writing class

When opportunity comes knocking, I usually shut off the lights and pretend I'm not home.
But this time I signed up for the writers' workshop.  The first workshop I've taken, except for a felted slippers workshop, in which I successfully crafted a pair of serviceable felt slippers. This success may have been the source of my confidence to write the check. Do I want to write? Yes, I do, and I would like to write better. I'm excited with anticipation.  We are given a list of supplies. I love to buy supplies! I buy a new notebook, with college spaced blue-lined paper.

In my first fiction writing class there are 12 writers writing, including two teenagers, two men,  and mostly people I know already.  I hear the instructor promise that no one must read what she has written aloud. We will be given a topic, and a time limit in which to write about it, using a technique called "free writing" in which nothing matters but to keep the pen on the paper,  pushing on even in the absence of an idea.  We are learning to access our creativity, without judgement. My first idea is that I'll not touch my pen to the paper until I have an idea, technically adhering to the rule of not stopping once I start.  We're given our subject:  an old worn object.

The story of my life! There's so much I could say. I gaze into the distance of the middle of the floor of the room where we are assembled at desks.  When was I last seated at a desk?  Every writer is writing furiously now. (I didn't expect the writing workshop to feel competitive). But, I'm going to wait until something comes to mind, as it surely will, so I may set my pen to paper and begin.

Next to me, a bright young woman, a dazzling and accomplished writer I have known and admired for several years, is already writing to the bottom of her first page.  She has a very fine pen, I notice, with very slippery, fast ink.  I wonder where she bought it.  I know myself, and though the time must be already half over, I am not concerned. But, no. The time is actually over, and we are told to stop.  Desperately I look into the inside of the front of my forehead. Two words swim up from the gravy murk, like a Magic-8 ball. I scribble them.

Now the vibrant writing woman next to me volunteers to read what she's written. "I'm not shy," she says.  Her piece starts with a small, worn fragment of cloth, a fragment of an old worn story, a child's blanket, a color,  rose, a bit of cashmere, a mystery memory, that ends half way down page 2 with a sentence that pulls at my heart. It is a beautiful piece about a bit of textile, which sounds beautiful but, after a while, I honestly can't hear a word of what she's reading.  I look down at my own paper, on which I've written, interestingly, two words:  tuna fish.  I don't share.

My friend Judith says, about taking workshops,  I don't want to be the worst. I don't have to be the  best, but somewhere in the middle. I just don't want to be the worst.

7 more writing classes. If I can last.