Banff the final days

Yep, I missed a few days. Such an incredibly busy time I just didn't get a chance to post. So many things happened during this week, the most amazing was I actually said something almost pithy. Of course I waited until the final party (last night). We were talking about revising and how our natural instinct is to fight against cutting or changing our story. My sense is that behind that defensiveness is sometimes a fear that you won't be able to create something better than what you've already written. And part of that whole act of cutting and letting parts of stories go, is having the faith that something better will replace that original draft or idea. We just have to learn that creativity is an endless well. Wow, only took a whole week!

Here's my class, my very own group of seven. All brilliant and talented and we became a team.


There's me, Sondra, Harriet, Alissa, Brenda, Laurel, Antje, and Lynn. Watch for them. They're going to set the children's lit world on fire (in a good way). It was a real honour working with them.

As one of our class excursions we walked down to the book store in Banff. I was hoping to show them one of my books on the shelf of the store. It was that whole "some day you, too, will have a book on these shelves" lesson. Except the bookstore had none of my books. Instead the lesson was my students got to watch the humble author introduce himself to the staff and suggest they should order his book so that he can feed his wife and child and his cookie habit.

Here's an obligatory shot of a mountain.

Taken from the top of Lloyd Hall.

There were so many positive elements to take away from this experience. We had our last supper, our last party, and, just a few minutes ago, the last breakfast. Now all my students are gone and I'm just finishing this up before my airporter bus arrives. And, to cap the whole week off, it's snowing.



It's actually the perfect way for things to end. Snow to cover up our tracks and let the next class make new ones. Goodbye class, goodbye Banff.

Hello, real world.


Art