This has been one amazing week for me (and twelve other writers) as we’ve been writing and reading and listening and communing … all with the likes of word lovers like ourselve. What a wonderful chance to spend the week with Erika Ritter, a fabulous and witty writer who likes bikes, animals, and dirty politics.

I finally managed to make some sort of headway into the life of the publishing business, and it seems that it’s not all that mysterious after all!

It was a bit of a large week, considering that I’ve been getting ready for a massive family reunion that’s been getting planned for at least a year (ahem, www.duffyfamilyreunion.com). I was having a bit of a hard time finding my Zen the first couple of days of the writing workshops due to the heavy fog of Duffy online registrations, last minute phone-calls with caterers and musicians, and the oh-so-irritating, last minute lists of the Duffy Family Reunion’s Survivor series, taking place tomorrow on the Brudenell River.But I did get to spend a ton of time with my two amazing brothers and my nephew, as well as my awesome vancouver island cousins, who i will admit, came salmon in arms. Yum.

Back to the workshops for a minute. We sat in the sunshine of the front room of the Haviland club, a large circle of armchairs eating fruit and sipping on coffee, talking about the ways of the industry. We also had fascinating discussions with Jackie Kaiser, literary agent extraordinaire, Bonnie Stewart, blogger and social media fortuneteller, and Christy Ann Conlin, a fiction writer who lives at the end of a long dirt road in Nova Scotia. Fabulous people.

Erika got us to do writing assignments, usually every morning. I’m not used to getting the assignments, I’m more used to giving them. I set the deadlines, facilitate the dialogue, and move things on when they’re getting slowed down. But I liked the assignments. It was fun being a student again, jotting down useful notes, listening to the lectures, and getting the practical infomation that i need – to get published.

The good news is that it’s possible. The bad news is that it may take a looooooong time – some aspiring writers were there with manuscripts they’d been holding and pawing through for more than ten years. Is this the future of Mystic Stillbirth: from Conception to Reflection?

The other good news is that if I write three blogs a week for a year, then surely to god I’ll get the hang of blogging – writing into the universe. Where the words will go, who only knows.

Here’s to you, Mystic. Here’s to a story that needs to be a lot more commercial before it hits the shelves, and maybe that’s okay. Writing is a transformative process, and I like that. There’s something about being forced to change that’s so …refreshing.