I was apprehensive going into Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference. Mr. Randall’s intensive class and three years of journalism had prepped me for my nonfiction workshop, and I’d had a blast at Kenyon Young Writers’ Workshop last summer. But as I walked into my first 9 a.m. class and exchanged awkward smiles with my eleven classmates, I couldn’t shake the fear that I would be the worst writer there.
That dread intensified when our buoyant teacher, a wiry 30-something going on 18 who insisted we call her Marjorie, announced that in our second week we’d write and rewrite and submit to critique a single pièce de résistance—a polished product we could take away with pride.
"Don’t worry about it yet," Marjorie said, perching on her green-Conversed toes for emphasis. She scrawled Describe your birth on the whiteboard and said, "Get writing." Paradise.
I wasn’t the worst writer. Better yet, I learned to emulate the styles of my most talented classmates: a young Mr. Randall lookalike from Kansas, a hip New Yorker, a quiet girl from Nashville whose final project stunned me. By the last day, when all of us gathered to dance the hokey pokey with Marjorie and swear to swap writing via Facebook, I had not only produced a decent piece myself but also made sound friends with a good eye for editing. I headed home with a folder fat with their work, a camera full of lush green Tennessee, and a notebook scribbled with my own prose. "Keep writing," I made the others promise, and we’ve been sharing our latest since.
~Aspiring Writer, class of 2010
That dread intensified when our buoyant teacher, a wiry 30-something going on 18 who insisted we call her Marjorie, announced that in our second week we’d write and rewrite and submit to critique a single pièce de résistance—a polished product we could take away with pride.
"Don’t worry about it yet," Marjorie said, perching on her green-Conversed toes for emphasis. She scrawled Describe your birth on the whiteboard and said, "Get writing." Paradise.
I wasn’t the worst writer. Better yet, I learned to emulate the styles of my most talented classmates: a young Mr. Randall lookalike from Kansas, a hip New Yorker, a quiet girl from Nashville whose final project stunned me. By the last day, when all of us gathered to dance the hokey pokey with Marjorie and swear to swap writing via Facebook, I had not only produced a decent piece myself but also made sound friends with a good eye for editing. I headed home with a folder fat with their work, a camera full of lush green Tennessee, and a notebook scribbled with my own prose. "Keep writing," I made the others promise, and we’ve been sharing our latest since.
~Aspiring Writer, class of 2010
