Wow.

I've been completely alone in the house (except for the animals, who're also totally relaxed and thrilled to be back in the rhythm of the school year) for about 1 1/2 hours now.

What an amazing blessing to be able to have space and time to create. I'm inexpressibly grateful.

Today is about incorporating the crits from PCCWW into Calendar, trying to move forward a bit with the story, and working on some freelance editing projects. I intentionally allowed for a slower start to ease the transition back to work. I'm also trying to weave together the playlist for CALENDAR. I have the theme, so that's good, but the rest always takes forever! And I do need to have it in order to sprint later in the process.

About PCCWW. It's not really a conference, and I shouldn't use that misnomer. It is a workshop. Extremely intense. Insanely productive. Amazingly intimate.

A couple of pictures: First is of Saturday night faculty dinner. (I was adjunct faculty, so to speak, as I presented the focus session on Saturday.) The theme for this year's workshop was epiphanies and endings. Edward is on the end, across from me, with Nancy Sondel, the workshop director, between us at the head of the table. Anne is two up from him on the right, in the leather jacket. Photo thanks to Doug Giddings.




One of the masterclass crits (this is a 3 on 1 critique. The other attendees are present and are invited to participate at the end with questions and comments on the manuscript.) Each faculty member crits for 5 minutes, the author asks questions/clarifies their points for 5 minutes and then there are 10 minutes of audience participation. Some crits are more a round-table discussion between faculty and author with audience chiming in. Mine was like that.




This was just after our Sunday brunch. Most everyone had left, but we gathered for one last picture. Can you tell which one is Edward? There WERE men attendees, 4 actually. Photo thanks to Derrick, our server.




The main issue with CALENDAR was structure. Talking it over with Anne and Edward was heady and enlightening and... empowering. So off I go to get to work. More later. Specifics and details and applications.

The second coolest thing about this workshop are the opportunities to chat with the faculty, get to know them as people. Amazing. Fun. Trippy. A blessing.

I leave you with a video from the CALENDAR playlist. This is for the theme song: