Home Again

I’m just home from Banff, and I feel marinated in story and language. That’s all we did, besides eat and crack endless jokes. And it was brilliant.

I found it really interesting talking to other writers, partly because they were interesting people, and partly because of the shared experience of writing. The difficultly of getting our heads around large projects, how each project is its own puzzle that has to be figured out, how doubt persists regardless of what we’ve done in the past…

Writers are also the funniest group I’ve ever hung out with – well, kid writers, perhaps. These writers. Or maybe it’s just Art Slade plus altitude infecting everyone with absurdity.

The support was awesome, although at times surprising and bizarrely nerdy. We discussed or quoted Torchwood, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, Dungeons and Dragons, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Dollhouse, and Josh Whedon (and that’s just Art and me, the fantasy nerds), and of course books – always books. Scrabble, wine, beer. All the important things in life.

I left Banff exhausted, exhilarated, and desperate for some quiet and space to spread out my story and settle in to work on it, without interruption. Oddly, I didn’t find that in Banff. We were too busy, my time and attention too fragmented. And still, the story cooked. I spent a lot of time thinking about it, making decisions, solving problems, planning, organizing, and gaining confidence in my story and in my ability to write it.

Reading to this crowd was interesting, as it was the first time I’ve read to adults only. I wondered if I could hold their attention the way I can with kids, but it wasn’t a problem at all. The story pulled them in; perhaps they were all eleven again for a little while. But they laughed at the wrong places. I’ve noticed this before, that adults find different things funny than kids do. The laughter was good – it told me I had them – but the timing threw me, as they laughed unexpectedly. Oh, that’s funny?

Maureen