Afterwards, we had breakfast then the staff reading. Carrie Jerrell, Caki Wilkinson, Kevin Wilson read their work. All very good readers. I was impressed with Jerrell. She had memorized two of her poems. Caki read some hilarious poems with a very sing song sarcastic voice, which I liked. Kevin Wilson read two stories, one of which told the story of a man who gets smacked in the head by a robber prostitute. He is funny in a deadpan sort of way. We published him in our latest issue of Phoebe, so it was very cool to hear him read finally.
Then came some free time, during which I finished reading the stories for my workshop today.
Lunch.
After lunch, I started to get really nervous. Jim and I walked to workshop and then we sat there in the workshop. Christine Schutt sat there too and everyone else sat there. Christine was very calm and quiet. John Casey came in and was very loud. He demanded that everyone tell him their name. Then he posted his rules for workshop. Whenever he talked, Christine seemed stunned, but happy. Relieved. I dont' know. I am adding worthless things. We talked about my story first. Christine opened up the discussion and asked what people thought. During the workshop, I could not stop shaking. I wanted to throwup. I felt very nervous. People said that they liked the story. People said really awesome and nice things. Then people brought up some questions/concerns. I felt like I wanted to stop sweating, but couldn't. Christine picked several parts in the story to read aloud. One part she read aloud and said 'damn, that's good.' I felt happy. I felt happy with what she said about my story. I felt like I learned things. Several people in workshop said really smart things that I wanted to talk about more. We talked about these comments later. They were still smart later. I cannot believe I went first. I feel happy and sad. I felt really nervous. Afterwards, Christine said she was happy that I was working with her; I meet with her tomorrow to talk about the rest of the MS. That should be very good.
The rest of the workshop went well, I think, although I did worry about our inability to discuss the deeper issues. Because we were such a big class, and because John sort of took over with his tangents and his going around the classroom questions, it took us quite a while to cover the other stories. The other stories were okay, I think. I dunno. We talked about them for a while, and then we left for the reading.
Schutt read from her new novel. She read awesome stuff. I could not believe how awesome it was. I was really happy with her reading. She read from the sadder parts of her novel and from some happy, funny parts. I liked this.
Dinner (pasta - I got seconds, hooray)
We skipped the poetry reading tonight and instead drank outside for a bit, played pingpong, then went to the French House. Much talking with others ensued. After that, we went back to the dorm. More drunk pingpong happened. Then sitting around happened. Then sleep.
Goodnight. Tomorrow I meet with Christine to talk about my MS.
More soon.