E. Hemingway

Saturday gone, we went to our first session of the writing workshop (fiction). Our tutor is here from the States and will be with us for 3 hours every Saturday for the next 8 weeks. In that time, at points during the week, we will each also have 2 one-on-one sessions with her. It is a class of 18 people (16 female, 2 male) - inclusive of Andreamuse and my friend Carolyn.

Homework is a lot of reading from prescribed texts ("Read it as a writer, not a reader") ... and of course some writing. I must admit, I'm not much of a reader. This needs to change ... "if you are going to write novels" (as one girl in the class pointed out to me). Unless a book really grabs me during the first page, continuing is an effort or, at best, a determined choice. My sister Vanessa, on the other hand, consumes books like a rabid animal.

Nevertheless, I did the homework on Sunday. Just the reading part ... not yet the 'write notes about it' part or the 'write a page describing a character or a setting'.

This week, until Wednesday, I will be in a training workshop (video related). Thursday and Friday will be busy with other things ... but I will make the time somewhere within those days to work on my prose, especially if I am to meet my date with destiny ... 2013 (by which time I am basking in the afterglow of my run away best selling novel-soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture).

Once when I was in Paris, I went into a quaint bar with my friend/traveling companion/Cambridge housemate, Harriet. We sat at the dark wooden bar on tall wooden stools and ordered whatever we were drinking. At one point Harriet said to me: "Look down, E." When I looked down I saw a name engraved in brass, screwed into the wood of the bar before me: Ernest Hemingway. I was sitting in 'his' seat.

Not that I want to be like Hemingway, but it was an interesting symbol.