How I spent my summer vacation

Actually, how I have been spending my summer. Several highlights:

- Signed up for the South Carolina Writer's Conference in October. Polished up the beginning of the latest novel and sent it off to be critiqued. Laurie will be going with me this time - that's good news, because I can be a painfully-shy wallflower when alone.

- Spent our vacation at the John C. Campbell Folk School. We both took a memoir writing class from Vicki Hunt. That was a great time, and she's an excellent and insightful teacher. The class sessions were very "Oprahesque", as we all shared episodes from our past. I'm not really very keen on writing a memoir, but writing is writing, and I had a good time. Came away with a version of my "Broken Keys" story that everybody liked. We had a reading on the last night, and I got so choked up reading it that I had to stop and try to recover. Very embarrassing, but everyone was very nice about it. I guess that episode of the broken piano afected me more than I realized.

- So I converted the first person memoir about the broken piano to a 3rd person short story - added some scenes, narrativem and dialog, rearraged things, etc. Sent it off to Glimmer Train for the "Family Matters" contest they have every so often. Should hear back from them fairly soon - they are very good at reviewing submissions.

So the summer has been productive. I know I made the resolution to let the novel rest and work on shorter pieces and I have done that. We'll see what happens...