Last weekend I taught a course in fiction writing at St. Peter’s Abbey in Muenster, Saskatchewan. The monks are in the Order of St. Benedict, and they are a hospitable group. Of course, any order that gave us Benedictine – half of one of my favourite drinks—knows how to welcome guests. The monks appear to have a puckish affinity for existential humour. In the bathroom just inside the entrance a hand-lettered sign over the toilet instructs: Hold Down the Handle Until Everything Disappears.
For the second time this summer, Ted and I were in a dormitory together. After 42 years of marriage, Ted is still a fun guy to sneak into a dorm room—especially when the church bells toll to summon the faithful to ponder their sins.
There were 16 people in my class – twice my usual maximum and four times the ideal number for a weekend course. That said, I wouldn’t have traded one of them. We were a disparate group: a family physician, a true crust punk, a lawyer, a crime reporter, two retired teachers; two men who are currently teaching; three students of St. Peter’s College and a nice sprinkling of people who were simply interested in writing. I wish we’d taken a class picture.
Because of our numbers, we decided to have a two hour class the first night, an hour and a half class every morning, then spend the rest of the day in one-on-one interviews. Evenings were for wine, cheese and readings.
As someone who has spend her adult life teaching, I’ve always been fascinated by how groups come together. Perhaps because we were sleeping in dorms and eating together, we were quick to bond. We laughed a lot and the students learned a lot—not just from me but from one another. The first night people were reluctant to read from works in progress, so I read a chunk from “The Nesting Dolls”. The next night – perhaps because my first reading had already pleasured them enough, the students were eager to participate. Without exception, they were sensational.
We opened our classes in the morning with Elmore Leonard’s rules for writers and the responses other writers had made to Elmore Leonard’s rules.
At the end of our last class, I read the rule that I felt was the most important at the It comes from writer Helen Dunmore: “Don’t worry about posterity – as Philip Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed, “What will survive of us is love”. I think perhaps our weekend together at St. Peter’s had already taught our little group that lesson.