My Creative Butt On The Line

I spent yesterday in a total haze and suspect I'll be in the same state of overwhelm for the rest of the week. So if I can't string a sentence together in this here bloggie, that's why.

Some Facts:

• They give you an ID card here at the Banff Centre with the word ARTIST stamped on it, all in capitals. I am a card-carrying artist.* Feels delicious.
  
• My best friends in this course are from the travel group. Their names are Mike and Bill. I know for sure Bill's in his 50s. Mike looks like he could be 50, but I wouldn't want to presume. Although, after reading his piece about getting his ass kicked all over Lake Chapala, Mexico, he could just be a really-worked-over 34. Hard to say.
• The travel group had a big fight yesterday. Something about false advertising in the Banff Centre brochure blurb. Big debates about what is travel writing and is it journalism and all that. Bill suspects it will be the first of many fights.
• Someone has already almost cried in Memoir group. Because 5-minute writing exercises can do that to a person.
  
• I should talk. At the prospect of reading my 5-minute writing exercise to the group, my heart almost ripped itself from my body, got on a Greyhound bus and escaped to the wilds of Lake Chapala, Mexico.
  
• When I parked my car, I got out and three deer jumped down into the parking lot as though to greet me. I said, "Hello Beauties," and went to class. We saw another little Bambi when Mike, Bill and I made our way to dinner. The restaurant is called Vistas and once the sun dips behind the mountains enough so your retinas don't burn off, they raise the blinds in a dramatic Rocky Mountains reveal.
• There are in fact counseling services here at the Banff Centre. But only on Fridays. So you'll have to soldier through until then.
• The poetry instructor is a young-looking dude who, in his twenties, taught English in Japan for a year and saved all the money he made. It bought him two years of time in which he wrote and submitted like crazy, and created a paying writing career. He now makes his living as a novelist. In Canada. It can be done. I also got great validation about my Just One Year plan. (Even though it may take two.)
  
• I'm getting workshopped today. Which means in 4.2 seconds I have to leap into my car, drive to Banff and hope there isn't a massive line-up at the printer in the Writer's Lounge.

* Valid only until September 21, 2008