Students write about the class

Yellow Lines
(memoir of Adair's class, put to music)
By Josh Coleman

I remember the first time that I saw them The day I got my paper back
They were just like rays of sunshine Running straight across the tracks Well I didn't even ask her
What these yeller lines are for
I counted them up like they was money nd they numbered 24

YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES
MAKE YOU FEEL SMART MAKE YA FEEL FINE MAKE MUNI RUN ON TIME YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES CHANGE DIET ROOT BEER INTO WINE HOW I LOVE THEM YELLOW LINES
Well it was just a few weeks later
I saw something that give me a fright The only thing there was on my paper Was my own words in black and white I told myself not to panic
There must be a reason to see
Maybe there was a shutdown
At the highliter factory
That night I felt pretty lousy
Till I saw what the cure must be I went and dug out my own pen
Now my paper's as yellow as a lemon on a tree
YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES
MAKE YOUR EGO STRETCH AND SHINE MAKE YOUR HEAD SWELL UP WITH PRIDE YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES GONNA MAKE A STRONG MAN WHINE "TEACHER, WHERE'S MY YELLOW LINES?"

Well I realized what was the problem I needed more strength to my tone I was badly in need of an angle
My epiphanies could sure use a hone My papers were full of problems With no solutions in sight
I saw all of these answers
And my papers still came back white

YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES HOW THEY MAKE A FELLA PINE

#####
FOR THOSE GOOD OL YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES GONNA MAKE A MEAN MAN KIND MAKE AN UPTIGHT ONE UNWIND MAKE A BROKEN CHURCH BELL CHIME MAKE A SLEAZEBALL LOSE HIS SLIME MAKE A BLIND MAN TELL TIME

"HEY TEACHER
WHERE'S MY YELLOW LINES?"

#####
Stacy Appel 5115/'76

WRITING CLASS JOURNAL

March 20
Writing class with Adair begins tomorrow. I'm so thrilled. I've written my first piece for class. I call it "Grocers° List."
GR_OCERY LIST
Eggs_
Bananas.
Milk
Bread.
Diet Coke.
Paper towels.
Sudafed.
And cheese.
Well. That’s it. Hope she likes it. I can't wait to write morel
March 21
First class was terrific. Love her squirrel slippers. Love her haircut. Didn't have to read, (hank God. One of the other students. Eileen, read her piece. Similar to mine but about 100 times better. She wrote about pineapple, and anchovies. Anchovies, for God's sake! Why didn't 11lrink of that? My piece is stupid and boring. I’ll never be a writer.
March 2R
Got back Adair's critique of my piece. She crossed out " Sudafed`: says it belongs in a different piece. But I think she liked it! She wrote, "Good detail, has possibilities. Expand on your theme and emphasize first person' Maybe l can do this after ail!
000015 Next assignment is on memory and imagination. Here's what I wrote:
THE GROCERY STORE
It was a summer afternoon in Bethesda, Maryland, and I was about 5 years old and had long, brown hair, and it was about 80 degrees. My mother took me shopping with her to Safeway, which was air-conditioned_ Right in the middle of the aisle with the vegetables, my mother exclaimed, "Damn! I've forgotten the list"
In a soft, shy voice J whispered into her ear, "Eggs. Bananas. Milk, bread, paper towels." When we got home, she yelled at Inc for not reminding her to get Diet Coke and cheese. It was still about 80 degrees. T never forgot it.

April 4
I'm so proud. I read my piece in class, and they seemed to love it. Except 1 :forgot to have an angle and epiphany. And it was kind of over-written and trite. But Adair said it was very moving and had strong images. She loved the part about the heat.
April 18
The weeks are flying by. Forgot to write in my journal because I'm so busy writing other stuff. We've learned all about angles_ and set-up, and epiphanies, and I think I've really got it now. This week we wrote a "topical piece". Here's mine:
JESSICA AND ME
Jessica Dubrow's plane crashed. They say it may have been overloaded with supplies. Which reminds me of the time I went to the grocery, and they put everything in one bag. It was very heavy. The bag ripped on the way out to the parking lot. I stood there looking at the mess: broken eggs spilling over crushed bananas, cans of Diet Coke rolling away on the asphalt, the waxed carton of milk leaking all over everything_
I realized, that moment in the parking lot, that if we lighten our loads we have a better chance of making it to our destination, which in this case was my car. J think Jessica would know exactly what I mean.
12=
I'm an utter failure. My writing partner liked the topical piece, but she likes everything_ Adair said my epiphany was a little thin. Maybe [ should give up this first-person thing and write poetry. I'm going to try redoing my earlier woe, since this week we're doing rewrites. I couldn't think up a new piece to save my life_
May 2
Success at last! Adair loved it, my writing partner loved it, and the class loved it. Here's my rewrite:

THE SHOPPING LIST by Stacy Appel
Farm fresh eggs. Bananas, slightly green. Low-fat milk. Rye bread A six-pack of Diet Coke. Brie. I needed these things. A lot.

Not bad, if I do say so myself I took out the bit about the paper towels, even (though I really liked it. It didn't seem to frt. I’ll use it later, in some other piece. [ love writing)
May 9
Dear Editor: May 9, 1996
Grocery shopping is a universal activity, wouldn't you agree? Enclosed is a brief piece about grocery shopping in today's confusing world. Please consider publishing this piece in your magazine. I think h is particularly geared to the home and family angle your magazine presents so well. Enclosed is a SASE for your convenience.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely_
Stacy Appel
May 16
The last class. I've learned so much. My head is full of the wonderful pieces my classmates have written, and I will remember Adair's encouragement and wisdom for years to come. Got my firs( rejection slip; guess I'm a real writer now. Gotta go. I'm working on a new little piece about paper towels and Sudafed.

Pieces about class all

Stacy Appel
WRITING CLASS JOURNAL

March 20
Writing class with Adair begins tomorrow. I'm so thrilled. I've written my first piece for class. I call it "Grocery List.” "
GROCERY LIST
Eggs_
Bananas.
Milk
Bread.
Diet Coke.
Paper towels.
Sudafed.
And cheese.
Well. That’s it. Hope she likes it. I can't wait to write morel
March 21
First class was terrific. Love her squirrel slippers. Love her haircut. Didn't have to read, (thank God. One of the other students. Eileen, read her piece. Similar to mine but about 100 times better. She wrote about pineapple, and anchovies. Anchovies, for God's sake! Why didn't 11lrink of that? My piece is stupid and boring. I’ll never be a writer.
March 2R
Got back Adair's critique of my piece. She crossed out " Sudafed`: says it belongs in a different piece. But I think she liked it! She wrote, "Good detail, has possibilities. Expand on your theme and emphasize first person' Maybe l can do this after ail!
000015 Next assignment is on memory and imagination. Here's what I wrote:
THE GROCERY STORE
It was a summer afternoon in Bethesda, Maryland, and I was about 5 years old and had long, brown hair, and it was about 80 degrees. My mother took me shopping with her to Safeway, which was air-conditioned_ Right in the middle of the aisle with the vegetables, my mother exclaimed, "Damn! I've forgotten the list"
In a soft, shy voice J whispered into her ear, "Eggs. Bananas. Milk, bread, paper towels." When we got home, she yelled at Inc for not reminding her to get Diet Coke and cheese. It was still about 80 degrees. T never forgot it.

THE SHOPPING LIST by Stacy Appel
Farm fresh eggs. Bananas, slightly green. Low-fat milk. Rye bread A six-pack of Diet Coke. Brie. I needed these things. A lot.

The Last Hurrah

Hank Martinson
Damn. This learning to write business stands a really good chance of screwing up my writing. At sixty-one, do I have time to actually learn how to write and still have a few days left to get anything written? Yesterday morning, as I was happily cranking out the material, I was thinking, “it’s about time I get an agent”. This morning, having been to writing class last night, all I can think about is “it’s probably time to get an angle”. An angle? Son of a bitch! Who even knew about an angle?
Now my fingers are frozen. They refuse to dance over the keyboard: No angle? No story. So I had better stop obsessing about an angle and just do the class assignment. Besides, I’ve got the princess of the entire class as my writing partner this week – the only published person in the class (other than the teacher) – so I don’t want to screw this up.
The assignment is to talk about what is in our purse. See what I mean? This learning to write business is for chicks. Would Hemingway have described what he was carrying around in his purse? Never! But I got dispensation to describe what’s in my pockets. So even if it’s going to destroy my interest in, not to mention my ability to, ever write another word, here goes…
The first thing you need to understand about what’s in my pockets is that I don’t use the two in the back. Everything has to go in the front two or stay at home.
Now, if you find yourself asking “Why is that?” and thinking to yourself, “That’s really fascinating, I can hardly wait to read the rest of this personal essay fraught with imagery from the author’s own life”, I might have found an angle.
Lacking any likelihood of that, the reason I don’t use the back pockets is this: I used to go around with a huge, lumpy wallet in my left back pocket. It looked and felt like a hand grenade. As it turns out, it was more of a time bomb than a grenade. After years of sitting on about a hundred credit cards, receipts from decades long gone, driver’s license, insurance cards, etc. my psychotic nerve (a nerve which runs from the tip of you nose, through your eyeball, around your neck, across your shoulder, down your back, through you genitals via your sphincter, wraps several times around your thigh and calf and finally ends at the tip of your big toe), became inflamed to roughly two thousand degrees Fahrenheit and I was practically unable to breath, much less walk, for two months. I have finally gotten over the psyatica but I still, unfortunately, have a huge indentation in my left cheek where the wallet used to be.
Nowadays, my wallet is very slim and located in my right front pocket. It has a tight money clip on the outside, slots for one debit card, one credit card and one driver’s license and a cunning little pocket that you can squeeze open which will hold two, maybe three business cards plus my “frequent reader” card from Books, Inc.
Also in my right front pocket is my new stubby pen. You see, a man, at least a man without a purse, who tends to wear pocketless t-shirts, cannot carry a pen or pencil around in his pants or it might stab him in the thigh. Until class last evening, I needed to have a pen with me at all times so I could jot down the fascinating things that occurred to me during the day or note things I had observed which no one had ever observed before. That’s when I was thinking about becoming a writer. I spent hours at Flax shopping for this stubby pen – it looks like it might have belonged to Flash Gordon, defender of the universe. You could set up a trick photo and claim this stubby little guy was the flying cigar of Gordon’s archenemy, Ming, the merciless monarch of Mongo. Pull it open and the writing tip pops out. Snap it shut and the writing tip retracts. Plus, at just over two inches it doesn’t create any confusion about whether I’m carrying or gun in my khakis or just happy to see you.
Everything else I carry around with me, except for two particularly crucial items, is also in the right front pocket: typically keys and any change I might have accumulated. Nothing. Nothing at all, save those two particularly crucial items (which must remain unnamed to create suspense) goes in the left pocket. Even if I pick up a huge uncut diamond lying on the ground or happen to need a Swiss Army knife that day, those would have to go in the right hand pocket.
If you are now on the edge of your seat, asking yourself “What in God’s name could he possibly have in that other pocket? I can’t stand the suspense.” Then perhaps my writing career has a fighting chance. But I somehow doubt it.
Let’s cut to the chase, the climax of this story, shall we? Here in my left front pocket is my very slim notebook. A Moleskin©, the exact model Hemingway used to carry around to jot down his very curt, masculine thoughts and manly feelings. Once crucial to my life as a writer, I won’t be needing this particular accoutrement after last night’s class, but it has contoured nicely to my mid-thigh and I might hang on to it; it can’t weigh more than a half an ounce.
The other item sanctioned real estate in my left front pocket is, of course, my cell phone. But, through your own deduction and no cunning foreshadowing of my own, you will have guessed that. What you can’t have possibly guessed is the back-story that goes along with this particular cell phone and makes it a cell phone unlike any other cell phone in the world. You see, I have recently retired…
The reason nothing can be in there with this particular cell phone is that, as a retired person, I had to pay for it out of my own wallet (which is in the other pocket) and I don’t want anything scratching it or pressing against its little micro chips.
If you are currently a wage earner and your employer provides you with a cell phone, you have several things to look forward to in your retirement. Generally, the term “looking forward” is reserved for happy events, things that are worth waiting for. That wouldn’t be the case here.
Once you retire, you will probably have to buy your own cell phone. WARNING: Do not, under any circumstances, go to the cell phone store on a weekend; it will be swarming, God knows why, with teenagers. There are so many makes and models of phones to choose from. It’s daunting. In shopping for your cell phone, interestingly, the feature that gets the most play has nothing whatsoever to do with a telephone. (In marketing this is called “barrowed interest” in writing, I’m hoping to God, this might be known as an “angle”.) This feature has nothing to do with the clarity of the reception. Nothing to do with the coverage – as in can you really get a signal with it and if so can you hear what the person on the other end of the line is trying to convey?
This much-touted feature, of course, is the camera. Who decided to do that? To put a camera in a telephone? Did they do it just because it was possible? With that rationale why don’t they put a toaster oven in your clock radio? On second thought, someone probably has. But if you’re like me, you already own a camera and the jig is up about surreptitiously using your phone to photograph girls at the gym high on endorphins and aglow with perspiration. (Men are pigs, aren’t they?) In most cases the camera works about as well as the phone. While many of the phones are free (after rebate) when you sign up for one of the service plans, here’s my advice: go for the make and model all the teenagers wish to God they could have but can’t afford. It’ll make you feel superior, like Cathy Bates in “Fried Green Tomatoes” when those tacky teenage girls nabbed her parking spot and she just plowed right into them and smashed up their daddy’s car because she had better insurance. Feeling superior to anyone, even a teenager, is important for retired folk.
And there you have it, my friends. My last writing assignment. My final hope for authorship. The scintillating story of “what’s in my pockets”. Completely free of any angle. Completely barren of any pathos. The last hurrah of a very short-lived career in writing.

-----Original Message-----
From: Margee Robinson
To: Adair Lara
Sent: 3/29/2002 3:29 PM
Subject: Writing Class Piece

Hi Adair,

I have copied my "Writing Class" piece into this email as you
requested. If you wanted it as an attachment, let me know and I'll
resend. I think it showed great restraint on my part to wait until
today to send it instead of sending it right after class. - Margee
Robinson

Dear Martha,

Writing class began at 6:45 PM, March 14. Due to a last minute
cancellation I was accepted into class at 6:47 PM, March 14. At 6:49,
after a frantic change of clothes, I set off to class, driving a bit
more dangerously than usual.

This saga began in January where in a fit of self-improvement, writing
wise, I emailed local writer Adair Lara for information about her
writing classes. I considered just doing this step mighty good. No
real writing...but writing for information, an indication my low
standards. I received a reply about a week later saying the class was
full, as was the next one. She did however want to see a writing
sample, and if qualified would put me on the waiting list. Terror
struck. If I had known I would actually have to send a piece of writing
I can assure you I never would have inquired. Now I had to produce a
sample mighty fast. If I took a year to send a sample, I figured it
said way too much about my writing habits. I revised a short piece,
still hysterical. Lucky I had that little piece that took months to
make presentable. As I'm hysterically writing, I'm thinking, here is a
writer who, at the least, can produce 2 columns a week. She might not
have much patience for my lack of speed...or is that a lack of something
else. I would love to have a column that comes out once a year. I like
a deadline. My finger hovered over the send button for a long time and
finally in a burst of optimism, pressed send. Maybe it was a burst of
"screw it". The first piece of writing, sample or otherwise, to be
submitted anywhere was jettisoned into cyberspace. And then I waited.
I checked my email regularly, Very regularly. And then my Sally Field
moment came...she liked it, she really liked it. A few encouraging
words, a full class, a place on the waiting list. I didn't have to
write yet. How perfect was this?

With possibility in the air I went shopping. That’s pretty much the
first thing I like to do when starting a new project. Actually, it
doesn’t have to be new project. I’ve wanted an Oxford English
Dictionary for a long time. With the chance of a writing class on the
horizon, want became necessity. In order to make space for the OED my
desk needed to be cleared, a perfect time to reorganize my notes. Notes
sound a bit more substantive than the reality of piles of papers of
every size and shape, each with tidbits of writing, crammed onto a shelf
in no particular order. It was clear that I needed a better system if I
was going to be in a class. I bought file folders, including some
accordion shaped ones, because they came in the best colors. Those file
folders certainly helped, but required the purchase of a plastic
portable file drawer in order to contain them. My dictionary arrived and
it consumed the entire area of the desk, not occupied by the computer.
It was impossible to pick up and open without breaking my wrist. I
needed to purchase a stand to hold the dictionary.

I tackled my virtual desktop next. I’m mortified to report that I had
labeled varying versions of one short piece, "Final/Not", "Final Draft",
"Final #1", there were two of these, "Final # 3,4 and 7". No indication
to what happened to #2,5 and 6". It is clear I got pretty desperate in
figuring out my system because all of a sudden there was a "Final Draft
#13". There must be some software that I could buy that would number
things automatically and keep me out of the loop. I planned to go
shopping again soon.

I shopped for words too. In a lovely new little notebook, with a
vintage photo of the Eiffel tower on front, I started accumulating words
that might find their way into my writing, just as soon as I started
writing.

As March 14 approached, I was disappointed that apparently the class was
full and I didn’t get in. But still, no writing required. I would have
time to get the bookstand for my dictionary. I leisurely opened my email
on the evening of March 14, all hope gone. There was an email from Adair
Lara. A cancellation! Could I respond immediately and come to the first
class? It was sent at 8 am. It was 5:40 PM. I replied, leaving an
email and voice mail message. "Was I too late, love to come, can’t wait,
so happy etc." And then I waited. At 6:45,the starting time of the
class, I put on old paint-stained pants and a torn flannel shirt. At
6:47 Adair Lara called. "Just got your message, come on over, park in my
driveway", a very special favor in San Francisco. I was in the class
and arriving late, no psychic preparedness, no new pen, no new notebook,
and no new shoes for the first night of class. And now I have to write…a
lot. I'm hysterical again. Of course any sensible person would be
working on a piece right now. You can see my problem. Maybe the store
with bookstands is still open. I better go check.

Lynne Jerome
Going to a Place I’d Never Go

It wasn't that I'd never go there. It was the terms under which I was there that made it all so strange. I'd decided to take a writing class. This in itself wasn't unusual; I'd just finished a writing class at the college I work for. As a staff member, I'm eligible for one course tuition free each semester. Last September as I was walking the blue carpeted hall toward my office I passed a woman I was certain I'd seen before, but couldn't place. I continued walking until she disappeared into the bathroom and then doubled back to catch her on her return trip and sure enough, it was Adair Lara, a local newspaper columnist, whose columns I'd loved and who had been a guest teacher one night in a writing class I had taken at a bookstore in Malin several years hack. I introduced myself and we shook hands and l found out that she was here to teach the first day of her undergraduate creative nonfiction class that would begin in about two hours. I'd had no idea! After wishing her well I ran to my office, made a flurry of phone calls to line up after school care for my kids and alert my husband that we'd be home late, got the forms I'd needed from the registrar and department offices and by the start of class was sitting in a chair at the table, a notebook and the required texts in front of me.

But tonight I was skulking about that same Malin bookstore I'd taken the class in, eyeing the clerks to sec if I could figure out who had student registration duty for the class that was about to begin. At the end of last semester, after loving everything about the class, I pulled together my courage and asked Adair if I could be a sort of TA or provide any other service I was capable of (baking cookies, scrubbing floors, knitting socks?) in trade for the reg fees so I could be in the class. She graciously accepted.

We left the terms of the trade undefined, but in the intervening weeks until the class started, 1 mused about organizational systems I could design for her; ways to efficiently handle the large volumes of paper teaching a writing course necessarily generated. Whenever I remembered the ensuing chaos in the group when she handed back our drafts or gave us photocopied pieces to read, the shuffling of the paper and the predictable chatter, "where's page 27" "does anyone else have extra page 5's?" "I didn't get my cover sheet back" would make my pulse quicken. One night during a reading for students and faculty at the college, she had turned a page to find the next page missing. Out in the audience, I seized up in my seat. I stopped breathing as she vamped, telling the audience what she would have been reading to us at that point in the story. Meanwhile, someone shuffled through the pile she had left on her seat and found the missing page. My heart rate didn't slow til sometime later that night.

So I knew there were myriad ways I could help and didn't really worry about pinning down the details until a few days before class. I emailed to ask if there was anything I could do ahead of time and what I should do about checking in. She replied that she would let me know how I could help and to just "come in after the bookstore person leaves." My mind raced. I was going to just crash the course? What if they closed a door and I couldn't get in? What if the bookstore personnel asked for proof of registration?

I got to the store early to scope out the scene. For the entire hour-long drive there, I kept admonishing myself not to walk straight to the register, with my arms in the air and turn myself in. I was standing by a display near the door when Adair came up, "I see you skulking around here!" We said hello and hugged, chatted a bit and I said, "So I'll just mosey in after a bit?" "Oh yeah," she said, "just wait til the clerk is out of the room" She went to get her coffee and I positioned myself in the travel section, outside the classroom entryway, and watched the clerk check off names and hand out name tags from behind a book about Exciting Getaways to the Caribbean. I heard Adair begin talking while everyone settled down and after about ten minutes, the clerk walked toward the front counter with some papers in her hand, and I slipped in the door and over to one of two empty seats off to the right that I'd seen from my post. It was a room full of middle-aged, nicely groomed white people—all women except for one man. Everyone had bright blue nametags. Everyone looked like they'd paid to be here.

I opened my notebook and started writing. Instead of taking notes on what Adair was saying, I was jotting down my lines for when the clerk came in and interrupted the class by asking what I was doing there_ I considered: I'm Adair's cousin, visiting from Iowa. Or, I'm a student from Mills, where she taught last semester, and I'm doing an article for the school newspaper. Finally, I'm her assistant, taking notes for her—she wants to turn this into a book and she can't very well teach and take notes at the same time.

Then a young man, also missing a blue nametag, took the empty seat next to me. I wondered what he was doing here. What were the chances that he had signed up to take this course? Maybe he was someone's son? Could he be a fellow imposter—dropping in because it looked interesting while he'd been shopping for books? A few times, he seemed to laugh at inappropriate moments causing me to be even more suspicious. Maybe if the clerk came in and asked now, I could just say, "I'm with him" and see what his answer was!

As the class continued, I got taken in by what Adair said and started to forget my registration worries. When we went around the room saying our names and reasons for being in the class, I introduced myself as legitimately as anyone had before me. I also learned that the man next to me was indeed someone's son—Adair's! And I thanked my stars I hadn't embarrassed myself by passing him a note asking if he was a fellow illegal. When Adair announced the assignments for the coming week, as usual, several people raised hands with questions. Were there five topics to write about or just four? When were the 4-page assignments due? Were we supposed to send our pages to our writing partners or to Adair? Then neighbors began talking, trying to clarify the instructions for one another. As the noise level escalated, I felt my familiar racing heart. On the way home I hummed to myself as I devised a filing system to contain the fifty pieces of paper that would be turned in next week and every week after that for the next seven weeks.

I was a writer that did not write. While I watched others flail about with
their creativity, I calmly assured myself that I was merely a diamond in the
rough and when I finally decided to grace the outside world with a few pages
of prose, the accolades would be mine for the taking. I failed to grace
much more than a grocery list over the years, surrendering hopes of
consequent acclaim.
On one unsuspecting Wednesday afternoon, an email popped up on my computer
from Adair Lara, a real live writer person offering a class to little old me
and I took it as a sign. Several other emails had popped up from the bank
regarding sales ratios and the like, but holding no cosmic significance for
me, they were promptly deleted. I continued to bask in the glow of my
potential until an unfortunate pinprick of reality burst my Pulitzer-bound
balloon. I would most likely have to write something to get into the class.
I highlighted the email and dragged it towards delete. As I began to slowly
raise my finger off the mouse, I heard a little voice say "Stop. Not this
time!" I spun around wildly, half-expecting to see a goldly-illuminated
Roma Downey, her eyes pooling, begging me to share my god given talents with
the world in her blessed brogue. Instead my corneas were met with the stark
blaze of a fluorescent light fixture as I realized the voice was just the
temp in the next cubicle in a heated but covert game of Tomb Raider. "Stop
or I'm going to crush you bastards" she muttered. The disappointment of
absent angels notwithstanding, I opted to view the timing as evidence still
of a fumbling fate struggling to get a foothold on my path.
I rifled through my old college assignments to excavate any piece that would
pass for recent, freeing me from the burden of actually having to, of all
things, write, but my movie review of "The Forbidden Dance is Lambada"
seemed to fall short of my hopes. Weeks passed until I was, fortunately for
me, shamed into writing something for a reading at my Artist's Way Art
Opening, a group I joined to unblock my creativity that turned out to be
real sticklers for working on your craft. I searched for a topic that would
reveal my genius and insight into the human condition, but as I was always
taught to write what you know, I landed uncomfortably on the chilling story
of my recently diagnosed digestive disorder... inevitably a crowd pleaser. I
scrambled to pull the piece together the night of the event, mowing through
the very M&M's I was renouncing on page after page, hand writing the tail
end as I bounded down my steps and into the waiting taxi, reviving my
signature "in the cab conclusion." After the adrenaline drained from my head
that night, and I began formulating sentences again and retaining coherent
thoughts, I realized I now had a sample to submit for the class. I
considering brushing it up a bit; at the very least replacing the chocolate
saliva dribbled sheets for freshly typed prose. I stuffed it into an
envelope and wished it the best, sending it off to a real person for the
first time.
Twenty fours later, I combed my email for Adair's response. "Well, I know
she must be busy, but I have a life, too," I said wrapping another band
around my softball sized rubber-band ball at work. I decided to take a long
walk around the floor, socializing with the resident office slackers in an
attempt to distract myself. Ten whole minutes later, I rounded my gray tweed
covered cubicle and shook off my screen saver. "You have got to be kidding
me!" I yelped as I furiously clicked on my "send and receive" tab. After
getting off the line with our computer tech support to rule out server
errors, I phoned my mother for commiseration.
"That damn lady hasn't gotten back to me. Doesn't she know that all I'm
clinging to is your praise about my letters from camp at this point...I
mean, what with the penmanship contest wins no longer coming in...doesn't
she realize what's riding on this?"
"She sounds like a busy lady, honey. I wouldn't worry about it. She
probably doesn't have your job flexibility. Isn't she a columnist for a
major newspaper?"
"Oh, yeah, o.k., sure...but did you birth her from your loins!?" I cried
into the receiver before slamming it down.
I flung my head on my keyboard, considering sucking my finger as a last
resort for self-soothing when I heard a faint ding from my computer. I
looked up and a newly bolded message from "alara@sfgate" glared at me from
the screen. I gulped a hard gulp and hummed Gloria Gayner's anthem in my
head.
I slowly clicked open the message and gasped.
"It's a wonderful sample and you're in the class."
I began printing multiple copies as my fingers flew across the phone keypad.
"Mommy, mommy...she likes me...she really likes me!"
"Who? Oh...well what happened to 'that damn lady'?"
"...a real official writer from the San Francisco Chronicle, a paper which I
don't really read all that often but I hear is quite reputable, thinks I'm
wonderful..."
"I think she meant your piece dear. Better not let on that your sample is
the only stuff you've got. Now, did you need anything else 'cause I have to
bring your father his meatloaf."
The next day as I faced the same mundane crowded commute, still averting my
eyes from the elderly and physically impaired to remain securely seated, I
beamed with a new sense of importance and purpose. I was a writer, and
apparently, to hear my pal Adair tell it, a not too shabby one at that. I
pictured my much anticipated arrival into the class and imagined how
difficult it might be for her to hide her favoritism, as I was certain
"wonderful" was reserved for only the cream of this semester's crop...for
those who could write so poignantly and passionately, with just the right
dash of merriment, about such wrenching, soulful topics as being sick. Being
sick. Those two words hung ominously in my thoughts until I felt a cold
chill rise up towards my neck and an acid burn start bubbling in my gut.
All color then drained from my face. She thought I was sick! Here I was
mentally laying out brightly colored book jackets, when she thought she was
only filling her Make A Wish quota for the quarter. My god, I had gotten a
pity place in her class because I was unable to ingest wheat. I felt faint
and rested my head against an elderly woman's walker in the aisle.
Once I recovered, I decided, at the very least, I could finally meet my
Personal Essay-type peers. Other young struggling folks like myself,
bolding exploring the "known", who would also surely find my contention that
Cream of Mushroom soup's aftertaste resembles Captn' Crunch cereal to be
noteworthy. We'd all still be living like college kids in a Real World
reality, surviving on our wits when the temp pool went dry, and I imagined
us huddled around a café's wobbly Formica 4 top fashioning our own remedial
round table. On the first day of class, I raced up the stairs of Adair's big
yellow Victorian and burst through the door with expectant glee. I stopped
short in the foyer, facing a colorful, nicely furnished living room filled
with a buzzing crowd. Perplexed, I resisted the temptation to pull out my
email to go over the address again and reveal my shock, but there had to be
a mistake. These were...adults. People with furniture and established credit
and undoubtedly, things they had written! Real writer people cramped on two
couches...looking at me and my ever so subtly post-pubescent puss slinking
into a folding chair, all of us thinking the same thing: "You, my dear, do
not belong here." I desperately sized up the room, hoping for more obvious
misfits in the crowd, landing half-heartedly on a much older gentleman with
thick glasses named Woody squished against the sofa arm. "Well, maybe he
doesn't belong either then," I weakly consoled myself. I shifted awkwardly
on the cold steel chair, imagining how I'd inevitably be pulled aside
quietly after class, where it might be suggested that I seek out a less
rigorous, more appropriate course, especially for someone of my weakened
constitution. I considered bolting out of the window after a bathroom break,
but dragging in the seven bags I brought with me would arouse suspicion and
call more attention to my questionable presence.
Adair brushed back the thick sweep of her short honey-colored hair,
bare-footed and comfortable, as I contemplated faking some kind of
gluten-related seizure. She went over some introductory topics and then,
with all the anxiety-eliciting power of a pop quiz, asked a few of us to
read. "Oh, here we go," I thought, "it wasn't bad enough having to endure
the already obvious awkwardness. Now I get to have verbal confirmation
outing my displacement. "Poor little novice. Let's all take a moment to
chortle at her sophomoric use of language and fetal epiphanies, shall we,"
they'd snicker. I slid further down my chair. First up, Woody cleared his
throat and scooted to the sofa's edge, shifting his pages closer to his
face. He began to read, recounting the horrors of mustard plaster steamed
to his chest as a child, and we all laughed with delight and
recognition...all of us (even if, say, one had no idea what mustard plaster
was). A few more people read, sharing stories and insights from their lives,
with which we could all empathize or embrace, softening our own anxieties
for a few moments. Their gazes then shifted and it was my turn to read. I
unfolded my crumpled pages and started to slowly recite the words I knew
only too well, my heart thumping louder than my voice. My volume began to
rise, along with my confidence, as I soaked up their audible acceptance.
These adults were laughing at my words, my stories, my thoughts, and not
only were they not my Mom, I seriously doubted, unless money had exchanged
hands, that they even knew her! They wrote me post-reading "valentines" that
said things like "this piece really rocks" and "you're a very funny writer"
and I figured, hey, I think I can probably settle in here for awhile after
all. Most importantly, though, wedged between these two cramped couches, I
began to realize the power of writing. It would be the great equalizer,
shedding us of clothes, calendars, and discomfort and I knew that in this
room of strangers....adults...people...I had found a world where I finally
belonged.
COVER LETTER:
Erik Meers
Managing Editor, PAPER Magazine
365 Broadway, 6th Fl.
New York, NY 10013
July 16, 2001

Dear Erik,
After a long day of eye-blurring editing, as you sink into your sofa
with a carton of Crunch 'n Munch, do you want to be greeted by "When I first
found out I had herpes, I was devastated!"?
Me, neither.
Unfortunately, recent drug advertising on TV has soiled our few moments of
solace, and I knew the team at PAPER would be just the folks to help me out
this current abomination. I've attached an approximately 1100-word
perspective on this plague. I hope you find it to be an enjoyable read and
take comfort that its benefits are free from the following common side
effects: dizziness, dry mouth, headaches, constipation, abdominal
cramping...
I started my illustrious writing career in the communications program at
Boston University. However, after college, full of piss, vinegar, and
Melrose Place, I rejected the world of advertising, copywriting
specifically, to avoid squandering my creative energies writing copy for
such doldrum clients as financial institutions. Today, as I sit in my
cubicle at California Federal, I become painfully aware of the irony.
Obviously, I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Sara Rhodes
1254 23rd Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94122
Work: (415) 904-4685
Home: (415) 681-8214
srhodes@calfed.com

Cathy Scott on writing

BUT SOMETHING GOT IN MY WAY
She was about five-foot-seven, thin, with red hair, and beady eyes. Addicted to hand-outs, she’d circulate around our desks, plopping down one writing exercise after another. AH, THE ANTAGONIST!
“On this one,” she’d say, in her quirky voice, “imagine you’re a dinosaur. Only you’re pink, and gentle.”
Well, I was already writing my very-important manuscript. It would be an epoch of, well...epoch proportions. I didn’t have time for frivolous exercises. So I procrastinated on my assignments. I simply wouldn’t do them. I’d slide under the radar. The instructor would never know. My writing partners—busy people—would be grateful not to be inundated by my snippets. It was going to be very simple.

The Writer’s Path

First, enter the world totally believing Cap’s Kangaroo’s rah-rah that you can do anything you set your mind to. Think astronaut, paleontologist. Enjoy saying paleontologist to elementary school teachers and hope they don’t ask you to spell it. In third grade, you complete your first short story: A Horse and His Boy, five pages including the half page “THE END” with exclamation points that follow the suspenseful “and he chewed the rope – the rope to freedom!” conclusion. You take Mrs. Robinson’s advice to “just keep writing” literally and become a closet journal writer and poet. You will recall this moment as proof of your life calling a scary number of times over the next thirty years.

Start a journal in middle school for keeping track of boy crushes and injustices from the world, particularly blonde members. Welcome rainy days for writing poetry – “lyrics” really, as soon as Elton John gets his hands on these – revealing your seventh grade experiences with love and loss:

Secret Lover, Secret Lover, can you hear my desperate cries?
Come away through the door,
Away from the truth,
Away from the lies.

Arrive at college eager for freedom to select coursework and fill social calendar. Assume that campus party attendance is mandatory for freshman and oversleep any chance for Biology course credit. Decide that 8:00 a.m. is too early for a major, and who needs another doctor in this world anyway? Quit chemistry. Take German. And don’t even think about the Creative Writing Program.

Enroll in first college literature class and find out you’re the only who didn’t do the optional summer fun reading of Man and His Symbols. Wonder what a psych book is doing in literature and get lost in the crossfire of archetype references and familiar sounding books you never read in Mrs. Honeycutt’s democratically-minded English class where punctuation reigned supreme. Turn in your first paper, thrilled with the insightful psychoanalysis of your giant bicycle looming in the distance dream. Confidently pick up graded paper the next week, unrecognizable now through bold, red strokes shouting your need to write longer sentences and use bigger words. Finish semester with handwritten gobbledy-gook comparing Paradise Lost and A Winter’s Tale written in a 2:00 a.m. tequila haze that makes no sense by 9:00 a.m. class. Get first A on assignment.

Spend adult career writing for short attention span executives; slimming paragraphs down to bullets, bullets down to executive summaries, and summaries down to top-line conclusions that all come down to this: your company so sucks that you really need us to fix your problems. Scatter jargon with pages of acronyms, and assorted MBA’isms: outline objectives, determine process, analyze findings, and summarize conclusions. Get better at blaming client management but end the engagement before you actually have to write in complete sentences.

Eventually, you give in to the force that is pushing you, screaming at you to stop the Google-searching factoid collection (that no one reads) you’ve called a career and write the book that’s been haunting you for two years. Get pregnant first, relieved to put off lack of talent for the whole world to see. Your accountant, Sherwin will ask, in his thick Brooklyn accent, what happened this year? did you stop getting assignments? to which you’ll mumble something about three kids and different direction as self-explanatory. Once acknowledged, you find that writing is a force stronger than the professional definition of yourself that carried you through college and beyond for reasons that you can barely fathom at this point.

One year goes by. “How’s your book?” people continue to ask. Over and over again. Bask in journaling process and stream of consciousness recordings. Know that the wisdom will sound so good in black and white. It doesn’t.

Think there might be a correct way to write a book, even one about yourself. You decide this idea has merit and you: 1) outline the process, 2) analyze the sources, 3) determine best strategy for moving ahead. Attend your first weekend seminar with a promising sounding title of “First Person Writing That Sells.” Think 6 hours is fun, why not go for 30? Panic attacks begin two weeks before class and continue for the next twelve, accompanied by severe homework guilt on Tuesday mornings. Fun little diatribes turn to serious critiques. How do these people have so much material? Wonder at what point you can call yourself a writer.

Hide your writing journal on lap at kids’ soccer games; rely on other moms to give you answers to the “how many goals did I score?” quiz at the end. Struggle to make sense of idea fragments through pageful drawings of happy faces (with tongues) used to amuse your 1-year old in same soccer matches. At home, you are interrupted by constant humming of “I love you, You love me,” while toddler tugs at your leg and 10-year-old screams from downstairs for piano books that she KNOWS you HAD last week. Your moment of inspiration comes out of nowhere, and you drag along your still screaming 1-year old, pretending to calm her without losing the tiny thread of enlightened prose, as you look for just one of your notebooks in the scattered piles. Settle for a used envelope and a crayon. Recycle it before transcribing it.

You carry and fill multiple journals and purse-sized notebooks with partially realized class assignments designed to bring out the writer in you, things like: obsessions and smells, describe your nose, and what does your junk drawer say about you? Realize that your weekly obsession is trying to figure out something to say for these assignments. Lose sleep, dream writing, drink coffee, ignore friends. Switch to stretchier clothes and looser sweaters that hide the effects of also ignoring exercise.

You sit in your office, grabbing the quiet time to dash off a few thoughts before the Tuesday class countdown begins. Your seven-year old son walks into the multi-pile, no surface area desktop you call a home office, and you realize you’re still in pajamas and haven’t brushed your teeth. But he sure looks proud of his Mom. Then he asks, in his sweet, direct tone, “Mommy, are you ever going to have a job again?”

At night, before you get started on that homework, you decide to clear out the towering stack of New Yorkers by your bedside, reading just the fiction before surrendering to the fact you will never finish them before the new batch arrives. One hour later, you throw down the magazines in disgust, knowing you don’t have a thimbleful of their talent, so how in the world will you ever get published? Notice the Mitch Ablom book peeking out from the bottom of the nightstand and think there might be hope after all.

You attend your weekly come-to-Jesus sessions for which you’ve paid good money, realizing the piece you brought cannot be read out loud: your dialogue is full of floating heads and unrealized conflict resolution and it ‘tells’ more than it ‘shows’. Push it to the back of your notebook, with the growing stack of “work in process” assignments you’ve promised yourself to complete as soon as class is over.

Continue with anxiety attacks, humiliation, frustration, but don’t stop, convinced by the memory of Mrs. Robinson that you are doing exactly what you should be doing. And besides, you need an answer to the casually thrown question “are you done with your book?,” which is kind of like when your parents asked if you got a ‘100’ on your Chem exam. Am I Done?? “Well, about how much of it do you think you’ve written - 25%?”

“I’m taking a writing class.”

March 3. 1999

Adair Lara
97 Scott Street
San Francisco, CA 94 117

Dear Adair:

Enclosed is the first piece I wrote for our writing club after your class. You gave me a wonderful push toward exploring first person writing. 1 am struggling to fit it into my life in a major way. Just as you said I am finding it very hard and hence very time consuming. But it is so much fun that I want to "go for it". My class in Spanish keeps hogging the time I have for practice, so I'm trying to convince myself to elbow Spanish out of the way and write - in English. The exchanges between me and my writing partner are dwindling since we are both too busy to keep up the daily pace . Our club has been a nice motivator though. It sure has livened up my mail. I am hoping we will continue it in some fashion.

On a day when i was too strapped for time to write a Mist person piece, I sent Dick the notes I took during your class. He liked them so much that he sent them on to a friend. So just in case you might be able to make use of them in some way, I am taking the liberty of e mailing them to you by way of a kind of thank you. Please do what you like with them. I will take no offense if you hit Delete.

I hope that your Brazilian adventures met all your expectations and that I will be reading about them soon in your column.

Sincerely,
Pat Malmstrom <twinservices@j un o com>

Marc, 1999
Taking a Chance on Chance
Pat Malmstrom
Taking a Chance on Chance
by Pat Malmstrom
When the extension catalog came in the mail I let it sit on the bench in my bedroom for a few days before I looked through it to find a Spanish conversation class. In my sabbatical from administering a non profit organization I was planning fun for the right side of my brain. Learning Spanish would lead me back toward childhood when learning was not linear and time ran in circles like the clock.
But after I'd found the Spanish course I wanted to register for, I idly flipped on from the "S" courses all the way back to the "Ws". I couldn't look up from the pages until I had read the descriptions for every writing course listed. "What is going on here?" I asked myself. "Haven't you just finished writing a book? Aren't you just sick of having computer eye-glaze and desk chair back-ache? Isn't your in-box overflowing with unanswered business mail?" "Yes," I answered. "But look, I argued, "not all of these courses are about business and book writing." "Here's one on first person writing with Adair Lara. "1 love reading Adair's column. I've heard her read at Black Oak bookstore. I know she'll make me laugh. And just maybe, she'll point the way back to the eagerness I felt as a ten year old when Sister Miriam Dolores gave us free time to write about our favorite relative."
Storm clouds loomed as I drove sleepily across the bay into the City for the Saturday class with my hands at a careful 10 and 2 o'clock on the steering wheel. I felt okay about bringing a blank notebook. After all I was just shopping around. This might not be

March 1999
Taking a Chance on Chance Pat Malmstrom

my cup of tea. I'd wait and see how things went before I decided whether or not I'd write something for Adair to review.
About 50 students were gathering in the gray classroom light ten minutes ahead of time. We filled up almost all the chairs and struggled to arrange our jackets and bags without bumping our neighbors. Adair stood behind a small desk riffling through a high stack of papers. "Oh my gosh!" I thought, startled. "Could all those be essays people have turned in today?" It turned out that they weren't from our crowd. They were offerings from our predecessors from which Adair deftly extracted examples of writing that works.
The morning flew by as Adair shared facts about good writing... Good writing is difficult. Write. That's how you learn. Don't wait until you discover a new universal truth to share with us all. It'll never happen. Be honest about your own personal struggles. That's what it takes. And, it's hard.
After lunch it was our turn to try. Adair wrote "Mother's Day" on the board, chalked a big circle around it and gave us five minutes to write clusters of our personal associations with the word. Then we had five minutes to write one paragraph incorporating some of those associations.
I wrote "When my ex husband and I started having children, the question of Mother's Day and Father's Day came up. Would we celebrate those holidays in the expected fashion - flowers for me- ties for him? We decided a resounding "No."

March 1999
Taking a Chance on Chance

Then she showed us how imagery and telling details help your reader experience what you experienced and gave us five minutes to rewrite a sentence from our paragraph. Many precious minutes went by as I struggled to find the right images. Time was up. Adair was already asking for volunteers to read their before and after sentences when the words started tumbling onto the margins of my note book. "Awash in drip drying diapers and the monsoon rains of Portland, Oregon, In that Long ago May when our first daughter, Carolyn, was born, Ed and I rejected out of hand any notion of celebrating Mother's or Father's Day. No flowers for me. No ties for him. No Hallmark cards either. "
"Whew!" I thought, " That was really hard, but I think I nailed it."
I let a couple of readings go by and then I raised my hand feeling a little shaky. My mouth went dry and my voice got hoarse, but I managed to read.
Adair looked out at the group expectantly. "Class?" she asked." Nothing. Silence. I held my breath. Finally Adair spoke. "It's really very good. You even managed to work in a kid the second time. And for that matter your first try was good, too. "
I exhaled.
As I drove home over the bridge my hands kept sliding down to the bottom of the steering wheel. Unperturbed by the heavy traffic and the storm winds jerking the car, I could have steered with my knees.

Yellow Lines
(memoir of Adair's class, put to music)
Josh Coleman

YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES HOW THEY MAKE A FELLA PINE
FOR THOSE GOOD OL YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES YELLOW LINES GONNA MAKE A MEAN MAN KIND MAKE AN UPTIGHT ONE UNWIND MAKE A BROKEN CHURCH BELL CHIME MAKE A SLEAZEBALL LOSE HIS SLIME MAKE A BLIND MAN TELL TIME

"HEY TEACHER
WHERE'S MY YELLOW LINES?"

Establishing Trust and Encouraging One Another

Sally Sanger

I participate in a writing group that meets once a month in San Francisco. We meet tonight for the third time. I am very glad to be in the group, but I find, on the whole, however, that I feel shy about sharing with the group material I have written. This feeling puts a damper on my participation and reasons for being there (here). I have considered dropping out of the group because of these feelings, but after discussing them with my husband, we decided perhaps this is a challenge I need to meet for my own personal growth, and that opening up the discussion within the group may be worthwhile, not only for me but for the rest of the group as well.

I am afraid of being shot down. My husband says a beginning writer is like a tender green shoot that is fragile, and that one must be very careful to choose a safe place and trustworthy people with whom to share ones work, in order to continue growing.

In our writing class last Spring, I was able to turn in some of my most personal and best work to the teacher alone. I trusted her because she set the tone for emphasizing what works, for encouraging us, and for highlighting the positive. Occasionally one or the other of us would make a remark in class that might discourage the writer of work under discussion. In those instances, almost immediately our teacher would intervene, countering any negative feedback, and setting us on the right course again, of On parental jargon) "emphasizing the positive and ignoring the negative." On the whole,
however, taking the cue from our teacher, we were very good about mentioning what we liked and why.

I hope we are able to continue in our writing group this method of encouraging one another in our different writing styles and subjects. My husband and I have a friend who meets with a group of writers, also all women, that has been together for many years. This summer, in fact, they rented a house together in Cape Cod for a whole month, to devote to writing and encouraging one another. I hope we are able to develop such a long standing group.

But now we are just getting started. I hope we grow to feel safe sharing with each other our writing efforts, knowing that we will treat each other and our work with respect, sensitivity, and confidentiality. Part of that will be taking care in our comments about one another's writing, to say what we like and why, honestly. Another part will be not gossiping about each other. I must be as careful as anyone else, and if I have said anything to offend anyone in the past, I am sorry. None of us is perfect, of course, but I hope that if any of us is negatively critical of another's work, the rest of us will realize what is
happening and work to set the discussion in a positive light, especially in these early months of our group, so as to develop respect and confidence in one another.

As we grow to trust each other, it may be that after we have learned to praise the good, we will be able to and even appreciate comments on what does not work. But I for one am just in the tender shoot stage of writing, and cannot bear a lot of negative criticism. How do you feel?

ADAIR LARA PROGRAM EVALUATION
I. Do more analysis of process.
2. You opened some windows for me into a kind of writing that has intrigued me for a long time but which 1'd done nothing about.
3. Each week I've felt as if every word you said and point you made went strait inside me.
4. I am forever indebted to you for your focus on angles and epiphanies. Now I go through my days thinking about those two concepts of form and structure, and they make exact sense to me. I look at previous work in my mind, and notice that what has those ingredients and what doesn't. this is stimulating stuff, and I feel as if your class gave me a short in the arm.
5. I've gone back over all my notes to help me find an angle for saying think you that wouldn't sound worn out, syrupy-sweet and full of superlatives and clichés. Not much luck yet but I've managed to jot down a few details and images that stick with me-your great hairdo that I wish I could wear but can't because my ears are too big, your funny shoes that appear to need regular feeding, your interesting house, free cokes and cute husband-oh yes, and all the writing stuff.
6. ...you have a special gift for is knowing how to critique our writing. That delicate balance of pointing out the good stuff and the stuff that isn't quite working YET. T' m going to try hard to remember that all important "YET" because as you have probably guessed, I tend to be a catastrophizer-if something isn't working out, it will NEVER work out. Skimming over essays I wrote I am a little surprised at how totally neurotic I sound in the writing. I'm not surprised at being neurotic but am very surprised at how open I am about it. Eeeek! The facade is slipping some more. Maybe it's life that needs revising and the next time you see me t might be dressed in a muumuu and have flaming red hair. Epiphany at last.
7. When you had the class respond to a few sentences I had written, they didn't evaluate it good or had but they said what they "heard". "Kid's playing in a sprinkler" or a "mother's whining voice." They each had their own experience. This impressed me and must have sunk in.
8. I also felt the visit by Joan Frank was beneficial. Her insights complimented yours. If possible I would try to have a successful freelancer talk at your classes. Listening to the pieces was helpful, but being able to jot down comments as the person read along on the physical piece itself may have made the reading more productive. Asking us to read a magazine we hope to he published in would have perhaps honed our skills. OR asking us to slip a first person piece we had read during the week that we especially liked might also serve this purpose. you could coy the ones you feel deserve it and distribute them to the rest of the class the following week.
9. My writing partner and 1 agreed to send each other an essay every weekday for two weeks, beginning the following Monday. We established no topical constraints, and vowed to utilize your model of positive and supportive feedback. I bought a yellow highlighter. The first few days were exhilarating. I wrote each rapidly each evening, completing a day's work at least the night ahead of

time. I was filled with a sense of mission and importance, knowing I had a waiting, captive, and (by definition), positive audience. I free-wrote. 1 just sat down and write it straight through, then read it once and sealed it into an envelope. I even got two days ahead of myself at one point. Though I felt some trepidation at mailed stuffed envelopes for three days before the post brought be a first essay from my partner in Alameda, the requirement of placing an essay in the mail each day was supremely motivating. 1 admired the work my writing partner, Judy, sent me, and took pleasure in commenting on it and marking the passages which really spoke to me. However, when she returned the first essay I had written, I read it with amazement. I did not remember those sentences. I had forgotten that I had written about that topic. This happened with my second, and then third, essay. Undaunted by my failing memory or the trances I must had entered during writing, I enjoyed the shock and surprise of readying my worn work. I even liked it. I read the essays to my husband and to our seventeen year old daughter, a gifted but intensely private writer. The re-read them, looked at the positive comments my partner had penciled in, and laughed over the topics and my foibles. At the beginning of the second week, I received a note from my writing partner says that an extraneous circumstance in her life would prevent her from completing the two week commitment. I was still on a roll, and had sent her a few more essays since she had written the note, but this threw a corkscrew into my momentum. I call her. The unforeseen circumstance had, by then, evaporated. We decided to complete the second week. The essays were getting harder to write. On Thursday morning of the second week, I spent two or three hours dawdling at my computer. The writing was not flowing anymore. 1 had shot my wad. I had nothing more to say that was interesting, succinct, pertinent, or remotely capable of encapsulating any wisdom or experience. Finally I finished something sub-par and dragged it off to the blue postal box on the corner. As 1 meandered home, I realized that I had not been intent on writing that day. I had been merely stalling to avoid facing a momentous task of bitter necessity, cleaning the house for weekend company. For some read now forgotten, we cried "Uncle!", and stopped after this second Thursday. Whew! Nine days of producing a complete essay each day was astonishing for me. The concept from your class of "having and angle" was one of the most helpful insights about writing that I have received and it enabled me, I believe to write these essays.
10....copying enlarges slight, so if you copy on 98%o, your margins come in a hit and you get all...
11. Preparatory exercises-to do some writing or thinking about specific exercises before the session.
12. Would like more handouts with writing exercises to practice and develop your skill in the writing process.
13.... handouts of bibliography.
14....it might have been helpful to have hand out of sample proposal & prologue & epilogue-also maybe bibliography of good memoir.
15. _.a checklist for a good memoir
16. _.like more info about definitions of memoir vs. personal essay, etc.

17_ ...the vocabulary, the first person essay structure, the understanding that it's okay not to get it right the first time, the importance of rewrites and the spontaneity of first drafts, the concept of digging deeper – all this was new and wonderfully helpful You are a kind and astute judge and I lost a lot of my fear of sharing my work as well as learning to enjoy other people's — kind of opened up my solitary world behind my typewriter_
18. I liked Philip Lopate's introduction to his anthology and think we should all be required to read it. It places us within a tradition, which is exciting.
19. I think it's important to take a break in the middle of the course, even if it has to be for two weeks. There comes a point when we have a lot of half finished work that beckon, and a week off would give time for rewrites as well as to catch our breath. It becomes increasingly hard to focus on something new with so much unfinished business trailing behind.
20. you have a great style and a wry sense of humor which demystifies writing and makes the class a lot of fun.
21....found the peer responses to be overly critical and counter-productive.
22. I liked the format of the class and most of your suggested assignments. Although I often chose to take the "or write whatever you want" option.
23. The peer response part of the class would have worked better for me if on the weeks we were reading, you had us make multiple copies of our essays so the other participants could read along.
24. Last week, when Diana read the essay about her father, I thought it sounded wonderful but most everyone else seemed to think that there were some distracting inconsistencies. After class I realized that Diana could probably read the back of a cereal box and I would think she had written something brilliant because her voice makes everything sound so important and engaging.
25. ,,,1 would have liked a few more suggestions from you of which markets might he right for our essays----especially the ones that you indicated showed promise of being publishable.
26.... my next class will be one on learning to use Excel so I can create spreadsheets and such. I'm sure that often while I am trying to create cells and columns and graphs, I will daydream myself back into your living room where I could he engaged in the wonderful stories of other people's lives and be inspired to make sense of my own.
27. I've sent out seven queries on this piece, and I've been papering the market with others. I've become addicted to having something gout out each day, and I'm working on new things constantly.
2& Among the many helpful things which you shared with us was your file of rejection letters.
29....the longer he knew her, the more of a mystery she became to him. And I think that's what keeps us going, never really knowing someone as well as I think I do, being completely surprised, wondering what else I don't know about him, this Other. I love seeing him though others' eyes and I think he feels the same about me. We always tell each other we've left the party with the best looking guy/gal in the room, marveling at our luck.

30. Finally, I'm sending the turning of the Tables to Dr. Eugene Sigler, a dentist who mirabile dictum, possesses both a sense of humor and an exquisite gentleness. Nevertheless, he lives in fear that some writer will write a slam piece on him. Just keep giving me that nitrous, I tell him, and nobody gets hurt.
31. Well, thought you might want to know that I decided to go ahead with my real name on the locket piece—must have been meant to be as had been agonizing about it even before the Chron editor called and gave me this last chance to change my mind. Called Annie Lamott as well, my sponsors—old and new, my therapists, friends, everything in my life being done by committee, you know. Almost all agreed I should plunge ahead, that it was about recognition and ownership, and that there were consequences to having been an abusive addicted parent and some of them took the form of the written word. Not only is my mother the prime minister, she and my father are the whole fucking parliament, so this will be some kind of Pyrrhic victory I suppose. At any rate, the publication date has been moved to 7/30, unless 1 get humped by someone else, so this is the Good News.
32. I have also learned a great deal about epiphany and the importance of a good-no, a great-opening line or need to "hook" the reader. Ironically, I discovered that the pieces I wrote that poked fun spoke more eloquently than the essays that were more sympathetic.
33....your point about the message needing to be universal was important and necessary for me to hear.
34. And although your class points us towards publishing as the ultimate goal, I think I've learned that the ability to express myself is the greatest prize.
35. Within the class discussion, I believe that your criticism has always been fair, true, constructive and extremely supporting. (Did I really need the extremely or the really for that matter?)
36. I went to a writer's retreat over the weekend and studied a stack of pieces I've written that don't work. I found pieces without angle or epiphany that I think I can save-and pieces that I thought were hopeless that aren't.
37. Although you dislike the word "literally" (I read that in your column recently) I believe you have literally changed my life. you have changed the way I look at situations, at people, at the absurd, at the profound, at the past, at the moment, at memorie3s, at family, and most importantly, at myself
38. I was impressed by how much the writing level in the class improved over a relatively short period of time.
39....maybe even have a class assignment of imitating an Adair Lara column.
40. Your class, and your encouragement, have been extremely important in re
establishing my confidence and my sense that I must write, even if nothing
tangible comes of it.
41. Angles are troublesome, so I'll call then angels.
42....should create a handout that defines angels....have an angel or not. 43.

Julie Gardner August 27, 2001 Class Critique
Dear Adair,
I had been toying with writing for a bit — for months actually — and had approached a few friends who write professionally to form a writer's group. I had no idea at the time what a writer's group was, but thought we would come together much the same way book clubs do on a monthly basis to share a common interest. I was itching to put my thoughts down on paper, itching to pursue something else beyond motherhood, anxious to find out if my brain still worked or if it had turned to oatmeal like my breakfast. My family had been going through a difficult time and as a result, I was carrying a heavier load than usual. I needed an outlet and a method to organize and distance myself from the chaos that was taking over my life. When my friend, Gayle, suggested your class, I thought it might provide a jumping off point. It has ... and much more.

Although you dislike the word "literally" (I read that in your column recently) I believe you have literally changed my life. You have changed the way I look at situations, at people, at the absurd, at the profound, at the past, at the moment, at memories, at family, and most importantly, at myself. That's not always a good thing for the people around me who are now subjected to my scrutiny and cynicism, but it does

least I know the way home. And when I'm asked at the next school function "What is it that you do?" I can offer up that "I am a mother and a writer" (Albeit one who needs to work on punctuation and grammar, but that's for me to know.) and watch the interviewer pique with interest rather than glaze over.
Most people have a teacher that sticks out in their mind as someone who significantly shaped their lives. I didn't. Somehow, I fell through the cracks and have spent much of my adult life wondering why and how to redeem myself Your class has made me feel as if that might yet be possible. Listening to the other students has helped improve my technique and made me more cognizant of the fact that everyone carries baggage. (Some people just happen to own Gucci while my bags are Costco specials.) . Our weekly sessions have been a course study on life as well as writing; group therapy as it were. I'll miss that. I will miss you. Prior to my becoming a student, I enjoyed reading your column and often thought you funny and talented, but you are an equally gifted teacher as well. Like a blob of clay that gets shaped into a vase (or useful pitcher — 1 couldn't resist) you have helped shape me. It's been a pleasure being a guest. As a fan, it's so nice when our Heroes do not disappoint. Thank you, Adair. I will forever feel grateful.

Sally Sanger Wordwright Unlimited

Revision Class Critique Liz Roberts

Set-up

The premise of this class is a really good one (which is why I signed up in the first place). Most of us love to write and hate to rewrite. I was frustrated with the pile of half-written essays in my hard drive (okay, so they used to be in my hard drive), and I felt paralyzed every time I looked at the titles. The exercise of going back in and fixing, rewriting, adjusting, rethinking is an important part of writing, the other half of the skill set. In fact, I'd suggest that you sort of "semi formalize" your growing curriculum – strongly recommend that your students take the rewrite class before going on to master work.

In-Class Discussions

After I took your first class, I started going to Stan Sinberg's on Monday nights for his little writing group because they're convenient (three minutes from my house) and low-key, plus they are my biggest motivator to keep writing regularly. It's a totally different set-up. He's kept it small (or more to the point, he doesn't have your reputation and has difficulty getting the group beyond four or five). We don't read aloud; rather, we bring enough copies of our pieces for everyone to read silently in class. I prefer this because

like part of a laboratory situation, with a teacher somewhere behind me who was on my side.

I wanted to comment on one other thing. I do remember very well the evening that Annie came to class at the Media Alliance and brought Sam, and I also remember Wendy Lichtman's essay about her frustration. I wanted to tell you a little of what my experience was.

As Annie tended to Sam as best she could, her stream of consciousness discussion of writing was never interrupted, and I wrote it all down to study later. She said if you have a message, send a telegram, don't clutter the end of your story with it, readers only want the depth and truth of your experience, and I wrote it down. She quoted someone who said that a writer is someone on whom nothing is lost and I wrote it down. She said writing is like driving in a fog, where you can only see to the end of your headlights but that's enough, and I wrote it down. At that time, I was absolutely dead stuck at an early structural stage of my Star Trek episode. I was desperate. After class, I went up and told her, essentially, that we were having trouble finding order in the sea of our plot. She told me that when you're writing a screenplay you have points at the end of each act that you write to. I went back to my partner, Karen, and said let's try it that way. We did, and our structure fell into place.

Not only did Sam not interfere with my learning from Annie, it seemed to me that he was intimately blended into her art and her way of understanding writing and understanding herself as a writer; he was a part of her and a part of what she was saying just as much as her hair or her alcoholism or the garden she made for Elizabeth. The forbidden word took its place on the blackboard, lest, we were led to suspect, all hell would break loose.
"Bees." Often pointed to throughout he evening, but never said. It was pointed to when an image was needed to personify and contain the demons of writing. Sam and his mortal fear of bees became metaphor f for all of the canyons and dark hallways and scary things that hide under the bed of a writer's efforts.

I don't mean to be sentimental. It's not that Annie wasn't exasperated, I could see that she was. And its not that I didn't regret the misfortune of having forgotten to bring a catcher's mitt to class on the off chance that a small, two-year old body might soon be flung in my direction by an exhausted, working single parent who was wondering why she never saw this coming as she slammed her locker door shut, late for Algebra in the 36th grade.
June 15, 1994 Dear Adair,

I'm writing this in the form of a letter even though I'm going to hand it to you at class and it doesn't have the magic alchemic addition of a stamp with spit on the back glued the side of the envelope. I hope it delivers my thoughts anyway.

First of all, here's the book you loaned me. I didn't finish it, so I will buy another copy. The first pages I did read are certainly energetic and invite me to read more. Thanks, and I'm flattered that you thought of my piece in relationship to this book. It will be interesting to me on that level. I need some examples of narrative farm for this kind of childhood stuff. I'm always worried it will be boring to people.

The group was very good, surprisingly good, and that of course sparks me from complacency. I am one of those writers that writes fast, fast as I can type (8Owpm with many mistakes), and has to go deeper, go deeper, write draft after draft to get wherever there is, so what I sought was some sensibility, some focus, and I do feel that I got that.

Oh yes, and you are the kind of person that inspires people to want to write letters, good letters to them. That is unusual. I don't quite know what that quality is, good listener? That people want you to think they are great letter writers? It's not a frump quality, I promise you. So I hope it's okay to write occasionally. Also, when we get some decent equipment I'll call you and see if you will still he available, for a half hour radio conversation.

Regards{
P.S. I wasn't sure that you heard me because the class had just started last week, but I was really embarrassed and uncomfortable that Susan what's her name approached you apparently insinuating that I had said that you'd commented favorably about her book. I did not say that to her, and certainly did not suggest that she bother you. I had mentioned that you had talked about "some book on writing" and that I didn't remember the title. I had brought it with me to ask you if it was the one you spoke of. I just wanted to clear that up with you because I left last week feeling yucky and unsure that you understood what happened. Obviously a pushy chick. I hope that is not a requisite quality for getting published. I now have to interview her and Act Really Nice.

Janet Madonna
EVALUATION
I'm sad the class is drawing to a close. It has
been a revealing experience for me. But once I realized I couldn't just gloss over real
emotion with a sarcastic comment, the writing, particularly the revisions, became more difficult for me. I'm not sure there has been enough space and time between the problems my kids and I have been through to want to involve them in my writing and dig deeper at this time.
I have thoroughly appreciated your encouragement and respect for my ideas even though my skill level is below the group's. I have a gut feeling about some of the things I want to write, but feel weak in the mechanics of putting it all together. I know if I want to effectively write, I need to spend way more time reading publications and finding out what's out there.
The class has been well-organized, and your willingness to share information and pass along tips has been great. I will miss Thursday nights!
Box 1867
ph/fax 707-9351008
Junehud@aol.com
5-21-98
Dear Adair:
Tonight is the last night of class and since I am going to have my "fifteen minutes of fame" I decided I should give you a "Hallmark Moment"— a thank you note to the best teacher in the whole wide world. (That sounds hyperbolic but I mean it seriously.)
Skimming over the essays I wrote I am a little surprised at how totally neurotic I sound in the writing. I'm not surprised at being neurotic but am very surprised at how open I was about it. Eeeeeks! The facade is slipping some more. Maybe it's my LIFE that needs revising and the next time you see me I might be dressed in a muumuu and have flaming red hair. Epiphany at last.
Thanks for everything.

How I've Grown as a Writer, by
Dear Adair,

You and the community of the class have helped me a good deal.

I feel better able to circle stuff on my pages and note where it sounds clunky, where I could expand, and what (still in early stages) is unnecessary.

The community of the group is great and we keep our focus on the writing; other groups I have been in devolve into chatting. One group is now just three women with brunch once a month. We're a Not Writing Group.
You arc so full of writing ideas, ways of seeing, different approaches into a piece - it's very fabulous. You're also a very strong writer as well as teacher - an uncommon mix. Usually its one or the other.

I worry that since you are such a good sergeant, I will continually struggle to be my own sergeant (how hideously New Age!). Where will I come up with all those ideas, all your energy? Who gets to be your Adair? You are the best teacher I've ever had. No one's ever grabbed my attention before. One of my formers is also my former English professor and advisor. I told him about you and he responded, "writing class sounds great, sounds like Adair can get in under the remnants of your old anti-critical radar.

Page 2 of 2

-eep at it, writing takes so much unglamorous labor to achieve the glamour. handy mnemonic device:
I still worry that my voice and tone are a bit off the mainstream, and I'll have to look harder for places to publish. I know they're out there, but they're probably not The Sacramento Bee, or the Contra Costa Times.

It will be hard not coming to your house every Thursday. I got this whole ritual down where I'd go first to Joel's work, lie on the floor in his
office, and listen to him complain about how what he has is shit, or how he hasn't written it. Of course it turns out to be dead brill, which is why I usually remain on the floor. Then we have a drink or a coffee and come to your place. I guess that's what a good writing group should do, build some ritual and community into this lonely, wonderful, drab and joyful thing we do on our own.

The Adair I got to meet was warm, and brusque, and funny - I'll miss you Sarge.

Shucks ma'am, Linda
la kilby
shockwave.com * 650 Townsend * SF, 94103 T: 415 503 2402 * F: 415 621 0745

NoveDL

Sr LV
worked

Tremendous effort on your art--really came across that you cared worked on our hat took each one of us seriously. Evidenced in your ornaments o each al US
on our pieces, in class, a u when encouraging the _t e
others to be constructive.

Handouts were thoughtful and useful. There's a ream knack in knowing what to give students, and not confusing quantity with quality. I’ve cot files fu- of Than dorts from other teachers that I've never locked at, and that overwhelmed me, instead of teaching me.

Appreciated the way you conveyed that writing is scary a bit e most powerful thing

Appreciated the way you mace me, and us, feel sate and accepted. Writing is a very, very personal. indicate
hing, if you do it rant. I t -+nk tohe a writer who is worth reading, you_ _, = to be willing, and able, to r a down into your essence and be brave enough to spit it out on the page, You erect c „ taught, and allowed as to do this, with each other. This is a group of people I would not have opened up with easily, and by class' era, 1 think we were all leaking pretty easily with each ether.

I think that most things come dean to tole tanci-nos and the intangibles.
Yost of all, I appreciated your encouragement. No one's s ever told me I was a -natural writer, at least no one 1 ever trusted to know that they were talking about.

Cecilia Worth Adair Lara March 9, 2000

Approx 5300 words

(Assignment: growth as a writer)
Way back a million years ago when I first started writing, I lived on top of a mountain called Mount Innocence. From the window of my thatched hut, I overlooked the Valley of Writing Principles. One day I packed bread and sausage, took up my walking staff and my keyboard, gave Irrelevance and Mediocrity a good-by kiss and set out to search for the holy grail of Perfect Writing. As I descended to the Valley I was amazed to discover that it was not the sunny land I had viewed from Mount Innocence but a dense and complex wilderness.
Can reaching the valley floor, the first thing I noticed were two signs, each guarding a path that disappeared into the wilderness. While I could easily see that the paths were separate from each other, I also detected a subtle, though definite, relationship between them. One path, marked, Ending, stood in a sparsely planted patch of Healthy Restraint. The other route, by which I chose to enter, logically enough, was labeled Beginning and wound through a garden rich in Savory First Sentences.
Almost immediately I came upon a pool whose shimmering depths invited me to Jump Right In. I did and surfaced smack in the middle of The Great Forest of Motion and Events, surrounded by Flashbacks. In every direction Concrete Details fluttered down from the trees, arranging themselves into Scenes.
Further on, the path entered a meadow thick with Adjectives and

2

Adverbs, surrounded by borders of Exhaustive Descriptions, all in full bloom and in every hue and size. I wanted to lie down, cover myself with them, never leave. At the path's edge rested a scythe, urging me to eliminate most of them and move on.
Several times, I became bogged down in the Quick Sands of Revision, attempting to cross them too early. Before I could add to the clichés, dangling modifiers and passive sentences that I could see sinking out of sight, I had to take the warning signs seriously, First Drafts First.
Cn and on I tramped, all the time searching for Tone. Often i t flitted in and out of sight, hiding behind Subjects that sprouted alongside the path, their Emotional Relationships resonating too closely with Tone itself.
Once, rounding a corner, I came upon the Cataracts of Epiphany. Some of the changes that this torrent had made in the terrain were obvious and stunning; others so subtle that the effect on me was gentle as a breeze.
All too often I lost my way. Or I found myself retracing the same route. Or I discovered that I had got turned around and was traveling backwards. I needed an Organizing Principle, an Angle to let me know exactly where I was going. Angles were elusive, though. Many hid themselves in the The Quick Sands of Revision. Sometimes I rounded an unexpected turn in the road, only to have a full grown Angle jump out and reveal itself to me.
Daily I pulled from my pocket the famous and well worn Adair Lara Directives map. To my frustration and dismay, the map often changed its appearance before my very eyes, some areas fading, others brightening, many mixing and mingling with each other until their definitions were

3

indistinct. Just often enough to tease me, briefly visible though frequently unclear, there appeared on the map, threading its way through the valley, a Theme With Universal Appeal. Unobscured by Dean-End Tributaries, this thread led directly to the mountain on the other side of the valley, the Pinnacle of Published Works, on whose slopes lived famous writers, their lungs accustomed to the rarefied air of Mastery and Success.
Days of bad travel were few but terrible. blank walls impossible to penetrate. At these times, seeing neither Problem nor Solution, I became depressed and frightened. What if I wasn't in the right valley after all? Maybe I should return to my thatched hut. Worst of all was the fog that billowed round me, that thinned but seldom lifted, the Mists Of Not Showing Myself In My Writing. How little I know, I moaned, slogging through the Swamps of Self-Editing, bogged down in Framing, mired in Wordiness.
Then, just when I was losing my Set-Up, the great Chronicler of Memoir materialized by my side. Showing Without Telling that I was about to have a Breakthrough, she gently turned me around. Whereupon, with seemingly no effort or warning, I emerged into a little clearing illuminated by the Light of Comprehension.
Looking over my journey from atop the prickly, sweet, crunchy surfaces of at least Three out of Five Senses, I realized how many territories in the Valley of Writing I had explored and could name. Gaining familiarity with the topography counted for something.
And there was that one unchanging thing, the knowing that I would either explode or wither away if I did not remain immersed in the magic of language and communication. I could never go back. To take one baby

4

step into the fog and reveal myself in a single sentence, to combine motion and dialogue, to be interesting, not nice or careful, to be truthful, though not necessarily accurate, to persist in writing when the Mother of Memoir no longer visited regularly, to unite with other writers as traveling companions: this was my future.
I threw back my head, held my lap-top aloft. I n the orchards, plump Nouns and Verbs hung ripe for the picking.

November 2, 1993 Dear Adair:

I have only two true regrets about this class: first, that it is ending, and second, that I didn't do more writing for it. I'm sorry it's over because I thought the class was extremely valuable. The second is more a personal problem—although I wonder if it's not related to a comment I could make about the class. What about requiring that students write three (or four) days a week? I think that to me, at least, that would seem less daunting, more approachable. But this may be simply a personal problem, because I suspect many people did manage to make the everyday writing a habit.

I found it very instructive to hear about your work habits, your frustrations as well as your successes. There is, of course, the fantasy that "real writers" have no difficulties at all—and that becomes a very handy way to discourage oneself.

The materials you passed out were great—good practical examples of writing that works, and in almost all cases, most inspirational. I especially enjoyed Joan Frank's thoughts, the article about memory and imagination, and Joe Bob Briggs's piece (though I wasn't able to put his advice into practice).

Now here's a few thoughts on some things I didn't like—but I'm really stretching to find them. Perhaps I have felt a little frustrated with the critique/discussion of pieces in class. With such a multitude of opinions, I have not known sometimes which point of view to listen to. And Of course, that may be your style, and after all, it's crucial to keep encouraging people and to point out what they've done well. But nonetheless,
Your comments and observations on people's work were insightful and keen, helpful and kind. Your general attitude toward your students' efforts is encouraging, nonjudgmental and accepting. This is precisely what I need–both to hear from a writing teacher and to adopt myself.
Actually, if I were to be "painfully honest," I'd admit that I have one more regret.
Anyway, thanks for a superb class! Sincerely,

Laure Oliver
P.S. Please let me know if you begin offering another class! Also, did you/will you review and comment on our writing samples? I'd love to see your detailed thoughts on it--even though its about a person uncomfortably close to home, I'd still like to see if I could work it into publishable shape.

Caroline Koch to me
More options Feb 9 (2 days ago) Hi, Adair,

Another great class tonight!

THANKS FOR response! yes, think I can help you a lot with that. Anne and I spent two hours yesterday on hers--you might ask her about it. I charge $100 for these private deals, but when it's time spent on arc I think well worth it.
I have so loved having you in the class, by the way.

On 2/2/06, Kimberley Kwok <kimkwok@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Hi, Adair,

Funny you should ask.

See you on Tuesday for the PAR-TEE. Flog on.

Adair Lara <adair.lara@gmail.com wrote:
I would love to have an email from each of you saying what you think
you have learned, and what you are still not clear on, and how you
think your writing has changed

if you have time

cheers

Adair,

and Radar (aka: Walks On Keyboards)

Hi Adair,

Good thing selling writing doesn't require "mastering" it first :-P

Barbara

what I have learned:
importance of scene
how to create time and place
how to give my writing a pulse of highs and lows
how dialog adds to a piece
subtext

what I am still not clear on:
still need to know how to wrap it up (ending) so it doesn't sound
contrived

how my writing has changed:
old: bad
new: better :-)

how to use angle
better organized
more thou Dear Adair,

This experience has been intoxicating for me. The energy in our group has been amazing.. Having writing partners every week, getting feedback line-by-line from them and then from the entire group, and being able to e-mail questions back & forth was very helpful. I think because we were in your home also made it a much safer environment to allow ourselves to be so open and vulnerable with all of our raw materials and emotions. I look forward to our reunion as well as our next class together.

Mary

650 712 9358
650 468 5528 cell
Freelance Writer
ght given to voice
tie back ending

Thanks, Adair! I loved your class and your kind encouragement!
Dear Adair:

Things not clear on - things like writing what you
are feeling in the moment you are writing about and
when those feelings are unecessary to include. Need
some help and clarification on weaknesses.

I have loved every moment of your classes and look
forward to them all week but I will do some of this revue in the
break I will have in February. I feel as though I am
just beginning to grasp it. I don't know whether my
writing has improved, I don't feel either objective or
secure enough to make that judgement.

I came in for a lark and found that I love it so that
it occupies a lot of my thinking during the day. I am
appreciating what people around me are saying so much
more, I examine strangers on the street and wonder
about them rather than seeing them in just a glance
and just as immediately forgetting them. So, bottom
line I have benefited from the class in ways I hadn't
expected and am already looking forward to March.
Thanks,
Marcia Armstrong

have just signed a megamillions contract as the new 'dior' face and that skeezy little kate moss can kiss my skinny white ass. wow. what can i say? adair lara knows a thing or two about writing. i'm not sure what because i missed a lot of classes and never finished any of the homework assignments but what do i care? after taking her class i'm skinny, beautiful and soon to be rich and famous. how does she do it?

sorry. couldn't resist. will get back to you with the real deal report card by monday.

On 2/5/06, Adair Lara <adair.lara@gmail.com wrote:
THIS ISso rich and detailed! and heartening, too. thanks!
maybe come a bit earlier, at 5:52?

On 2/3/06, Margee Robinson <robinsonworks@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Gee, If I had only known...

I found the emphasis on structure in this class helped me to analyze my
writing in terms that defined what I was doing, or not doing, as was
usually the case. I have begun to understand the use of image and detail in
a way I didn't before.

I had thought I knew about tone, but now I know it a lot better.

I learned so much about scene, but it is still an area that I need help. Or
maybe need more practice. I have been looking over your handout on scenes
and if I used that when writing, it would be a good prompt. As a matter of
fact, all the handouts were so good and I realize that I should have gone
back to them more often when writing.

Although I am clearer about detail and image, I feel I need more work in
that area. What is too much, what is too little. I can find details
distracting, can take me away from my story and others too. I haven't found
a good balance yet. Perhaps just need more practice.

This was a terrific class. I think with the foundation of the first class I
was able to move faster and get more done. Some of what I learned in the
first class sunk in deeper and started to become automatic. A great
feeling.

So, your report card is A+ for teaching and a D+ for xeroxing, which is
coming right along.

See you at 6:01 on Tuesday

From: Adair Lara <adair.lara@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 12:03:22 -0800
To: fall2005classb@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [fall2005classB] did I mention that those who send me my report card

get back a file with all the assignments for the class on it, so you
can go back (guiltily) and do what you missed?

2. Further to that... re: Report card

What I’ve learned: Greater skill at handling scene and dialogue. Better able to recognize what pops out. Better at cutting
What not clear on: We don’t know what we don’t know! It think I need to work on editing, editing, cutting my darlings. And I need more work on beats and structure. And how to subtly work in back-story as action proceeds.

How I think my writing has changed: I have more confidence. It’s getting tighter and more dramatic.

Fantastic class! The best I’ve taken!

3. So if you send me the class assignment list, I’ll take it with me and use it for exercises.

4. I just looked at the Kilimanjaro story you asked about. Ach! What have I learned in your class? Enough to know I need to revise it before I can let it out of my sight. I’ll do that as an exercise in Guatemala and send it to you when I return.

Anne

Class a reports

You found the structure “recipe” helpful for a short piece, and learned the importance of structure over style, to use Jim’s tidy phrase.
Jim
“How to get rid of details that may sound nice but have no other purpose. How to move stuff around to increase tension and interest. How to rely on concrete actions or observations rather than summary.”
“Rather than simply free writing, I’m starting to think about story arcs.
I’ve learned to ask: What is this piece about? What happens?
Beats; moving from one pole to the other; epiphany/moment of change
Structure—“writing is not just stringing together nice words.”
A turning point that anchors the story
Using a model as a template
Death to adverbs
I am getting better at seeing what works and what doesn’t
I am more aware of tone, POV, and thinking ahead: what goes in this story and what in the next.
I can revise in response to feedback
I am beginning to get emotion in my writing

Here’s what people felt they still struggle with:

Developing a piece overall
Ways to end one

Using dialogue to convey emotion rather than exposition

Letting more heat and dirt and mess come in earlier

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED

ANALYZE WHAT WORKS

* * *

The second paragraph heightens the tension between danger and sensuality, confinement and belonging.
So far, we know we are in the hands of someone who is worth reading simply for the joy of her sensuous writing. And we suspect that there will be breakthroughs, possibly dangerous ones that bore down to her core and “split my heart down its seam.”
In the third paragraph, we find where we are in time, and probably where we are in space when we hear her Southern speech. We know we should get ready for some spiritual stuff, but given her informal tone with the Virgin Mary, we don’t expect it to be too stuffy or religious. We know it will be big and frightening, but that her heart remains intact and that she appreciates the danger and intrusion because of what they yielded.
She doesn’t so much start or end anywhere, as describe the bee phenomenon of that summer as a metaphor for what is about to happen to her. Then she places herself next to them, gives us some further hints and a preview of her own very likable, intriguing, and trustworthy voice, and lets us loose on the fun.

WHAT WORKS: stacked and multi-sensory images, the power and mystery of the bees, the tension between yearning after them and having a swarm of bees in her bedroom, her openness and vulnerability, and the promise that her world is about to explode, and the sense that she will overcome danger and difficulty to find a whole new life of possibilities and “honey seeping out for me to taste.”

WHAT I’VE LEARNED
Asking the questions:
What is this piece about?
What is the problem?
Using detail and images to slow down the piece and focus a particular part of it, and also to show emotion
Problem to solution, problem to solution
Thinking of the piece as a movie and watching what would happen on the screen
Nobody cares about anything except the emotions. We don’t read for information. If you don’t focus them nicely, there’s no point in reading.
The bare-bones structuring tool:
I WANTED…
THE FIRST THING I DID TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN WAS…
BUT SOMETHING GOT IN THE WAY. IT WAS…
I HAD TO TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT, SO I…
BUT SOMETHING ELSE GOT IN THE WAY…
SO I…
ALL THE TIME I HAD BEEN THINKING I WANTED….
BUT I REALIZED I REALLY WANTED…
I GOT IT, OR I DIDN’T, OR I REALIZED I DIDN’T WANT IT, SO I…
Everything in the piece has to be in the service of driving it forward.

I WANT MORE OF…
More about structuring. Even though I know what to do, I don’t always do it. I want to get this into my bones.
More illustration of the bare-bones structuring tool above.
Taking specific pieces and showing the arc. Where do we start? What is the problem? What happens? What are the beats? I would love it if we all read a short piece, then diagramed the arc in class.

Carol Costello
The Soul of Selling

What have I gained/learned so far in this class.

1. You have to write all the time. I am still not good about a fixed writing time (time of day as well as duration). I tend to write less frequently and long stretches. When I have sustained daily practice it has paid off well.
2. Work on multiple pieces a t once! I am working on so many that I don’t have enough time to go back to most of them. I need to try to focus down. Right now my subject (‘my book’) is my whole life. Often, when I sit down to move a piece forward (by adding a second ‘chapter’ for instance, I find I urgently want to write about an experience twenty years earlier (or later). Still, this is not as bad as writer’s block.
3. I am learning to listen better when others are reading their work. Somehow it is easier for me to focus on a piece by reading it than listening, although I am fully aware of the rewards of the latter.
4. Story is a series of emotions.
5. The emotional truth is the story. The incidents don’t have to be ‘true’.
6. Start where the emotion is the strongest. Most people start too early in the story.
7. All of the above about emotions being true and crucial and non-negotiable, I loved the ‘story by the numbers”: I wanted…so I…but…
8. Use all five senses.
9. Read a lot and a lot of different stuff. Get quotes, images, stray musings into your journal.
10. Keeping doing it!

What I want to work on more:

Dear Comrades,

What I have learned and how I have applied it:

Get the Words on Paper:
Writers are people who put words on paper. Editing the words before they land on paper greatly diminishes their chances of ever arriving. Just write it and accept that some amount of it will be embarrassing junk. Just “keep the channel open” as Martha Graham said to Agnes DeMille (from one of my favorite quotes on creativity, below*). Also, I have to dedicate the time to writing or everything else in my life is more important.

Choosing where to begin the story in time:

Editing:
No matter how much I cherish part of a story or how good it might be, sometimes it just has to be chopped for the story to advance, even if raccoons must be sacrificed.

Point of View:
Pick one and stick to it if you are writing in the first person. (“describing flipping my blond hair back when I can’t even see it”)

Using dialogue to convey emotion rather than exposition:
Dialogue’s only purpose is to convey emotion. It’s not a play – I don’t have to say, “Gee, Hank, look at that red car over there…”

Letting more heat and dirt and mess come in earlier:
It’s all about emotion and tension, Baby. Readers want a mess and a mystery, and fast!

Structure! Structure! Structure!
As Trixie Delight said, “We ain’t nothing without good structure!” The story recipe Adair provided is like an answer to a long prayer. “I wanted X, and so I Y, and then that didn’t work, so I… etc.” It gives me something to hang all of my collateral from and has helped me get past road blocks.

Writing partners are a marvelous resource:

What I am still struggling with:

All of the above.
When I signed up for this class, I wanted a reason to write and an expectation that I would. More than anything else, what I've got out of the class so far is a desire to write better.

Specifically:

1. I've learned that good writing, at least for me, is hard. I know that sounds trite, but it also means not giving up on a piece or an idea just because it's not working the first time. Practically, this means I've learned to slow down. I don't have to get an entire piece out before I run out of motivation. Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

2. I've learned about the importance of detail, conflict, tension, and starting a story in the right place. I've learned how to better structure a simple piece using story arcs. What I'm struggling with is how to translate these ideas into better stories. What's the right pacing? How much detail is enough? How much is too much? How do I most effectively use conflict? How do I build the tension without slowing the piece down too much?

34. I've learned I'm not good at listening and responding

5. I've learned to pay more attention when I'm reading. I'm looking more now to see how an author sets up the structure in a piece. I'm looking for the conflict, the turning points, the epiphany.

Hi all,

I have learned that I’ve been starting a lot of my pieces “when the alarm clock goes off.” Okay, I don’t start my stuff exactly when an alarm clock goes off, but it’s my nature to start at the beginning and plough through. For example, in the “Winners” piece about Megan and her cheerleading squad not making it to Regionals in 2003, I started at the beginning – like before the competition. Well, actually, I started while watching the Canada geese fly in formation which made me think of how the girls on the cheerleading squad all stand in formation.

Now I know that I can jump in right when the action starts, and this will be a valuable device for me to use in all of my pieces.

I know that I can start the above piece I just referred to right when we’re at the competition watching – start with a bang and put a little back story in.

The piece that I’m planning to share in class tonight is another example of something I’ve attempted to write a couple of t