Senior Living: A summer writing conference brings inspiration

Trips to coffee shops to review the day’s notes were part of columnist Liane Faulder’s routine when she attended a writing workshop at a small American university. Article content A friend told me she had purchased a tap dancing board for her home. She had danced as a kid, and now that she was reducing her work hours to part time as a transition to retirement, she was looking to make a little noise. This gesture seemed so delightfully whimsical that I looked up “home dance boards” online to see if such transcendent items were indeed available to anybody with a patent-shoe past and a current passion. I thought about her home studio for days, wondering if she might get a mirror, too, and a wooden barre. Recalling my own tap dance days, when I was five, I thought of Perry — the boy who knelt in front of me during the dance school’s year-end recital. His dark, slick hair smelled of Brylcreem; I knew this because my chin was perched over his shoulder during one of the dance poses. I sniffed his head hungrily during rehearsals until the teacher told me to stop. Shortly thereafter, my mother withdrew me from tap; apparently my toes were too square. You can imagine how I envied my friend her home board, and the world it opened for her. Article content I stepped out in my own way, however, when I decided this summer to attend a writing conference in Forest Grove, Ore. Part of the master of fine arts offered by Pacific University, a small college near Portland, the conference could be audited by those who weren’t enrolled in the full-time program. Offered over 10 days, the program gave attendees the chance to work on a short manuscript of fiction with award-winning novelists and to attend talks on the craft of writing. I had long dreamed of taking a writing workshop, but it wasn’t until I retired that I allowed myself the indulgence. Still, even as I packed my computer for the journey, I wondered why I was doing it. After […]

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