2AM Traffic

Yesterday was pretty intense. Long story short, I'm actually IN the class I'm assisting now. Joe told me that a student dropped out and asked if I had any material I might want to workshop, and I said that I might, so I'm bringing in pages from the book I attempted to write for NaNoWriMo back in 2006. I haven't looked at that story in months. I read through it last night and didn't recall writing most of it, powering through coffee and tuna sandwiches at the Elgin Street Diner. In a lot of ways that worked tapped me of output. It's the longest piece of writing I've ever produced, it's unfinished, and now it's suddenly back in my life.

To top it off, I have to read through two 15-page manuscripts a night and make notes for the other students. Midway through the week I have to take the comments on my work and apply them to a rewrite to workshop at the end of the week. It's going to be a much busier time than I thought it would, but I'm suddenly in quite the place of privilege.

Yesterday I watched talks delivered by professional editors on the kind of work that gets published and marketed in Canada (read: next to nothing). The group also heard from a very engaging Richard Scrimger on finding your inner child when you're writing as well as Richard Bausch, who I'd ask to sign my book if he didn't intimidate the fuck out of me. He offered ten commandments for being a writer, the last of which demanded that the first nine be ignored if they interfere with the process.

I met Paul Quarrington, who seemed very funny, and told him that I loved Whale Music. I've been talking with some really interesting people about writing. Well, listening, mostly. I've picking up some helpful advice and I'm starting to believe that this dry spell I'm going through is far more common than I thought. It will be interesting to see what else comes from the classes this week.

Matt, Kim and I ordered pizza and watched 24 Hour Party People. I stayed up until 1 AM fretting.