Our weekend intensive session: I am more confident

I have just come out of the weekend intensive workshop in the Novel and Script First Draft course - a weekend during which we writing students were supposed to figure out the "spines" of our stories. The weekend could have been a disaster. Saturday night I was invited to a great party. I set myself a curfew of midnight. I got home at 3am, off my head. But I pulled myself together for Sunday session nonetheless. And in general, I was wracked with worry before the weekend, but happily less so now, for a variety of reasons.

• First, I am not alone. Four out of the 12 or so students in the course apparently contacted Roland and Kathleen begging not to have to come to the weekend intensive, because they felt that they had no story whatsoever.
• Second, people (i.e. other students) keep saying how much they like my stuff. (I refer you to earlier entries, in which I detail how I live and breathe for the external validation of my writing. I so need professional help.)
• Third, Roland says it's not a bad approach to find my story now, and fill in the historical stuff with research later, that too much research too early can paralyze the writer of fiction. (Well, he didn't actually say this, but this is my interpretation of his mumblings.)
• Fourth, Roland said that he thinks I have a good grasp of my story, of dramatic possibility. And that I have talent in spotting it in others' stories too.
  

So all is well in my writing world. Thank God, coz the slump wasn't pretty. And I don't hate Roland anymore. In fact, I think he's rather fine. He amused me greatly during the weekend intensive, entirely unintentionally, when he leant back in his chair and absentmindedly pulled up his shirt to scratch his hairy belly, as it pressed against the table edge.

The student with all the silver skull jewelry who's writing a novel about biker gangs is a steward for Quantas. Go figure.

Another student revealed he's also writing a novel set in the pearling industry in Broome, although his novel is quite different in plot and era. But if he uses my pearl metaphor - which I never would have disclosed to the class had I known of his novel beforehand - I shall kill him.