SHU January Residency: Day 4

(If you haven’t read day 0, day 1, day 2, or day 3, you might want to check them out first.)

Tuesday morning my story was critiqued. I thought I’d feel a lot more nervous, but the good experiences I’d had in the other critique sessions and the couple of comments I’d heard from people who had critiqued my work had me feeling fairly confident.

In the end, I was thrilled with the critiques. They gave me exactly what I’d needed – I’ve known there was something still not right about the writing, but I couldn’t figure out what. When they told me, it seemed so obvious. It didn’t hurt (as I’d thought it would), and in the end I just felt grateful. Wow. 🙂

Things were pretty much downhill from there (as in, easier and easier). After lunch, we had a writing period and then a presentation by the guest author, Bruce Hale, who has written many Chet Gecko mysteries for kids. I read a few beforehand (The Mystery of Mr. Nice, Farewell, My Lunchbag, and The Malted Falcon), and they were very amusing. Not surprisingly, his class that afternoon and then his talk later that evening were both quite funny.

After the class with Bruce Hale, we had the afternoon off until his talk that evening. There was a reception after the presentation, where we had wine and punch and cookies and stood around talking.

Just one more day to go.