Updates

No Family School this week. Did get out cross country skiing for a few hours, but that is the last of it: snow is staring to go, and social isolation is ramping up. Did edit for a client and had a virtual meeting to review the work. He is happy with the direction his memoir is going!

Yep. Schools, restaurants and public gatherings are shut down this week to prevent a massive rise in COVID-19 cases overwhelming our hospitals, so I’ve gone back to teaching–family-style. Fun, busy, but no writing. Weird to be living through a SF-predicted tipping point in my lifetime, though it’s not as though something like this wasn’t foreseeable.

No new fiction this week–all editing jobs. I created a nonfiction proposal for the biography I’m working on, revised the Dinosaur treatment as per client’s requests, edited a continuing client’s short story, put together a contract for a potential new editing client, and blurbed a novel as per a publisher’s request. Whew!

Have been working on a treatment for a play (that could also be a MG book) about dinosaurs.  It’s been interesting using the Hero’s Journey as a scaffold, and checking out 8-10 kids’ stories (everything from Hans Christian Andersen to Wreck-It Ralph) to see how they hit the beats. I’ve used this structure before, but mostly as reverse-engineering for an idea I already had, rather than as a guide to creating something new. It’s been interesting and inspiring. Amazing how you can put together connections that spark new ideas.

So, when the four of us go to the Rainforest, it is a two-day drive (we have long ago given up the dangerous, stomach-churning option of driving over night). We want to arrive ready to write, so we have a tradition of giving each person up to half a day (usually it turns out to be 1-2 hours) to talk out whatever they want about their Rainforest project.

Then the rest of us ask questions, help brainstorm, and diverge into writerly topics sparked by the discussion, ending with, “is there anything else we can help you with?” Invariably, not only the focus on the individual, but all the discussions and divergences, ignites each writer’s ideas, creativity and passion for their project. We land at the Rainforest primed and ready to write.

In addition, the writers I travel with are knowledgeable professionals, so it is like a series 4-member convention panels providing a two-day professional development course in addition to the writing and inspiration of the actual Rainforest, itself.