Randolph College Wrap-Up

I’ve closed the laptop and hit the road, folks. This here Randolph College Emerging Writer is homeward bound! It’s always hard to leave, especially when I felt like I was just starting to deepen relationships with a few folks. (Most notably: Larry, the bartender from Mangia. I’m not kidding. Sixty-something years old, as New York as they get, smart, and he delivered the best description of a properly prepared and enjoyed vodka martini that I have ever been blessed to hear.) But leaving is the name of the game and if I’m not good at it by now, I never will be.

The most exciting news, other than getting to go home and see Gus (and you, too, parents!) is this:

I HAVE COMPLETED THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY NOVEL.

That’s right folks…a goal I wasn’t sure I’d reach this winter, maybe not even this year, and yet…the gift of time at Randolph and the extraordinarily light teaching duties made the task possible. All totaled, I added 130 pages to the novel, about 80-90 of which were new.

And my dear students of ENG 167 came around and did quite well for themselves, also, each earning a P for passing in my 1-credit P/F course. Here are a few things they said to me in the introductory statements of their creative writing portfolios:

 “Understanding these subtle techniques [taught in class] has allowed me not only to implement them in my own work but also to pick out techniques in other writing as well. It becomes clear why a writer chose the word they chose…More importantly, it is easier to point out the overall impact or ‘humannes’ the author is aiming for…I have also learned to structure my wok in a way that benefits the impact rather than crippling it.”

“Whenever I used to write an essay, I would get so caught up in whether or not the original words going down onto the paper sounded perfect. I’ve learned that it’s okay for everything to not be as clear the first time around. I can always go back and fix it. It’s a lot easier to say what I want to say if I am not worrying about perfection the first time around…It is like a puzzle. Going back and revising is how you find the perfect word to fit into each sentence.”

“The techniques that we learned were incredibly helpful in my own writing pursuits and, unlike, many English classes I’ve taken before, I can see the difference and improvement in my writing. I was skeptical at first when you explained what we were going to do throughout the class [learning by imitation], especially at the amount of papers I realized that you were assigning us. However, this learning technique has helped me more in a semester than years of English classes before. I’m sold.”