Category Archives: adventures

Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, Day 1

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I arrived at Bard last night for the IWT, aka “teacher camp,” after a lovely two-hour drive north from NYC with my friend Marla. This is my first visit to upstate New York and it’s absolutely gorgeous; Bard’s campus is gorgeous, too.

After I got settled in in my dorm room I wandered down a forested path to the opening reception, where I chatted with some other teachers (mostly from New York, some from New Jersey, one who’s headed to a boarding school in Jordan) and ate some tasty snacks (wine, cheese, grapes). Then dining-hall dinner!

I was a bit nervous coming in that everyone else in the writing retreat would be working on Serious Writing, aka Literary Fiction, and might look down their noses at my YA scifi nonsense, and that feeling wasn’t getting any better despite a)me knowing not to mind if they did, their loss, and b)people being super nice. Super nice they may have been, but they were also all dressed like Serious People (except for one woman in an awesome leopard-print skirt and motorcycle boots, and it turned out she was an instructor!). Continue reading Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, Day 1 →

Adventure Time is nigh!

adventures, housekeeping, Lilly grant

FinnJake
As part of my Teacher Creativity Grant, I have signed up for three Adventures: Write on the River with Bob Mayer, the Writing Retreat for Teachers being held at Bard College next week, and the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, IN the week after that. (I also gave myself a bonus adventure for my birthday this year: the Indiana Romance Writers–our local branch of the Romance Writers of America–put on the Making Magic conference, which was ten blocks away on my actual birthday… clearly a sign. Plus, At Write on the River, Bob told us that RWA is by far the best-organized and most welcoming group for writers, even if you’re not strictly a romance writer. I am thinking about joining next year.)

Part of my plan was to write about each adventure as I attended it, but thanks to some scheduling craziness I ended up attending Write on the River in March, driving down to Tennessee on a Friday afternoon (turns out five and a half hours is a really tough drive when you’re 7 months pregnant). Then I did the IRWA conference in April. Then I finally got around to this whole blogging thing… last week.

So clearly I need to start writing up my takeaways from each of those experiences!

Unfortunately the notebook where I took all of my notes at both of those is currently AWOL. So it may well be that you get to hear about IWT’s writing retreat before you get to hear about those…

I’m sure the entire world waits with bated breath. 😉