School has just started here in Virginia, and
like many teachers, I’ve been asking my students what they did this summer.
So it seemed appropriate to write about my summer, and how I learned the value
of Not-Writing.
My summer has been framed by two Highlights workshops with the fabulous Patti Gauch: one in May, the other this October. Between May and October, I was supposed to write the entire first draft of a new story.
No worries, right?
No worries, right?
I'm a huge proponent of the Butt in Chair school
of writing: You write whether you feel like it or not. You hope the muse shows
up, but if she doesn't, you don't sit at your desk, weeping softly and consuming
large amounts of ice cream. You write. Finally, the muse feels so left out that
she actually shows up.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered how well I
wrote when… I didn’t write. Here's what happened:
