WIFYR made me feel like a rock star

I'm back from a week teaching a writer's workshop at WIFYR, where I had the most stunning class of writers. Fourteen of them: one guy--Daniel-- amidst all that estrogen. They were loud, generous, snarky, abusive, supportive and always funny.

I had to send one to the bathroom to keep her from talking out of turn. One looked exactly like Juliette Lewis in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. There were two Emily /Emalees. I thought one of them was named Maggie Sneddon, but that was actually her character's name. A couple came from Colorado. One came from California and took over as teacher when I was out of the room. One grew up in Beaver, UT. One was from Layton. One was sixteen and one was seventy-one with a lot of thirty-somethings in between. One worked on the Rooseveltian with Tom in junior high school. There was Jenilyn and Jerilyn like two Old Testament queens.

They wrote about dragonkins, Rowaness, ancient Mayan maps, genies ("No, she's not a genie!")

They wrote about growing up in the fifties, dust storms and black blizzards, taro fields and waterfalls. They wrote high fantasy, low fantasy, dystopian, memoir, contemporary.

And they revised first pages into "hook the reader" perfection.

Things I did besides teaching writing: I told the pee-in-my-car story, laughed, shimmied, laughed, rolled my eyes, laughed, cursed, ate chocolate covered raisins, laughed; told them to shut up, laughed at them, abused them and they in turn made me feel like a rock star.

Can't wait to get the photos.