The divine Marianne Villanueva has invited me to speak to her Women's Lit class at Notre Dame de Namur sometime during March or April. Seized by a bizarre form of stagefright (her class only has ten students, for chrissakes) I put off answering her for days.
I did a number of these class visits in conjunction with Going Home to a Landscape a few months back, and I pretty much sucked. I don't field questions well; I'm a bumbling, stumbling excuse for a writer. When a bright-eyed nineteen-year-old asks a question like, "What is your number one purpose for writing?" you should really take a moment to think about your answer. You should not (because you fear silence) begin with, "Oh, wow. Good question..." and then ramble incoherently for 90 seconds until it becomes clear to everyone--including the kid who walked into class fifteen minutes late and then promptly fell asleep--that you have no idea why you write, who you are, or how it came to pass that you ended up talking to them at all.
But I'm going to Marianne's class anyway. So there.
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