Sunday, July 17, 2011

And I feel fine

Right now I am seated on one of two aircraft carrier-sized beds in my Boston hotel room. It is Saturday, it's after midnight, I am exhausted in both body and spirit, but I can't sleep.

Yesterday was the last day of Odyssey 2011. Six weeks, gone, over and out, game over, man, game over.

I don't even know where to begin to describe my experience. I have been writing over these past weeks about writing techniques we've been taught by Evil Overlord and our guest lecturers, about writing and laughing. But I haven't said anything more profound, have I?

This is going to sound totally pretentious, but I have changed over these six weeks. Yes, I have learned tools for a writer that I didn't even knew existed, and it has elevated my writing to whole new levels, but I have also been transformed as a person.

Writing is so personal, so close to who we are, that anything that changes that process, that makes me look at it and reevaluate my own relation to writing, will also change me. Has changed me.

I have pics to post and things to write about the last few days of Odyssey, but for now I will say this. The Odyssey Writing Workshop has been one of the best experiences of my life. I look back at these six weeks in awe. Absolute awe. Of the phenomenon that is Jeanne Cavelos, a.k.a . Evil Overlord, of the knowledge she imparts on her minions, of the fantastic people I have been surrounded by. There are no words, really.

Thank you. Thank you, Miss Gone, for finding this class. Thank you, Work, that gave me the time off. Thank you, fellow OdFellows, for making these six weeks such a brilliant combination of learning, inspiration and utter madness. And thank you to my parents, who have fanned the flames of my imagination since the first time I played dressup as a little non-bearded fellow.

Alright. Enough of the sentimentality already. More tomorrow.

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