The class is over and the real work begins. These are my new friends (their names read from left to right). Keep your eyes out for amazing new stories from these people.

Minrose Gwin is the lovely woman in the middle, holding the champagne and flowers. This woman cajoled, directed, listened and pulled emotion and craft and words and insights out of each of us.

Remember Field of Dreams? It’s true. I wept openly.

We laughed and cried together and we worked really hard to listen and understand and help each other find that one true sentence, that theme, the metaphor, that almost unnameable thing that moves a piece forward.  

I have discovered that the story I thought I was writing has bent and morphed from that swampy beginning into a different creature altogether. It’s both daunting & exhilirating to keep discovering – by writing and writing only – what that new story will be

I cannot will it or think it or believe it into existence. I can only write to discover it. I still find this whole process incredibly magical – and harder work than anything I’ve done in my life so far.  

It was a week of discovering how much further we could go. When we all read our homework this morning, I know we were collectively in awe of what we’d done.

Thank you Minrose, for being a true teacher, mentor and lover of writing. I know we were in the presence of someone who believes in the power of the word.  Read her books and if you’re interested in writing memoir… take this course.  

Minrose Gwin of course, is already a well known writer. But you might want to start scanning the bookshelves for those names you see under that photo above, because…we’re coming up next.