After the grumpiness of the morning passed, I'll credit the coffee, I settled into the day with ease. My anticipation was high as I knew Jack Driscoll was going to be giving the first craft talk of the residency. As always, he was eloquent. He revisited a theme he and I have discussed many times...love. This time the frame of the talk surrounded the treatment of "characters," those people we inhabit when we write fiction.
He talked about desire and how when characters don't desire, they lose the ability to suffer, which inevitably flattens out the prose. He talked about loving our characters, both good and bad, heroes and villains, in a way that we enlivened them with the energy of that passion. It brought my mind back to Keir, a character for a novel I was working on when I first began the MFA. I realized I still loved the man, was still invested in his journey, and I wondered what would happen if I revisited the page with this young man in mind.
Well, when I found a free moment, I returned to the page and I invoked Keir's spirit. Sure enough he was there, he was enlivened, and three pages passed before I even really knew that I was writing. I'm debating whether or not I should follow him further or return to the short story. Either way, I'm having fun being present and inspired. I'm sneaking away more than is usual for me at residency, which is a nice change of pace and a nice tone to my new life outside the program.
Yes, I am here. Yes, I am participating in elements of the program, but, no, the program is no longer mine. I love it but must leave it. I have a feeling that these ten days are going to be the perfect bon voyage.
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