The Writing Teacher

The fog lifted slowly on the Santa Fe River on the morning of our first writing session. Four writers sitting in a loft of the banks of the river found their voice and created magic.



Writing is such an isolated activity, I found myself entranced by the sounds of others creating. I usually participate with my students, but on this day I listened to the tapping of fingers on a keyboard as one of the participants wrote on her laptop. Another preferred the old-fashioned pencil and brought a dozen finely sharpened instruments to sketch a story about her husband. Another lay on a chaise with a fine pen and a legal pad. The sounds of her writing remained mute and only the sight of her pen moving from margin to margin on the pad gave away the magic she created.



"I just got started," the pen writer said when I called time.



I reminded the students of Somerset Maughim's great advice to beginning writers: always stop each day's writing in the middle of a sentence.



The next day no blank pages stare back at the writer, just the possibility of finishing that sentence, even if the original intent blew away.