It's been two days since I escaped from Maine, barely missing the Nor'easter that hit Freeport and dumped buckets of snow on top of an already snow covered land. It's also been two days since I left the Winter 2008 Stonecoast Residency, and I'm already missing my friends.

My second residency was nothing short of exhausting and amazing. Ten days of readings, writing, critiquing, and listening have stoked my desire to write. This is a very good thing since I have an incredibly aggressive semester in front of me. Yes, I know, I am an overachiever. Then again, Jason did give me the "overachiever" super power in his Pop'Fic Super Heroes story. How can I let this power go to waste? :-)

I have the amazingly good fortune to be mentored by Nancy Holder this semester. Her experience and my needs (and there are many!) are a perfect match. Over the next five months, I'll be blasting through the first draft of my novel, doing research for my 3rd semester project and thesis, and begin organizing my paper on the art of adapting story from one form to another.

Having a chance to work with Jim Kelly last semester was just what I needed. He's a fabulous story doctor and he has helped to push my writing to the next level. In addition, I had some great workshops this semester with Mike Kimball, Julia Spenser-Fleming, and Nancy Holder. After having my workshop manuscripts critiqued by them, I finally feel like I'm "getting it". Writing is a difficult process, but it's not impossible. The key to writing is time, energy, and a stubborn need to persevere no matter what.

To anyone thinking about writing, my best advice is to just do it. Put those words down on paper no matter how crappy they are right now. Literary beauty comes with revision, and not even Shakespeare can revise a blank piece of paper.

If the world were an ideal place, the July 2007 Stonecoast residency would have been perfect. But life happens and things aren't always perfect, but sometimes that lack of perfection just makes the experience all the richer.

Three days into the residency I found out that my father had passed away. Although he had been ill, very ill, hearing that he was gone still shocked me. For twenty years my dad has been beating death off with a mighty big stick - and winning the better part of the battle. This time when death called, I believe my dad welcomed him like an old friend stopping by for a refreshing drink on a hot summer day.

Love deeply, live passionately, and follow your dreams. That's what my dad always told me. So, that's what I did. I followed my dreams all the way to Freeport, Maine where I found some of the most incredible people I could ever hope to meet. The support and concern that the administration, faculty, and my fellow students showed me after my dad passed away will always be a testament to the strength of the Stonecoast program.

My fellow popular fiction students not only became part of my tribe, they became part of my family. They were there to sooth and comfort me when I needed it. Even better, they were there to kick my ass too.

The intense learning environment at Stonecoast was amazing. I could have gone home, but my dad wanted me to stay and I'm glad I did. The seminars given by graduating students and faculty, along with the daily writing workshops, helped me to understand writing on a whole new level. I began to see the fullness of my characters's lives even before they hit the page; I finally realized how to thread multiple plots together; and I learned ways to show character motivation through the use of well placed details within the prose.

As much as I'd like to spell out the secrets to writing, it's just not possible because my way isn't your way. The biggest lesson I've learned is that writing is a journey that we each need to accomplish on our own. It's a journey that we all take at our own pace, one step at a time. If we're lucky, we have friends to help us along the way.

Somehow, I managed to luck out and get Jim Kelly as my mentor this semester. I guess paying off the Fates worked in my favor. Yep, I'm pretty damned lucky. JPK is a story doctor extraordinaire and he's mine to torture all semester long. My pal Linda got the lovely and talented Kelly Link as her mentor and sweet Diana got the Queen of Suspense Julia Spencer Fleming as her mentor. I can't help but to feel like we have just embarked on an amazing adventure and we're going to have one hell of an experience along the way! :-)

If you'd like to see a few pictures of the residency, check out these photos .

Thanks again to everyone for your support over the last week. It hurts like hell to lose a parent, but each kind word makes the string a little easier to bear.

This is it! In two hours I will be in my car and driving to Maine. This is the first of my 5 10-day residencies. The next one will be in January. At this residency, I'm going to meet all of my fellow students and instructors, I'm going to have a mentor assigned to me, and I'm going to develop my study plan for the semester with my mentor.

The pre-residency jitter hit me yesteday and I freaked out just a little as I struggled with the "I suck" blues. I talked to a few writer friends and they smiled with that knowing gleam that says, "Hey, we all suck!"

This weekend, Readercon will be going strong in Burlington, MA. Writers from all over are coming and part of me wishes that I was going there, too. I would really like to attend an underground panel (everyone would be nameless, of course) that is titled "You're always going to feel like you suck so just deal with it and keep writing". :-)

Ok, it's time for me to sign off for now. I've got to bush my hair, pack the car, and zip over to the train station in Salem to pick up Jason McCarty. Poor guy is likely to be waiting there in the rain.

Cheers,
Erin