Writing about writing

If you've ever been to a writer's conference, you know they have a way of putting your mind in a different place. Being around all those writers, fascinating and bizarre people, can distract you from your original purpose for attending (working on your craft). If you're lucky, accomplished and talented people are there, too, inspiring and coaching and sharing their thoughts. But there's also the element of strange, the parallel-universe-ness of it, that take you into a whole new world.

So maybe that's why I liked Rebecca McClanahan's piece, Scenes from a Weekend Poetry Conference, in the latest version of Brevity. She captures the beauty and the mystery of such events.

"Never before so much hair in one space, so much hair so carefully out of place, and to arrange a ripped T-shirt to slide over one bare shoulder is an art in itself, as is the negative capability of shawls that fall just far enough. Here are jeans slashed to reveal knees polished to perfection. The mysteries abound: why such violence? Was it passion, going down on the Muse, and who mussed her hair into such chaos?"

Read more from Brevity here.