Taos Summer Writers’ Conference 2010

Our new group had our first meeting this morning with Minrose Gwinn. I am currently reading both her memoir, Wishing for Snow and her novel, Queen of Palmyra and find the overlap between the two quite amazing.

We didn’t work on any of our actual writing, but instead, each of us talked about our projects and which memoir we had read that really spoke to us. Then Minrose asked us to think about the craft involved..what worked, what we would like to use in ours and other specific questions. It was a great session and she manages the group well. 

I really liked what she said about the two kinds of memory; voluntary and involuntary. That is, voluntary, when we think back to say, grade five and look at photos and work at recalling specifics until we can remember certain things.

And then there is the kind of memory that comes flooding back when we smell something or taste something and the memory associated comes at us without our bidding. 

This kind of bodily memory is the kind that is imprinted in our cells and is accessed through the senses. So our writing needs these sensory ways in to conjure it up.  We need to utilize all the senses and ground the writing in specifics.

So much of this is stuff I’ve read and know at some level, but Minrose has a way of bringing a kind-fierceness and passion to explaining it that resonates at a different, and deeper, place.

It makes me want to go in and work and polish and edit my story. 

Of course, what I did instead was go into Taos and wander about, effectively procrastinating in the heat. 

No wait, I’m going to call it incubating ideas instead of procrastinating. I was mulling things over in some unconscious place and feel ready to get into it. This post is my warm-up.

It is fun to meet so many different writers working in such different genres.

And more than that, this feeds my inner hermit when I’m holed up in this motel room with the air conditioner humming the rest of the world away.

 Just me and this blinking cursor and piles of books…a sweet sort of heaven.