Faithful writing

Well yesterday was the Faithful Writer conference. I thought it was fantastic! The keynote speaker, Mark Tredinnick, is not actually a Christian, and made a curious effort to incorporate ideas of “faith” into his address, beginning with a reading of Luke chapter 5, which made for quite a fascinating talk, the likes of which most of us, I am sure, have never heard before. But he is a very good teacher of writing well, which is an important aspect of doing our work of writing faithfully, and so from a perspective of creative writing it was brilliant. It was essentially a day for Christians to learn how to become better writers, in order to better communicate the truth that they have to tell - and to receive tuition from Mark at a very inexpensive rate!

My friend from work came along, as I have mentioned earlier, and she had a great time and absorbed a lot of Christian subtext throughout the day. Over lunch we sat down at a table alongside a student from Moore College and I missed the opening but soon discovered that they were deep in conversation to my left and that he was doing an admirable job of meeting her where she was at and essentially sharing the gospel. So, well done to him! That is a conversation that I will endeavour to probe sometime this week. The downside of spending the day primarily with this friend is that I didn't spend as much time catching up with some other writing friends, but hopefully I can find other avenues for that soon.

Before lunch we had an hour an a half of writing time and afterwards could submit our work, with a handful of pieces then being selected for a public (anonymous) workshop. My friend’s poem was selected, and considered to be very good (and I've asked her for a copy). I’d have died a thousand deaths if the poem I wrote had gone up on the screen, because it ended up quite personal, but it was borne out of the thought and feeling that I had at the time, and couldn’t get out of the way, so I figured that that is what ought to be turned to poetry when pressed to write.

I then went to Mark’s poetry seminar elective in the afternoon, and enjoyed that a great deal too. My friend and I later asked Mark to sign our copies of The Little Red Writing Book. I thought that was a bit dorky, but then figured that if I had a book to sign I wouldn’t mind people asking me too, which is just what he said. He wrote in mine “For Alison, Her own woman ...”. Hmmm, what exactly does “her own woman” mean? (He was a very nice guy, so I am just going to let myself assume that he meant something positive!) At the end of the day I came home wanting (if not being talented enough!) to give up my day job.