First Class Today...

First fiction class today. Bret Lott has a really nice style that is hard to put my finger on...essentially, he's very down to earth, very relatable, kind of funny...He tells the story of working as an R and C cola man for awhile. He seems very defined by this sort of American childhood--father an R and C salesman--he moved the family whenever his job transferred...Bret worked at the company too before he ever figured out he wanted to be a writer...

Sitting in a fiction workshop is so different from sitting in a different type of class...Instead of writing down facts or information, I feel instead that I am sitting at the foot of a master writer and I am just absorbing nuggets of wisdom or advice about the writing craft--all with the caveat, of course, that anything he says, may or may not work for me as a writer personally. So much of it is about following the muse/magic/vision/instinct that works for you. He says things like, in order to be in this class, we all have to kind of acknowledge that we don't know any one answer to writing... (like Socrates!)

We read John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist as prep before coming here. The line that keeps standing out in this book, for me, is his idea that the novelist creates a vivid waking dream--and his job is the engage in that and to keep up the continuous waking dream in the work he or she writes...the image of the continuous waking dream really works for me because I think the act of writing can be engaging in a sort of waking dream, a trance-like state. But then of course, whatever I write, if it is good, should engage the reader in his or her own sort of waking dream. And the idea is to not artificially or accidentally interrupt this dream with awkward or "dishonest' moments in the writing.

Our clases meet downtown in this building that is across from one of the major bridges of Prague. When we walk out the building we have a beautiful view of Prague Castle up on the hill.

Ventured in to a major shopping area today in search of spiral notebooks...finally found them at this huge bookstore...Luxor Books. Nice place, I am sure I will revisit! It ain't Borders or Barnes and Nobles...which is a nice change!