Well, the reason I came to the conference because I am a writer of teacher and I'm very interested in writing and I'm here to gain more information to help my students. I guess mostly I wanted to see other writers both panelists who are so to speak successful having published and writers who are looking to publish writing is lonely you do it alone and it's nice at times to connect with other people that are doing the same things and just share everything from how you do it to how you sell it to what you'd write about. I teach writing and for that reason, you know, I shouldPractice what I preach it's kind of interesting to find people that have made it like Duty gassed in her book Ordinary People and to discover how she needed and I think you get some inspiration and help from these people. When you they tell you about their experiences every year the University of Minnesota Rochester Center presents a Minnesota writers conference. It is a time when people get together to hear their favored Riders the local people who have made it in the competitive world of writing fiction the range of people attending the Rochester writers conference extends from the closet writer who wants to begin writing stories to the freelance professional looking for contacts and markets for the beginner and those just interested in the creative process Minnesota writer, Carol Bly took the audience through the short story Dynamic where the outline of a new storyCreated through the process. The participants could see the pitfalls lying in wait for the potential writer. is happy to write dialogue It's just for fun. It's dialogue and plot as fast as we can in literally a half an hour and we should be able to do it because we are 85 brains working here instead of one. So it should go 85 times as fast if everybody works hard. All right, we're going to divide up into two teams. And this is the door team and this is the window team. And what we're going to do is work out is work out where they're too many of you have to divide up into teams and each give each other problem. The ideal way to do. This is that the door team would write up a plot like a three set its plot like there's a farm family. I'll just take one quickly from my own experience. There's a farm family with that have a daughter who's got a scholarship to Julliard School of Music and she's engaged to a young man that wants to buy their Farm the old folks want to sell the farm but an Arab from Chicago has offered to pay the full price plus lots and he can buy it right away and what's more if if they sell the farm to the young boy that wants to marry their daughter, which would be nice. Brown the place and all that then she'll get married and won't use the Julliard scholarship on the other hand and keep the land in the family go with it. That's the sort of things we do in the Farmers Union, you know and and try to work it out from there. But anyway, you give each other a problem, but we can't do that because there's too many of you to get together and Whisper up a plot to have time to work on with the other groups who will all write the story together. All right, there are some ground rules and here they are they have to do with the three most difficult things. There are four people which is Is early death and bad sex and cynicism in the room? We will imagine certain things are happening. We all imagine that there is somebody in this room either man or woman who if it's a woman feels this way about men and if it's a man he feels this way about women and that is they've never had anything to do with the opposite sex and they don't want to start now and they don't want to hear a lot of particulars that will be offensive to them. Therefore. It will keep the story without any without any particulars that are personal and physical just for the sake of it's the kind of its what checkoff would have said to his brother. What is it get that stuff out of the story and so the ground rules laid Bly began the action. Okay. What do you want? Where should it take place? You have to move off it fast. You got 26 minutes. And we're all right in an Old Barn. Is it morning afternoon or evening afternoon? All right. How does the light look in the afternoon? fading fast check out the window team is doing very well. The door to him is very quiet. The chickens are in the barn and the light is fading fast is the barn in South America. What and the barn doors open is light coming in through the door lovely lovely. Is it Dusty in there? What else is in the back? You can see the light through the Dust Tools hanging on the wall, and there are rustic. Wonderful. We got stop. Little kid is playing very quietly. He's our chief chief. Okay, she's playing so quietly. We still the loudest sound is the munching of the car. Well, you're the hey, you're the hey rustling. Is that what he does it is it Russell. That's the first word you heard for. Hey try to take the second word. You heard so that you get the less ordinary. What else does he do besides Russell? There's the crunching of hey, it's very good. It's good take the second word when you can't it's less ordinary diction and ordinary diction is for people that don't honor their feelings extraordinary diction is when you can okay, what else is going on? That's right. Okay, the neatly bailed stuff she staying off and she still near the stuff near the door where they've been Trucking route. All right, what else is going on? Pigeons aren't more sounds pigeons detail upon detail, but with 85 people adding bits and pieces the story began to get unwieldy Bly tried to help the group by inventing dialogue. Because then we learn more about each other will somebody be the farmer for that? Somebody else could take over the next few days just to think away. The wipers start first. All right. Well Amanda Farmers. Well, she walked into Chief. All right from to say it Henry Henry. little louder Can you heard the weather forecast today? Have you heard the weather forecast today? She says that he says that he says. He's drunk. He's drunk the story ground to a halt which is what actually happens to many writers. How do you move the story along when it happens in your own writing Bly explained? What is the problem with the story so far? You don't know it's not going fast enough. Is it here's the thing to remember about a short story in case of doubt you need another invention bring in somebody else meanwhile back at the ranch or just then I was working with this group of that got stuck like this once and I said you're getting stuck and we were playing the game that you couldn't have anything but dialogue you couldn't have any physical description and suddenly one of the men did a wonderful thing. He became simply awful looking and he's a very nice-looking man. He said they got this terrible expression on his face and he got up from his chair and he went over and he put an arm around with a woman who's the mother and house and he said well, I'm right between services and I thought I'd just drop over and see how you're all doing here and I had a moment and it's always nice to call I try to get around to everybody but I don't and I just I understand that your instant taking a job here and I want to tell you that the church supports women right down the line as Homemakers as mothers as was and you've got our complete support and I just wanted Even know instantly that story again took off you see you in a New Direction because someone invented a clergyman but no one seemed to be able to lift the story above the mass of details so far. The story has the drunk husband 14 children a pregnant cow a pregnant wife and a child suspended from the rafters. How could the story come to a reasonable end? She wouldn't say what know how to do it apparently is problematical and the birth of the child that's coming up which is problematic when another way if she's confused is going to say something you'll have to do it through talk. Alright, so lets just hear voices from here on and you'll have to do a lot of oh, look there Comes The Butler kind of stuff, you know, if you're going to move. Yep, damn that caps coming not coming and he says get me some twine in the wife realized. Everything is happening runs over here, they both work together and they both work together which just gonna talk and she's not coming right in the wife does. Well hold that calf's head hold that cab here. No, we there to bed and go back and get some more conflict in wear it when he says I'm going to get rid of this place and move off this Farm. She should say you're never going to sell this farm. This Farm has been in my family for two generations always been in Hurricane fly pleaded for a device to wind up the story with the calf be born with the baby be delivered with a father stopped drinking with a child come down from the rafters. We'll never know because there was no resolution but there was a lesson to be learned even from not finishing the inability to resolve a story as a dilemma many writers face. We've had the problem of moving dialogue along bring something new into it. When it begins to die at that very moment for heaven sakes dropping. We note that. We've tried to bring a new things. We tried everything we didn't like our first idea I brought An idea should it was like, okay, it's good. You have to know that somebody else brought it tonight. Yeah. I saw you bunch of the doing. So one person acted out he acted out the parts you could hear his own voice. That's a very good way to write dialogue and the rest of us either liked or didn't like what he did and people were spotted at one point. All the conversation was longer. Yeah, it's not once did you do but now flat conversation that just locked into itself like the arms of jellyfish. It was it was firm you had problems in making it Well, it kind of got stuck in the barn so to speak and that's the truck. But anyway, we had all that experience and that's a lot because we had it in we had it about 20 in 38 minutes. So we ran through a lot of the hard problems. You see if doing a story in 38 minutes and one thing that helps with writing story is to hear all those others voices saying no, not that not that that's what not like Elliot, you know, that's not what I meant. That's not what I meant. All essayist Carol Bligh if the process of writing fiction is often frustrating. It is also frequently very rewarding and the rewards of mastering the nuances and overcoming the frustrations are sweet fame money and occasionally even working with Robert Redford fiction writer Judith guests novel Ordinary. People was published over the transom sent to a publisher without an agent and published. It was one of the first books published in this way for over 25 years. Guess told the participants at the conference how she got her start. I went to a lot of writers conferences like this. And I think mostly what I was looking for. There was permission to write about whatever I wanted to write about. So I would like to say at the outset I give you permission to write about whatever you want to write about. I think that's the only way you can take yourself seriously as a writer is to write about what you want to write about and not worry about whether it's timely or it's going to sell or anybody else in the world is going to be interested in Reading what you're writing. I think another way of taking yourself seriously is to set yourself a goal the goal I said, What's to finish something as I said before I'd written since I was 12. I never finished anything. I wrote to the emotional moment. I wrote when it just things just sort of built up and I felt like I had to get it down and then I'd write until I'd written myself into a corner and didn't know how to get out of it or I got bored with what I was writing about or something came up in my life. That was more immediate and needed my attention and then I just stick it in a drawer and go on from there. So when I wrote Ordinary People I decided that it was about time that I got some outside information. I never let anybody read anything that I'd written. It didn't strike me as as an occupation. It's really seemed more like a bad habit. Just something that you couldn't help doing and you had better do it in the closet because nobody's really interested in this other than you and And when I started feeling the pressure of of of wanting to communicate, which I think at some point when you're writing that happens to you where it's not enough anymore to write in the closet you want you want somebody else to read it and see what they think of it and be interested in it. And I knew there was no point in showing lovely paragraphs to people or lovely sentences to people or hang it on the walls. And this is what I did today, huh? You like it. I knew I had to finish something. So Ordinary People was the first thing I finished and After I finished it, I looked it over and I thought that there were some things that I had done pretty. Well. There are other things that I was dissatisfied with but I didn't want to write on this novel for a hundred years. I wanted to write another novel and now it's five years later and I'm working on the final draft of the next novel and about 10 times a day. I still ask myself like I was asking myself 10 years ago. What do I do this for? I am I doing this it's so hard writing according to guest is not just a spontaneous outpouring of creativity. It is hard work deciding what goes where what to eliminate where to begin and where to end it is not easy. Sometimes view. My writing is this gigantic juggling act where you've got these apples and pears and oranges and bananas and you're trying to keep them all up in the air at the same time. And in that moment a couple of cows walk by and you think yeah, I think I can get these guys. Here too, but should they come before or after the oranges? Should they be eating the oranges? Should I tell the people in the first chapter or should I wait to the middle or should I let them guess that in actual fact the oranges and the payers are related to each other. They're all these problems they have to deal with in my darker moments. I see my writing like yesterday. I saw my writing as this huge black ocean out in front of me and I'm standing on this Dock and out there. There are a few lights but none of them are connected to each other and none of them are connected to me. I'm sure in this sea. It seems to have a name. I call it possibility that guest has these problems helps the potential writer feel less isolated assuring of problems helps the participants feel as though they are not alone. What does a writer do for instance if he is in a bad mood depressed, does he stop writing not so says guessed. It seems like you have to bring all these emotions with you to your work. And if you're expending a lot of them in your own personal life, sometimes you don't have the emotional energy to do what it is that you have to do. When I when it works, I mean I try to use some of the emotions that I have but I think even more than that. I've learned to try to be professional about writing and to work through these moods and to use them if I can but if not, just keep writing no matter what's going on justjust try to keep my work as separate as I can from the rest of my life. And when the novelist is through with her work, does she then feel good about everything she has written no says novelist Judith guests. There is always a quest for Perfection a feeling that one could have done better. I think specifically of my own novel Ordinary People in terms of the character of the mother who I think started out in my own mind is pretty much being the villain of the piece and the longer I wrote on it the less the more she kept trying to break out and be the person she wanted to be if I had to look at that novel and see a place where I don't think I was successful or as successful as I would have liked to have been it was around her if I were writing it today. I think I would write it differently and hopefully allow her a little more latitude than I did and unfortunately, I'm having the same problem the novel I'm writing now. I have a character and I know why it's happening. It's because I have this Prejudice I have this this Thing I want to teach and I want to say you see if you're this kind of a person this is what happens and a character like that. I've had so much trouble getting inside. This guy's mind and I was discussing with another friend of mine who's a writer and she said, well, I'll tell you why you're having all this trouble and I said why and she said because you hate this guy you hate this guy and he knows it and he ain't can tell you nothing and I so I think that's very true and I've been trying very hard to at least fool them into thinking I don't all these tricks but I do think that's true. I think when you have this preconceived notion and then you create this character to fit this notion. He's never going to come be anything more than a cardboard character and come alive in your novel what motivates students guests to write if the work is so hard. Is it the fame the recognition guest explains? I think the last thing That I realized in taking myself. Seriously as a writer was that for me? The process is all and I don't mean for that to sound. I mean, that's not to say I'm not glad I'm glad it was published. I'm glad they're making a movie of it. I'm glad that I've met all the people that I've met. I'm glad to be here and to have people listening to me about what I think about writing but in the last analysis none of those things for as hard as the job is none of those things are enough. To make you do the job if you don't love the job and I mean, I love hate the job there yesterday. I hated the job but there's got to be something more going. I know there is in just getting the words down and coming up with a scene and you read it over and you like it and it accomplish what you were trying to accomplish. I think that's that's the most important thing of all I have a quote on my wall by John McDonald and I read it just about every day. It says a book written for oneself to gratify and satisfy and entertain the toughest one man audience a writer can ever have that book has a good chance of acceptance anywhere and I hope that's true. I hope it's true for all of you to novelist Judith guest Judith guests over the transom experience is unusual most writers have to face the Grim reality of trying to sell. Our stories to Publishers each person who writes must eventually faced a question of the marketplace a panel of four Riders Marion daneboe. Our children's writer poet Michael Dennis Brown short story writer Emilio De Gracia and novelist Judith guests talk to the participants of the Rochester writers conference about the opportunities of the marketplace Judith guest considers herself lucky that she did not have to Market her works. But initially she did have some rejections. I sent out a couple of short stories and I got them back and I was really offended because nobody wanted to buy it, but at the time I was living in Detroit and I belonged to a writers group there and the consensus in that group was that you send to in my situation say if you're writing a novel or Long piece of work like that that you send to like 15 Publishers before you ever think of doing any revising and it because in actual fact 15 Publishers is 15 people and it's not very many people for you to make this decision that the whole thing has to be completely Rewritten. So another sort of helpful thing that we talked about was going through one of the many different writers manuals and making a list of the Publishers that seemed like likely candidates for whatever it is that you're doing in the case of fiction. I don't think that's even very difficult. I know the the kinds of fiction that I like to read and it's the same kind of fiction that I like to write. So it was simply a list of the publishers. Who I was reading at the moment and Ordinary People was the third publisher that I sent it to first. I sent it to Harcourt brace because of a woman named Marilyn Durham who wrote a novel called The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing. She was a housewife from Iowa. No agent never wrote a novel before just felt like sitting down and doing it and I thought Kismet there's my publisher. So I looked him up and writers Market. They said they wanted sample chapters and a synopsis of the plot. Which was great because that's about all I had sent it off. Got it back in three weeks with a very polite. No, thanks. We're not interested. And after that I decided I didn't want to send it anywhere else until I had finished it the second publisher. I sent it to was random house and they had it for three months and sent it back and said, well the book has some satiric bite overall. The level of writing does not sustain interest and we will have to decline it you always remember the unfavorable things. So then I had my list. I had like 15 Publishers all lined up because I figured if I didn't that I would take you know, take it to heart and put it in a drawer and leave it there for a year before. I got up the guts to send it out again, and it's not going to sell itself to anybody in a drawer. So I think it was a week or so after I got it back from random house that I sent it to Viking. And you know, you just make the list you got the address all their take it out of that envelope put in another envelope readdress it and send it out as fast as you can they had it five months before I heard a word and then what I heard was don't be discouraged. It isn't lost or buried. It's just a waiting a second reading second reading again, I mean that blew me away. I thought that was great and then it was two months after that. They finally bought it so all in all it's you know, quite a length of time. So my feeling about marketing is that this myth that you only sent to one publisher at a time ought to be discouraged as heartily as possible. I think that you ought to send multiple submissions. I mean the worst thing that can happen to you is that two people will want to buy it gee that's tough. It's really tough poet Michael Dennis Brown also gave advice and Solace to those who experienced rejection my first book by for winter was turned down three times before it was taken The second book The Sun Factory, which I did send out, you know one at a time and it came back. It was sent back seven times over a period of two years. I think it's better than the first book. Now. How did I feel during those two years? I mean you can joke and say they don't realize how wonderful I am. I just it didn't really deeply affect me because I my obligation in writing the poems and poetry is the least commercial I think of the kind of writing we discussing here. My obligation was to the experiences that seemed to ask a poem of me. So when I saw say the lamb being born I try to get down as vividly and rhythmically as I could what was happening what I was going through and I make the analogy of someone walking in a landscape and seeing a painter with an easel set up and he or she is facing a landscape and on the canvas has some landscape material. You probably wouldn't say to the painter who's it for is it for you as it for the Great American public the painter would say I'm trying to get down what's there in front of me? I'm trying to get the texture and you know of the of what's what's confronting. What seems to ask a poem with me? So I feel very much what John Barrowman said that apart is someone alone in a room with the English language? And that's your obligation to raise your obsessions onto the page. And a publication is a bonus. My obligation is to the experience. It's nice to publish and it's obviously someone like myself talking about these things can sound a little holier-than-thou because I publish and therefore, you know, it's okay to say it doesn't matter if you're neglected all your life and clean toilets and so forth. If you do want to publish and there's a tremendous market now for poetry is if you see from the planes table out there extraordinary number of small magazines and large magazines and chat books and so forth tremendous Market, I think the best thing to do if you say in the Twin Cities area, I don't know what bookstore scene is in Rochester is to go to a good book store that has a really good selection of magazines and look through them and see the kinds of poems that are being published there. And if you think that your work is somewhat in that area and send some poems out a typical thing to do is to have maybe three batches of four or five poems continually in circulation the day they come out come back you send them out again, if they've been heavily thumbed and kind of sneered on you re-type them, you know, but smeared on yes, you just send them out. It's the hay fever you send them out the same day so that at any moment in time little wetter can drop to the mailbox saying you are you were gorgeous, you know. Poetry needs you poet Michael Dennis Brown. The question of an agent came up despite guests over the transom success most agreed that an agent was necessary. But the writer must select with caution Marion Dane Bauer explains just a few basic points about how an agent functions number one. If you are trying to get an agent and it is possible to get an agent when you have not been published. It's not as easy but it is possible to get an agent when you have not been published if you have some good marketable material in your hands and if you can also demonstrate to the agent that it's not the only thing you're ever going to write because if it's the only thing you're ever going to write the agent probably will not be interested in you because it's very difficult to make enough money, you know on one piece to have Justified his or her time and work. Number two about an agent don't go with somebody who is in Rochester or in the Twin Cities who says I will agent your manuscript for you and agent is only useful to you if their agent is known to the publishing houses. And if it's a if it's someone the publishing houses don't know then you have no Advantage where they're going under that no more advantage of your manuscript going in under their agents name that if it went in under your own name, so don't go with somebody local, you know, go with as someone on the New York scene if where you're going is the New York Publishers. If you're in the script kind of market then go with someone in in California number two, and there is an organization called The Guild of authors Representatives, which is a kind of self disciplining Guild of literary agents and that Guild has Certain standards and people who belong to that Guild, you know can be counted on for a certain basic things. I'll one of those is that members of The Guild of authorized representatives. Do not charge reading fees. Now. There are reputable agents that charge reading fees and it will be generally. Well my information is from a number of years back. So I suppose it's gone up a number of years back. It was $100 for reading a novel and providing a critique of the novel or in any book length manuscript. This can be a valuable service. The problem is that I think some of the agencies that charge reading fees. I really earning their money from their reading fees rather than from agent eating material and a you have to be careful with that. If you go with a member of The Guild then they're not there's no reading fee involved if you can get in in the first place to get them to read and if they take you on you know, On the blyat someone accredited in someone who has a good reputation with the Publishers. One of the problems is that you try to get some kind of information about the agents through other writers or whatever sources you can because if you come up with an agent that the Publishers just hate it's not going to be any plus to your manuscript to go under and agents name who is noted for trying to sell all kinds of junk to them. If the agent doesn't have high standards, then the agent may be a disadvantage to your manuscript rather than and Advantage children's writer Mary and Dane Bauer if the participants of the conference were rewarded by market and writing tips, the general public was also given a chance to experience thoughts on writing on the evening of the first day of the conference essayist, Carol Bly presented a lecture to the general audience entitled writers accidental moralist Bly discuss the duty of the writer to assume a moral stance in literature. She believes that while the moral attitude was taken for granted. Granted in the 19th century. It is currently outmoded. So to suddenly come along and say oh, yes, but if you remember all the 19th century writers the great novelists of Russia and of England in particular and some of the ones at the turn of the century in France. The idea was that some things were good and some things are bad and some things cause a tremendous amount of suffering and other things don't so there's tremendous differences and writers care about those differences. That's out of style now and someone's very likely to say to you if you say well that was good and what what he did was good and what she did was bad or what they did was good. And what they did was bad and that hurt people someone's likely to say well but it takes two to tango, you know likely to say it's all really part and parcel of the same thing and it's just in your perception of it and the people that have had an awful lot of therapy of the wrong kind of very like are very likely to say at the end when you say well Which in that prison camp for six years and I suffer tremendously. They're likely to say yes, but you know the guard suffered too. They suffer terribly. We're all in this thing together. It's all kind of an easy flow of sameness. And that makes it very hard to have a moral point of view. So the idea is how can we recover not just recover the moral point of view on personal things which people like Tolstoy led us in a hundred years ago, but we now need to have a new ethic toward the horrors of wide morality, but the lines of morality are not easily drawn currently. There are many schools of thought that prevent people from differentiating from right and wrong those who pick up on Trends are one such group. They want the witch in Hansel and Gretel to be somebody who's got a problem that needs to be worked out and work through And hansel's got his problem and gretel's got hers. And actually if they can get together and talk and perhaps have some guidance so that there is nobody gets out of control, you know some servant counter thing the it can be worked out where the which has a tendency to express herself by acting out which is to say putting people into the ovens got over. Well, that's trendy but it isn't good psychology actually more interesting psychology on that is the idea that if you notice when Hansel and Gretel get their hands on gretel's awfully good at getting them back to the parents. Although the parents are just something you'd want to get back to, you know, after you drop them, but he's good at that. He's good at the technical stuff. He thinks when she gets panicky he thinks and says no don't fret I've got the Pebbles. I've got the bread crumbs and so on he's good at that and that is what we train men to do and they are good at that and they keep their head so on but then he gets into an extraordinary problem, which is they arrive at a house that appears to have a lovely grandmother in it, which is just what we all need lots more of and instead it's treachery. She isn't lovely. She's horrible and she sticks him in a cage. He can't handle that at all and I'm not sure young men can't handle old evil women once a woman goes bad, you know. So I think the writer of Hansel and Gretel was very shrewd. It takes another woman to get rid of a woman griddle takes one look and sees this is very very bad news. And so grete Waitz around and went and things get pushed to think as they say. When what is that expression when something comes to some? Yes, when push comes literally to shop? Yes. Exactly. The question is who's going in the oven and Gretel gets the which in and that's hard work for a little girl, but she gets it done and that's who has to get it done. So that's a job we have to do and that was seen and that's good psychology. I think it may not be true may not be a sound wave looking at that story but it's a useful way of looking at it. And if you ask yourself, what do kids like all those stories so well for and they do like them very much. I think it's because all that stuff is in there. They know some of these battles have to be fought if Bly has a philosophy it is at one must take a moral stand. Even if it appears trivial her example came. My personal experience in Marin County when I was living in Marin County. I picked up a young boy and gave him a ride. And Marin County is just like the movies by the way is just like what they said about it only more. So and I said, what are you into because I learned how to talk to. And I was in my 30s then I was trying to be young. You know, it's all so I said, what are you into you know stay as he went I was driving along the road and he said he said I'm into Eternal Bliss and I said, oh yeah, how's that going now? And he said well, he said I bought a word I got my word for 75 bucks. If it's no good on go back and get another word to meditate on within two weeks. But if it's longer than two weeks in on my word don't work. Then I said I have to pay to get another one but the second words only $35 and I said, well, what is the word you got he wouldn't tell me because it's a secret and that's you know, I mean II didn't offer me any money or anything for and and then I said, well, where do you stand on the Vietnam War because I was out there fighting about that at the time and and he said, well he said course that all those things are just handle that's all part of the Bliss and I said, well, how about those babies that are getting bombed now say it way or someplace and he said well, they surrender their parents in because that Outright because God controls all those things and it's all right for everybody that's in it or it wouldn't have happened. So I said this is where you get out. So I Screech the end and he got out. He was glad to get out too. And I I looked in the rearview mirror and I saw this incredibly mean looking woman and it was me and I was terrified by that SAS, Carol Bly whether the participants came to the 1980 Minnesota writers conference to find out how to write fiction or how to sell it. They all shared a common love of literature. The fiction fans were rewarded by hearing you Works in progress by the conference leaders one writer was Marion Dane Bauer author of many children's books bar was commissioned by the State Department of Education to write something for young children to which music could be composed. So she wrote a fairy tale he or she reads from the first section of her story. This is called the Silent Forest in this is the first part of a four-part story. Once Upon a Time in that long ago and far away in which dreams are born and sometimes nightmares a young prince the youngest of his father's seven sons set out on an ancient mayor to find himself a kingdom to rule there is no use he said in Waiting for a piece of my father's Kingdom Six Brothers stand in line before me besides he added when he and his plotting neg had traveled beyond the boundaries of his father's land everything there is to know easy and he removed the earmuffs he had taken to wearing day and night in his father's Palace and he sighed for noisy the palace was it ranked constantly with the clumping of feet and the clanging of dinner bills in the blaring of bugles and the jabbering of voices and the solemn reverberation of the Kings announcement Kong. It was filled as well with the clattering of dishes from the scullery and the Horses from the stable and the giggling of the ladies-in-waiting in the loud laughter of the gentleman who waited for no one at all. Stitch together with the yapping of the palace dogs. It was indeed an incredible hubbub and it wasn't only the palace that was noisy. The kings kingdom was by the Sea and resounded always with the slapping and thumping of waves the wind howled across the water and battered itself against the cliffs the rain drummed with the sound of Pebbles falling into a tin pan the people of the Kingdom cup their hands to their ears and spoke their deepest secrets and shouts and the babies were born wailing and never stopped. I want to rule a quieter place the traveling Prince said one filled with the song of wood violence and the falling needles of pine trees. Anyway, he added removing the clamp. He had taken to wearing on his nose. My father's Kingdom stinks perpetually of fish the old mare traveled slowly steadily clomping along roads waiting through swamps splashing across rivers in the desert the mayor sank in sand up to her fetlocks in the wind moaned and thus and rubbed against itself and blue into the princes eyes. Not here. He said not here. I would not have a kingdom 10 times the size of my father's and have it made of sand. The mayor stopped at the very top of a mountain and the prince looked around at the Stony land that fell away from him on every side and said not here my mare and I would always be tripping over rocks and sliding into gullies on these steep slopes besides the wind blows here with a lonely sound and the rain comes with barely a patter hardly having a chance to fall. He stopped again on a wide grassy plain and climb down from his horses back to ease the stiffness of his joints in the prairie grass crickets chirp to cicada shrilled and a slender snake whispered past his toes the grass grew long and dry all the way to the Horizon until it seemed at the edges of the world. The gray green grass scraped against the sky not here the prince said and he climbed back onto his mayor and rode on at last the prince arrived at a small Greenwood field with sapling trees Birds Sang from The Young trees flowers hummed in the long grass and the rain when it fell saying a gentle tinkling song as it dropped from Leaf to Leaf to leaf. This will be my kingdom the prince said and he took from his saddlebag a silver rope. His father had given him to measure off his new land. He climbed to the top of a tall oak tree the one Tall Tree in the very center of the wood and tied the silver rope to the trees tip, then he and the mayor wrote out his far as the Rope would reach when they came to the end of the Rope. They turned and rode a Wide Circle always keeping the Rope tight as it stretched down from the oak tree taking in the Greenwood some small hills and some pleasant broad valleys some Meadowland a winding River and several small ponds. His father the king had measured his son. Well when he measured off the silver rope. So when he was done the prince had a small round Kingdom exactly the right size for his rule first. The prince said I must have a home. So he built himself a sod house on the edge of the green would he put no glass in the windows and no door in the frame the better to hear the song of the rainbow. He said news traveled of the princes small around Kingdom news that told of trees. So Laden with birds that one could stand on the edge of the wood and hear the faint crackle of eggs opening. Of morning glories that saying harmony with the shafts of early sunlight a fish that left from evening ponds and landed again with a silver plink people came to see if the news was true. They came they listened and they stayed to build their homes and their their children in the princes Kingdom the trees grew even the tall oak brew and the children lying in their cradles and playing in their fathers Gardens heard the music of the wood and learned it along with their parents. Speech. One small girl loved the music of the woods so deeply that she created a Thanksgiving song to sing back to the Greenwood and soon all of the children of the Kingdom were singing the song with her. Every morning is the trilling sun rose. They would steal from their beds and standing and stand holding hands surrounding the wood and singing this song of Praise. We are the children of the green green wood. And we sing the song of Praise happy. Are we in the green green wood through all our nights and days. We wakened to the song of the shimmering do whispering to the grass and swing from Canary Songhai and true and swim with bubbling bath deer stand in silence listening rabbit sit so still for the sun's sliding song at evening her the chime of the daffodil. We are the children of the green green wood. And we sing this song of Praise happy. Are we in the green green wood through all our nights and days the Young Prince was content the people of the musical Kingdom were content the children were gloriously happy. But all that was before the Greenwood became the Silent Forest here also our selections from what Barra calls a presentational rather than a representational play each character steps out of the action and talks to the audience the basis of the story is that Rachel a 42 year old woman mother of three children who are now all college age and wife of a man who is an English professor at the University and who had been her own College English instructor when she was a freshman in college was how she had met him. I'll gets up one morning and goes out and gets in her car and starts driving. She packs her bags first starts driving first. Not really sure where she's going to go and ends up and at her parents home in northern Minnesota and basically arrives and says here I am I've come home and that's the action that sets off all of the reactions in the family. Her father is an Episcopal priest that gives you a clue as to how I use some of my actual background information. This is by making a generational difference in something that I am very familiar with and basically Rachel has come back because her marriage is a failure and she has come back to the source of the marriages failure, which is her failed relationship with her father to try to work something out with that relationship. This is Rachel's opening. Monologue. Here's the play opens. I woke up this morning and there wasn't a trace of light anywhere. The stars were icy. DM outside my bedroom window the shortest day of the year. They say the longest night a night that stretches even into morning. The day's grow longer from this point. I'm told but I find it hard to believe I lay there this dark morning in my bed in what my mother would refer to as my husband's bed next to the man. I have slept with for more than half my life and I shivered I forgot to tell you by the way that the title of the play is winter solstice. later, Rachel says this when I was a little girl in Sunday school, my teacher a fierce Maiden lady named Miss Simpson told us that God resided in the hearts of men. He did not I sent he stood on Sunday morning before the altar at st. John's. He wore a black suit children must never hug because it gathered lint and he slept in my mother's bed. Mrs. Simpsons face when it's tight his glass. I thought she would shatter before our eyes suddenly. She gripped my arm just above the wrist and jerked me bewildered up the basement Steps From the undercroft along the ringing wooden aisle of the church to my father's office. My father listened to the recital of my crime. I did not instead. I watched the play of light from a small stain glass window that moved across his face. Only the face of God could display such Vibrance such color only the face of God could hide such pain he set the record straight while miss Simpson listened like an Inquisitor set out to discover here a see his mouth when he talked moved softly his teeth flashed red and blue from the window painted light. I never heard what he said. I only know that when we turn to go mrs. Simpsons grasp less tight on my arm. I looked back his eyes were not angry bar read another section in which Rachel is a young wife pregnant with her third child confronted by her husband's infidelity. Aaron was the first man who ever looked at me ever wanted me he would call on me in class and I could see myself shining in his face. There was never a moment when I made a decision. Yes, I will go to bed with him. There was only the moment when everything had already happened everything and then there was that other moment. I opened my front door to a girl pale and slender with long straight hair and doe eyes she had come to beg for Alan's freedom. I stood there seven months pregnant with Meg, maybe eight supporting myself on the door frame. My eyes were drawn repeatedly to the hip bones that jutted against the fabric of her cotton skirt. I cursed the Slender length of the girl's vagina. I wished her crabs and creeping syphilis. I blessed her unconceived progeny with gonorrhea and then I invited her into server tea and tell her she was being used explain to her the faithless nastas of the male animal. Why did it seem more terrible to me that Allen had betrayed this Brave terrified girl, then that he had been unfaithful to me. That night Helen's homecoming was delayed with another meeting. I spent the silent evening packing suitcases for myself and the two small boys for the baby curled within me. I leaned heavily over the tub scrubbing the tender pink flesh. So little hint of a man's body in a small boys and dressed them for bed as usual and blue cotton pajamas with feet. I selected the only coat which would still nearly closed around my burgeoning belly and I helped the Sleepy rubber-legged boys into their snow suits and Boots then I opened the door. The wind shrilled in stinging our faces with snow one of the boys. I forget which one began to cry. I shut the door took off all the raps. Tuck the two little ones into their warm beds. When Ellen came home, I pretended to be asleep. I have slept for a long time. Perhaps things would have been different with Ellen if I had awakened sooner writer Mary and Dane Bauer after the readings after the workshops after the lectures and panels. The weary participants were ready to return home tired perhaps but inspired and stimulated by the creativity at the Minnesota writers Conference in Rochester many of them ready to return to Rochester next year for the third annual Minnesota writers conference. It's very enjoyable to see writers. How many Baseball fans would say they enjoy baseball but they've never seen a baseball game. I mean, you just don't see writers and this is about the only time they emerge