The best workshop ever...

6/11/2018

Someone asked me when I first started Wake Up and Write WRW why I would start yet another workshop. What, they asked, made mine different – in other words, why would anyone want to come to it? While it’s a legitimate question, I remember at the time hearing my mother’s voice when I told her I wanted to be a writer, asking me why I thought I was good enough to write.

There are all kinds of reasonable answers to both questions, but in the end, the only answer that makes any sense at all is the same for both: because I want to.

Portrait of me by Nushka, May 2018

Writers from May 2018 in Boise, Idaho

We completed the May workshop in Boise, Idaho just over a week ago. There are pictures on the website and the Facebook page and in this blog post, and the people in those pictures are why I want to run a workshop – in particular the Writers Retreat Workshop and the offshoot I started, Wake Up and Write WRW.

The people in those pictures are writers, who want to share their writing with the world, and want to learn whatever they can to make that happen. And there are instructors and an agent in those pictures, many of them also writers. And then there’s me.

My kindergarten picturre

I don’t remember not writing. Or reading. Before I got to school I already knew how to read and write, thanks to an older sister and an insatiable desire for books that continues to this day. Books are my addiction, more than anything else. And my avid reading is probably what gave me the desire to write, but I can’t honestly say I remember a moment when that happened.

I was always a storyteller, which in my case meant, I was always a liar. At a young age I lied for a variety of reasons: fear (there were tigers in the bathroom in the dark), competitiveness (okay, I rewrote the rules of Clue so I could win, and my friends trusted that I was telling them the truth), and religious fervor (I had to come up with some kind of sins to tell the priest in confession). In school I learned how to use my storytelling skills for more creative purposes than lying.

What I remember more than anything about the first Writers Retreat Workshop I attended, is that I felt as if I belonged. Since that particular feeling had eluded me for the first 37 years of my life, that was no small thing. When I returned to WRW in 2012 after being away for more than 10 years, that sense of belonging returned.

I can’t explain it. There are different people at every workshop. Jason and I talked about the fact that every workshop seems like the best one. And it is. Every one.

Rosalyn and Lisa

Creating a coat of arms

strange Play-Do sculpture created during a Shop Talk

A long time ago I was at a Pizza Hut with some WRW alums and someone quoted Maya Angelou’s statement that she’d die if she couldn’t write. I remember sitting there, knowing that wasn’t true for me. It wasn’t then. It isn’t now, though I would die if I couldn’t find a way to express the things I now write about.

While I am writing a novel, I also have written literally books of poetry, some non-fiction, several year’s worth of this blog, thousands (if not millions) of emails, and myriad other things. I also draw and paint and do crazy things with Play-Do and create a coat of arms for myself and my book.

My life is an expression of what I write about. Sometimes I wish it weren’t, sometimes I wish I could hide it or hide from it. But as I sit here tonight on my back porch which once again looks out over a lush, green woods with birdsong and traffic creating a soundtrack for the night, I am grateful.

I have seen my fifth Triple Crown winner, Justify, ridden by my favorite jockey, Mike Smith.

I watched Scott Dixon become the third winningest driver in Indy Car history in Texas Saturday night.

Glenda Jackson with her Tony award

And Sunday night I watched Glenda Jackson win her first Tony award after 30 years away from the stage to serve in Parliament, I watched The Band’s Visit sweep the musical Tonys and listened to some extraordinary acceptance speeches, and I found myself in tears when the Parkland students sang about love from the stage of Radio City Music Hall.

Life isn’t always easy, and it isn’t always good, but damn, I sure am lucky. I am able to live my life as an expression of who I am, which includes writing, and horse racing, and constant change and challenge. Life is the best workshop, ever…

Take care,

Doc