For those of you who don’t know what I’m up to this weekend — and I would be shocked, because I’m sure you all track my whereabouts at all times because it’s SO FASCINATING — I’m in Iowa City at the University of Iowa for a writing workshop!

This is the equivalent of a pilgrimage for writers; Iowa has one of the best writing grad programs in the country, and the summer workshop faculty is mostly Iowa faculty and graduates. It feels especially huge to me because I haven’t done any formal creative writing workshops or training since junior year in college, and this is my official return to studying creative writing. I’m seriously looking at grad programs and other avenues of training … this could be the first step toward taking the plunge.

I drove up tonight on the familiar Highway 63 to I-80 route I used to take to Grinnell. Brought back a lot of memories of that crazy first semester! All those small towns, two-lane highways and giant skies. Now I’m sitting in the hotel trying to stay mellow so I can get to sleep at a decent hour and not be tired for the workshop. I’m completely a night person and get a big second wind starting between 10 and midnight if I’m not careful … so no watching cage fighting on hotel cable for me tonight! Too bad the lion isn’t here to purr me to sleep.

The workshop is an 8-hour weekend class on memoir writing, specifically using fiction plot techniques to shape the structure. I was planning to do one of the workshops no matter what, but when I saw that course description it felt like they put it in there just for me — I’m in exactly that stage with the Suhaila book and can’t WAIT to spend the weekend talking about memoirs and structure and plot and getting some advice and feedback.

We’ll be doing writing exercises and dissecting examples from well-known memoirs, but there’s not enough time to share our memoir drafts and get critique. That’s okay though. I know this will get the juices flowing and help me think through the structure of the book. Wonder if I’m the only one in the class ghostwriting someone ELSE’s memoir?

I’ll be back in July for a weekend workshop on developing characters in fiction — also something I expect will help big time with the book.

More later!