Had some really great conversations the last few days. It’s funny, they sort of fell into generational categories?
There’s the interview I did with Karen Joy Fowler, who’s 76 (and looks 55, amazing). She’s someone I want to be when I grow up, and I talked to her for a little over an hour and would happily just sit at her feet for days, soaking up the wisdom. She’s so smart, and funny, and thoughtful, and kind. A privilege to spend time with her, and all the other mentors I’ve found here at ICFA. (Sheila Williams, you are very much missed! Get better soon!)
And then there are my peers, the people who started around the same time I did, and are around the same age, and here we are, thirty or so years into this career, and we haven’t figured it all out yet, alas. We’re reassuring each other that that’s okay, and maybe we did some other interesting stuff along the way, and there’s still plenty of time to write a great book or two, if that’s what we’re feeling called to do, and if that’s not where we are right now, that’s okay too, maybe?
The young ones might be the best, though. The recent Clarion grads, fifteen or twenty or twenty-five years behind me, so full of hope and anxiety and wondering if they’ll ever write a short story again, and it’s been months, and maybe they’ve missed it.
I tell them they haven’t missed it. I tell them stories of my own little successes and failures, hopefully funny stories some of the time. Maybe it helps them a bit; I hope so. But they definitely help me, with their excitement and fizziness and new approaches and ideas. Also their warmth — they’re just lovely young people, and the field will be better with them in it.
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Sometimes you go to a con, and you’re just unlucky — the conversations you’re hoping for don’t quite coalesce. But I had some great ones this time around. After all the rush of art-making and store-starting the last few years, writing has been somewhat neglected, and I’ve missed it.
Hoping to re-center my artistic practice to keep writing more central again. If I make my to-do list for the day, and there are five art tasks and five teaching tasks, let’s see if I can try to keep at least one writing task on there too, even if it’s very small. Write 50 words of fiction.
These conversations helped solidify my resolve, and also helped make it feel possible.
(Pictured with me here is Alex Kingsley, a delightful grad student in my department, academic and writer. I expect great things. No pressure! 
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