Sunday lectures started at 8:15 am and I chose to attend the grad lecture on the use of light and movement to show time in stories. Nina Kidd gave a really good lecture and I got another breakthrough on the novel rewrite I’m contemplating. Patti Brown’s lecture on use of the Tarot for deepening character development was also good, extending those skills I have with tarot images and symbols to my writing process. Faculty member Martine Leavitt’s talk on time management basically boiled down to a lecture about distraction and it’s link to fear. By lunchtime, I was exhausted again, my brain filled with so many concepts and implications and possible changes to my writing.
Workshops have been enlightening but also challenging, my chronic fatigue making itself a nuisance as I’m trying to stay awake for my classmates. Chewing gum is the most effective way I’ve found to stay awake since not even guilt or a sense of professionalism is making it for me. Along with lectures, I try to make as many of the graduate creative readings as I can, seeing what topics and forms the other students tackle, and how expertly they are writing. This the most talented, disciplined, creative group of writers I’ve ever been around and on this particular day, I wonder if I can keep up with them, learn as well as they do.
Sarah Ellis’ lecture on fairy was excellent, getting back to the essence of Fae and pointing out that that to fairy, the human world is a skewed version of the fairy world. A lot of this lecture will affect the novel rework to be sure. In fact, I think this lecture that made me revisit the idea of reworking Maganda’s Comb as a YA novel, that a rework from a single POV might just be the thing to do.
I decide to go home early after our pizza party as a cohort. My brain is shutting down and I feel narcoleptic. I would have liked to stay on campus to find out who my advisor will be, but I ask instead if one of my classmates can drive me back to the Guest House and another classmate to email me my advisor if she notices.
When I got home that night, I call my family and watch Spaceballs. I’ve watched Young Frankenstein this trip and clips from the Producers. There’s something comforting about Mel Brooks for me.
