had asked us to complain about it to the director to see if we could get a different room. We saw the director on our way into the amphitheatre and she told us that they had turned off the air. So when Linda and I saw Ms. Miner in the amphitheatre lobby and she smiled and asked us how it was going, Linda said, "It was fixed." I had no idea what Linda was talking about. I thought she meant that the workshop was fixed, as in a bet that was fixed. Valerie looked puzzled and Linda said the air conditioning. I laughed and said, "I thought you meant the workshop," and Ms. Miner laughed and said, "So did I." Linda was mortified, but I told her that I thought it was just a joke and Ms. Miner probably did, too.

The reading was Jack Driscoll and Craig Lesley. Mr. Driscoll read a new, unpublished short story that he had just finished before leaving Michigan. Mr. Lesley read some excerpts from a memoir about his relationship with his father. Mr. Driscoll's short story was amazing. It wasn't speculative, but it might as well have been. It seemed as improbable as any fantasy and yet it was anchored firmly in this world. Afterward I bought his novel, Lucky Man, Lucky Woman and stood in line to get his signature on it. I told him that I was from Michigan. He lives near Traverse City and teaches at Interlochen. His demeanor changed when he found out I was from Michigan and he told me how he had come to teach at Pacific. He said it was because of Pete Fromm and that originally he had thought he was only going to be there for one semester. Apparently he only takes two students a semester. I put him on my list of possible advisors turned in weeks ago, but having heard and met him, I feel more strongly about it now.

Craig Lesley, one of my workshop leaders, was the other reader. His memoir had the intensity of fiction. I've been so impressed with all the faculty so far

Later, all four of us came back to our apartment and sat in the living room and read writing to each other. It reminded me of the writing group back home. I have started editing out the words "am," "is,","was," and "were" where I can, replacing them with strong verbs. I'm surprised how often I use them.


Well, six forty-nine. I need to do a draft of my micro fiction, which solidified in my mind last night, before going to Claire Davis's talk on how to write about sex. I think I am going to write in present tense.

Drama

The day I arrived, I noticed that I had a bump on the bottom of my left foot. It didn't really worry me because I had stepped on a thistle plant in my backyard a week before and I knew that's what was causing it. At the time it had felt like I got some stickers in my foot, but Marc, my husband, looked at it for me and couldn't see anything. So when I felt the bump, I just thought it was a sticker working its way out.

Last night during the reading, I felt my foot throbbing and started to worry about it a little. So when I got back to my room, I looked at it and decided that it didn't look great. I called he 24 hour nursing line on the back of my insurance card and the nurse, after listening to my story, said, "You need to get yourself to an emergency room."

So this is how, at 10 o'clock at night, I went to the ER because I had a sticker in my foot. What ever happened to being a kid, when your mom could just pick it out for you? Well, I lay on a hospital bed on my belly while a doctor picked it out for me. There were actually two of them, but he only got one out. Micro-absess, he said. I got a tetanus shot, a dose of antibiotics, a prescription and some instructions. Ah, the joys of being diabetic.

I did get something out of it, though. I saw the details of a story, not in my ridiculous trip to the ER, but in the people who worked there: A triage nurse who looked back at me with eyes like a malamute, unflinching pale blue. A doctor with concrete-colored hair and a calm, pleasant manner, who chuckled wen I said, "Note to self," as if he had never heard the expression before and picked the thistle sticker out of my foot with no trace of hurry, making little jokes that weren't as lame as doctor jokes usually seem to be. (A few days later this doctor called to tell me that the culture he had taken showed I didn't have a staph infection and that he thought if I was doing ok, that I could stop the antibiotics. I almost had the feeling that he was going to ask me on a date. There was a longish, awkward pause and then I said, "OK, then. Take care." I think it might have been when I said I didn't think I could give up going barefoot that he became interested.) F our different people came into my room. It was as if every time someone went out, they were magically transformed into someone else. Maybe just because I am running on so little sleep, they all seemed slightly off, like in invasion of the body snatchers, except that they weren't trying to make me one of them

Anyway, that is all over now (inshallah)*

Last evening before all of this happened, I went to the reading by Joe Millar and Claire Davis, a poet and a writer of fiction. Mr. Millar has white hair and has grown daughters, though he didn't strike me as old, and always seems to be on the brink of laughing at some private joke. At first, I didn't know what to make of it, but after listening for a while, I found it endearing. Earlier, he was a member of a panel that talked about giving a reading. One of the things he said told me more about him than his poems did. He said that sometimes when you are giving a reading, you look at your poem, which is about someone you love and as you are reading it, you think about them and how much you love them, and it overwhelms you and you feel yourself start to tear up and you can't read. He described this as the worst possible experience, something that doesn't feel good. He said it was like being caught up in the greatness of your own work. One of the other poets responded that it wasn't your work that you were caught up in but your feelings about that person, which was as it should be, since that was what inspired the poem. So as I watched him read, I thought about this, and other things that he had said while on the panel.

On the topic of poetry readings, perhaps I am spoiled by my own experiences listening to Rebecca from our writing group read poems in her carefully modulated voice, which clearly delivers to the ear the words of her poetry while not calling a bit of attention to itself, but I find all of this reading stuff to be a little over the top. It's as if some poets don't realize that poetry can be read just like other things. It is Shakespeare's craft and its meaning can be lost with a false reading. Pattiann Rogers said yesterday that the audience knows if you are not with your poem. It's the reason why I have almost no idea what is going on when watching Shakespeare performed by high school students, yet am memorized (Ed. Note: mesmerized) when watching the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Not so much because of these readings, but because of some other readings I heard today, I started thinking that any MFA program should have an acting teacher who could work with students to help them be better readers. On the van ride in, Ms. Rogers talked about how more people would appreciate poetry if they heard it read properly and said that many poets were not good at reading their own work. I think it could be compared to Chinese water torture to be read poetry for over five minutes by someone who rarely varies their cadence and goes up at the end of every line break. I don't think it would matter if their poetry were fantastic; I would never really hear it. (Mr. Millar did not do this by the way. I'm just ranting, mostly about some other readings I heard yesterday.)

I bought Ms. Davis' book, and she signed it for me and asked me about my own writing. She said to me, "It was nice to meet you. I'll probably be working with you at some point." I also bought a book of Ellen Bass's poetry, the one I had read a bit of before coming here. Abby bought it , too, having found a poem about a deer that took a bubble bath. Also, Ms. Bass is extremely nice and you want to buy her books even if you don't know anything about poetry. It's a bonus that her poetry is also the literary equivalent of a great amuse-bouche. Well, some of it is, but that really doesn't do it justice.



*I'm not Muslim, but sometimes the Arabic expressions for things just seem to work for me. I haven't said Inshallah for years. It means something like "if God wills". Usually I just say "knock on wood," but as a client at the office told me once, "Wood won't do nothing for you."

Whew!

I arrived yesterday at the Portland Airport a little after two o'clock. My plane was slightly delayed, so I immediately went to the Starbucks kiosk in the baggage claim to find the shuttle driver with the MFA Pacific University sign. I managed to arrive before either of the faculty writers whom I would be riding back with. I was a little fearful because Amber had said, "Faculty writers don't like to wait."

All three of us eventually got our luggage and got onto the van with James, the intern driving the shuttle. As I mentioned earlier, the writers were Pattiann Rogers and Ellen Bass. I had made myself slightly starstruck by looking them up on Amazon.com before I left home and having seen how much they had published, I knew enough to be impressed. I had also found a snippet of Ms. Bass's work, a poem from Mules of Love, which touched me. Written very simply, yet resonating with some innate craving to ritualize in higher language that most profound of human emotions, love.

So, I spent the next hour in a van with them. They had not met before, but knew each other's work. So it was interesting to just hear them talk to each other. There was a whole conversation about having no sense of direction, which always makes me feel right at home! They were both very nice and funny, with easy senses of humor. I felt their collective wisdom in a way that surprised me and made me teary a few times. Maybe now I understand how, in old film footage I have seen, girls waiting in the crowd when the Beatles came to America started bawling when the musicians finally got off the plane. Maybe there is something about meeting someone who you know to be successful in a way that you really admire that makes you more emotionally vulnerable.

But I digress...

Last night was just a student potluck and then there was a meet and greet. I also, met all my roommates. We are in a quad, four bedrooms and two bathrooms along with a little living area, complete kitchen. We went grocery shopping together. It's pretty much like college.

My roommates are Abby, Linda, and Debi. They are from Alaska, Oregon, and Hawaii and are all first semester students. One in poetry, one non-ficdtion, and another one is fiction. Linda, the fiction roomie, is also in my workshop group. I reread her work this morning and it is really good. We are all getting along really well. It's fun. Three of us are in our forties and Abby is 24

I stayed awake for 21 straight hours yesterday, going to bed at midnight (which is 3 am at home.) Obviously, that is not my normal sleep schedule, and yet I set my alarm for 5:58 thinking that it's almost 9 am at home and actually got up after 5 hours of sleep. So today has been both interesting and challenging.

This morning we heard a craft talk by Marvin Bell, a poet who also teaching at the University of Oregon. It was entitled What I Do in the Dark. Apparently, he writes at night. He talked about process and how each poet has a different process. Then he read some specific poems and talked about the process he had gone through in writing them. He also talked a lot about his views of the war in Iraq and war in general. I came out of the craft talk wanting to write poetry and even got an idea for a poem while I was there. I was not familiar with his poetry before the talk and I'm not sure it was immediately interesting to me, but by the end, I liked it. He also made a point of saying that poets need to be free to write bad poetry. Things like this I felt applied to all writers. He also said that on some days he would feel like saying, I am not a poet. I can't write. Everything I have ever written is crap. I will never be able to write a poem.... And all of this resonated with me, as someone who periodically feels like I can't write at all. But it always comes back, and I expect it is the same with other writers. You just can' t let the fear rule you. (OK, this is not a paragraph. I'm functioning on not enough sleep. What do you want from me?)

There were many other activities today, a lot of them orienting us to school, graduation requirements, and each other. Tomorrow we start our workshops. I know that my work will not be workshopped tomorrow, but I need to reread the works of the two writers whose work will be done in my group.

There are two poetry workshop groups and three prose groups. Fiction and non-fiction are mixed together. I'm excited to see what it's like.

So, I have to eat dinner now and then we are going to a reading by two faculty members. I'll write more tomorrow. Hope I haven't bored you senseless. Fatigue is not the best writing companion. I'll try to catch up on sleep a little tonight so that I'll be a better blogger tomorrow.

First day of grad school eve

Just like with Christmas, there is bound to be some disaster. And so there was. I backed into someone's car just as I was about to pick my husband up from work. I left a note. Apparently, this is not common behavior, as I learned afterward when everyone, including the woman whose car I hit, said over and over, "I can't believe you left a note. Most people wouldn't." We met up at the police station. She was very nice to me. If you ever have to back into someone's car, let it be hers. Or one owned by someone like her. Anyway, my first ever at fault accident. Not one of my dreams come true.

I also got the schedule for the residency from Amber, who is really so nice and the most helpful person I have ever met. (Well... technically most helpful I will have ever met, since I haven't actually met her yet.)

I thought you might like to see some of the highlights.

Here's the first day:
7:30 - 8:30 a.m. Breakfast on your own

9:00 – 10:15 a.m. MFA Program Welcome

10:30 – 11:30 a.m. Craft Talk--Marvin Bell: What I Do in the Dark

Noon – 1:00 p.m. Lunch together
Note: Table reserved for new students

1:30 – 2:30 p.m. Panel Discussion
Marvin Bell, Claire Davis, Jack Driscoll, Pete
Fromm, Joseph Millar, Pattiann Rogers:
On Giving a Reading

2:30 – 2:45 p.m. Break

2:45 – 3:45 p.m. Meeting
Faculty

Alumni Reading
William Alton, Jeannine Hall Gailey, & Lisa
Galloway

4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Meeting
New Student Orientation

Round Table
Julie Rember: Tips for Presentations &
Readings &
Cheryl Thiele: Designing Digital Presentations
with Ease

5:10 p.m. Walk Meet in Burlingham Lobby

6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Dinner on your own

7:30 p.m. Reading & Book Signing:
Claire Davis & Joe Millar
---------

Some Other Craft Talks of Interest:

John Rember: Enkidu Died, Gilgamesh Cried:
Love and Grief as the Writer’s Best Friends

Claire Davis: Sex. How Far Do We Go, and Will
You Still Respect Me After the Story

Christopher Howell: Publishers and Publishing:
What You Need to Know

Craig Lesley: Landing the First Punch: Writing a
Compelling Opening

--------------

Workshops start the second day. There are also readings and thesis discussions by graduating students and readings every night by one or two of the faculty writers.

There are even a couple of student reading times, to be signed up for. I don't think I will be doing that my first time there, but maybe next semester. I'll try to plan ahead.

Of course, one big thing about the residency is finding out who you will be working with during the semester. I can't wait to find out. A few weeks ago, I sent in a preference form which I filled out based on having read through all the faculty writers, discovering who wrote fiction and then tracking down some of each one's writing and reading it, not critically, but just to see if it felt good. I picked the ones that seemed to fit best with what I like. I should say that I read only a few pages of each writer's work. Well, except one who hooked me and I bought his book. But I found the others' work equally interesting and I liked the voices. There was another book by another writer that I intend to read, but try not to invest in more books at once than I can read in a month. If you could see my bedside table...

Actually maybe I will close with that.

More tomorrow.

Travel Arrangements

I'm flying into Portland on Thursday. My plan had been to take the train to the end of the line and then call the school for a shuttle to come and pick me up. This afternoon I got an email from Amber, the administrator, telling me that two faculty writers would be arriving in Portland at the same time as I am and asking if I would like to catch a ride in the shuttle that will be picking them up from the airport.

I said yes, of course!

It turns out that the writers are Ellen Bass and Pattiann Rogers, two poets. It's a big bonus for me, I think. I'll get to meet people ahead of time and I will also get to have the real life experience of looking for someone standing in an airport holding a sign.

Tomorrow I'll be doing last minute, pre-trip stuff and, doubtless, getting really nervous. I can tell I'm going to have to go through a brief phase--due to shock, introversion, or having inadvertently used superglue instead of toothpaste-- of not being able to string a sentence together. But hopefully you won't have to see that part. It won't be pretty.

Countdown

On Thursday, June 21st, I will fly across the country to begin my first semester of grad school.

Many years ago, in the throes of a bout of writing, I told a friend that I was going to become a writer (as in a writer by vocation, not by avocation). His response?

"There's a five percent chance you'll become a writer."

I tried to ignore his words, but I admit that they stuck in my head. And while I kept writing, doubts sprang up like weeds in my subconscious. I started to think that I really wasn't much good at it. I didn't try to get published any more.

Then I got married and all bets were off. If, as Mary Ellen Lebert told me when I went to summer school in Monterey, "a relationship is 13 credits," marriage is full-time, full out, law school.

Still, once you've been doing it for a few years, you become a pro at it and can focus at least some of your attention on something else. So about a year ago, I decided to get more serious about my writing. Exactly how does one get serious about writing?

Well, you do it more, for one thing. That's how it started. I went back to writing regularly. I started a story blog. I joined a writing group. And I started thinking about what it would be like if writing were my job. What if I woke up every morning, made coffee, and sat down at my computer to type out the day's pages? What if I wrote a book and got it published? And what if I did that over and over again?

Then I decided to go back to school to get an MFA. I spent months working on the applications and got accepted to two out of the three places I applied.

So now, this has all culminated in my going away to school in less than a week. I'm excited and a little, um, TERRIFIED. But I do think I will love it once I get there.

So this blog really is just a way to keep my peeps posted on what is going on with my school work, my trip, my book.

I'll try to put up some pictures, too.

In the end, one of the things I will accomplish is to be able to say (albeit out of his hearing), "In your face, Steve. Five percent chance my ass."