The Loft Mentor Series

I had a great weekend at The Loft! Elmaz Abinader, a writer and professor at Mills College, was the visiting writer for the Mentor Series. I came away with so many new ideas. Biggest of all, I came away with a possible structure (?) for my book. I feel I've really been floundering in the wind up until this point. Elmaz smartly pointed out that I need a consistent perspective. Lately I've been thinking of structuring the memoir as a series of short scenes, letting them build upon themselves to tell the story without me as narrator having to say, "Hey you! Here's the story!" This afternoon I made a list of all the scenes I could think of, all the stories that could be told in a scene, and I came up with around 30. I'm finally excited to get a start on that. I have a big fear that I'll finish with this revision only to be told, or to have a gut feeling, that I need to go back to the way it was. Oh well, I guess I can't let fear stop me.

I read on Friday night -- Chrissy Kolaya and I were the first to take the plunge. All the mentees have a reading throughout the year, and we signed up for the first go-round. I was honored to share the stage with Elmaz and Chrissy. Elmaz has a serious gift for nonfiction narrative, and Chrissy writes the type of poems I enjoy (and I can't say I enjoy a whole lot!): descriptive, observational, real-world work.

Here are a couple of pictures from the event. The first one is my mom, myself and Elmaz, and the second one is Chrissy, myself and Elmaz.