Enga mellom fjella

Finally 40s! Zinserr memoir link. Writer's Conferences.

ME:

I got up to the lower meadow on Mt. Jumbo on Monday. Got a couple great sunset pictures. It felt good.

40s today ...finally. I need to walk more. Ice and mud are bad. Ice being worse. What's worser is the wind if there is any. At freezing, the humid chill goes through me. And this winter has been wet and cold.

When it warms a bit, when the wind dies down, when the path dries, I can walk more easily.

Bottom line? I need to get into shape and lose some weight.

I'm changing my diet over to more beans; although, adding bacon chunks and maple syrup might not cut the calories much. Still, beans are good protein and fiber. (We don't discuss gas ...but not a real issue so far).

Bored ...but went to a reading by Alicia Erian last night. She read from a personal non-fiction piece. I found some of it interesting. Fiction being based on an idea, what someone said or did; non-fiction being based on an actual event. Both ...flow from their source.

I went because I ran into Judy Blunt at the grocers. Judy does memoirs and teaches non-fiction at UM. Since I'm thinking of using my 5 years of journals/blog (the descent into homelessness and they struggle to rise again) I asked her who I should read. She recommended William Zinserr ("On Writing Well") as a source to check about memoirs.

Found an interesting link:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir

Oh... to have time to read and reread it all! The small part I perused was invaluable.

So... another project? With others unfinished? For some of us having multiple projects takes away the stress and allows us to write, edit, whatever without blockage. Works for me! Just need to finish some things off.

Another idea, an old one: GO TO A CONFERENCE!

The Anam Cara workshops run from April to July in West Cork, Ireland. Affordable weekly rates. http://www.anamcararetreat.com

Atlantic Center for the Arts: poetry with Nick Flynn $850 in October. In New Smyrna, Florida. http://www.atlanticcenterforthearts.org

Austin International: April 7-10. $30-50 registration. Austin, TX. http://www.aipf.org

Bear River: $605 tuitio9n; housing $90-215/week. Near Petrosky, MI. Poets: Tillinghast, Van Jordan, Bialosky. http://lsa.umich.edu/bearriver

Round Top Poetry in Round Top, Texas. April 15-17 (week after Austin). $125 + housing/meals on campus. http://www.festivalhill.org

U. North Dakota Writer's conference in Grand Forks, ND. March 29-April 2. Poets: Susan Deer Cloud and Carl Phillips. Most events free? http://www.undwritersconference.org

So... time to go on the road. I checked my finances. I've been behaving. I can afford to go. Even to Ireland...

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