Tonight, will be the last session of my current workshop at
the Irish Writers Centre. It is always tinged with a little sadness that a
course is coming to an end, primarily because I enjoy them so very much.
I will miss the passion and energy of being in a room every
week with other writers, eager to pursue their desire to write.
I will miss not only the students, but also the characters
they have created, some arriving quite shyly at first, others jumping off the
page, but each there all the same.
I will miss talking about writing and what drives us to
write stories and also, discussing aspects of writing that can and will bring your
story to life.
I will miss putting our fictional beings through hot seat
exercises, experimenting with dialogue, and reading weekly submissions, but
most importantly, I will miss spending two hours every week with people who
want to create stories, who like me, get extremely excited about this notion,
because making stuff up can be very pleasurable indeed.
I’ve gotten some lovely messages over time as a workshop
facilitator, and some over the last few days, each in their own way about how I’ve encouraged
folk to be passionate about writing and themselves as writers, and if that is
case, then that is a very good thing indeed.
:-)
