Yesterday, I visited Laura Cappelli's creative writing class at Sheehan High in Wallingford, Connecticut. You may recall I mentioned this school was a rival of the high school I attended back in the Stone Age (you know, the pre-Internet and cell phone days).
Some people, not naming any names here but you know who you are, teased me about being a cheerleader. I'll have you know I was the captain of the squad, thank you very much. I hope you'll bow down a little lower next time I pass...:)
I was all set to talk to them for a typical class length period of time - 40-45 minutes. Imagine my shock when I heard the teacher say, "We work in blocks here...so your class will start at twenty to one and go until...
...two."
Um. An hour and twenty minutes?
"Actually an hour and twenty-four minutes."
AUGHHHHH!! went my brain.
"That sounds fantastic," went my voice.
I could not have believed that I would talk for that long - and thanks to the students and their great questions, I really didn't have to. They all wanted to know about writing, about the process, about my process, about publishing. I mentioned to them a horror story I had written and they really wanted to hear that.
I promise to put that on the website when I get back to LA. Promise, promise.
I even read a little from the new book which they seemed to like. So all in all, whew, it was a great time. For me, anyway. I hope it was for them too.
So today, I'm off to Sedgwick in West Hartford. I've got cookies (shh!) and my Ninja Webmaster is going to project my website and maybe show off the little video interviews he did. I hope it goes as well as it did at Sheehan.
More to come...
