January 9, 2012 
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA: Now that I’m back from my second residency in the MFA in Writing program with the Vermont College of Fine Arts, I’d like to direct you to one more source of wisdom I learned from the last two weeks: YOU.
A father and son skate on a make-shift ice rink in front of VCFA's College Hall.
It was hard to carve out time each day to write and upload blog posts. But what kept me going was the fantastic range of comments the posts generated from readers. I would go from having a fascinating conversation on writing in a workshop or the dining hall to having a fascinating conversation on writing in my blog’s comment field.
This isn’t a new experience; I maintain the reason this blog was named a Top Ten Blog for Writers is because of the contributions of readers. But there was so much thought put into some of these comments. The authors of the comments cover the gamut, from beginning writers to seasoned writing instructors. They are all worth a read.
Below is an index of my MFA posts, in case you missed one or would like to go back to read the comments. On Friday we return to our regularly scheduled programming, with the triumphant return of the Creativity Tweets of the Week!
- A Window on Your Narrator (Dec. 30): A window as writing technique.
- Illuminating Your Story (Dec. 31): Thoughts on concise writing and revision.
- Creativity and Wasting Time (Dec. 31): Allowing creativity to cultivate.
- Storytelling vs. Fragmentation (Jan. 2): A look at the lyric essay.
- Reading Your Work Aloud (Jan. 3): The headline says it all.
- Revision vs. Re-Vision (Jan. 4): A new way to look at revising your writing.
- Dialogue as Action (Jan. 5): Conflict through dialogue.
- Pacing Yourself (Jan. 6): On writing and Robert Goulet messing with stuff.
- In Defense of Excessive Detail and Sentimental Disclosure (Jan. 7): Rethinking sparse prose.
- And one other post, with a short video of Thai lanterns being launched into the sky, New Year’s Tradition.
Thanks for taking the time to share them with us, Patrick, it was almost as good as being there! Looking forward to getting back to your usual schedule.
Dear Patrick,
I’m a new reader of your blog, and someone interested in low-residency MFA programs. I must say that the Vermont faculty did an impressive job with their workshops/lectures last winter.
I hope you don’t mind that I’ve cribbed your nuggets. Those In Defense of Excessive Detail and Sentimental Disclosures will be of great help to my novel in progress.
Thank you for sharing your experience!
Kind regards,
James Harris
Stanford University Libraries
P.S. Looking forward to your nuggets from the summer session.