Ganymeder

*(above) Ann Hagedorn teaching the Creative Non Fiction class

My final class on my final day of the Workshop ended at lunchtime yesterday, and I’ve found myself asking over and over again what I’ve brought home from my experience this past week.

Quite literally, I’ve brought home a hell of a lot of books. Three poetry books by our poetry instructor, Cathy Smith Bowers, as well as the poetry dictionary by John Drury. I was tempted to bring home many others, but since my To Be Read pile (of both paper and electronic books) is already quite steep, I’m afraid adding much more will cause it to topple and kill me in my sleep. So I resigned myself to the poetry books, not only for pleasure, but I’m sure they’ll be an invaluable resource for my writing projects – both prose and poetry.

Aside from physical things, I’ve brought back a renewed commitment to the craft as well as a lot of questions. The questions are things I’ve been asking myself for awhile, but I think my time at Antioch has given me tools to find the answers. What do I want to do with the previous rough draft novels I’ve written? Are they worth revising or should I just look at them as experience and move on? Where do I see myself with my writing 5 years from now? In 10 years? I still don’t have the answers, but I’m much closer to finding them than I was before.

The classroom setting was invigorating, and I enjoyed being around creative, literary people, but there were lots of things that I didn’t expect as well. I was pleasantly surprised that the Creative Non Fiction taught techniques that were equally useful for Fiction and Poetry. In fact, all the classes tied into each other, overlapping and stressing the same points again and again in different ways.  The theme throughout the entire workshop seemed to be free flowing creativity, without worrying about technique or craft, that you later sculpt into a work of art.

*(above) Cathy Smith Bowers teaching The Craft of Poetry class

I had the pleasure of meeting some wonderful people. My instructors were wonderful. My poetry instructor signed ‘A Book of Minutes‘ for me – my new favorite poetry book. I sat next to a very nice lady and exchanged emails with her. Hopefully we’ll stay in contact. The only thing I was a bit disappointed in was (I know it sounds corny)… I didn’t really bond with any other writers. That probably has more to do with me than anything else. I spent tons of time writing though – which was absolutely wonderful.

I’ve also gotten some very exciting news over the past couple days. I’m fairly bursting to tell it to the world, but since I’m not sure if I should (yet) I’m going to wait until all my i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. In the meantime, I’ll keep writing, submitting, dreaming.

And hopefully, someday, I’ll be able to go back to the Antioch Writers’ Workshop.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Current events, Writing Corner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.