A New Journey

Well, I got a yes. Not for a book, but for something I’d wanted to do since the mid 1990’s. I applied for, and got into an MFA in Creative Writing program at Fairleigh Dickinson University! My focus will be in Young Adult and Children’s Literature.

I already started the program this past July. I spent ten days on campus- in a dorm with a really tiny bed…but that’s another story. Those ten days were the best in my writing career. Spending ten days in a deep dive in writing and books with so many like minded others was an incredible experience. Being able to take deep dives into the craft of writing, whether each others work, or within a text we were reading has already paid off in how I’m reading mentor texts, and editing my own work.

The best part was the people I met, from different parts of the country, and having come to the US from other parts of the world. It was such a joy to meet them all, and I miss them already. The hardest adjustment after was knowing that I’m not going to see some of them until the Winter session, next Summer session, or maybe not again. They were an amazing group, and I can’t wait to see them again!

The Mansion at FDU, where we had all our classes

Reading my own writing to so many other writers was a bit intimidating.

Some of us went out for ice cream on a night we had off

My group discussing each others response to a prompt we’d gotten a few days before.

Four of the six flights of stairs most of us hiked up a few times a day…