Post Its & Sherrie & Writing & Shit

Once, when I was an undergraduate, our final assignment (or one of the ones at the tail end, anyhow) for Craft of Fiction was to write a piece of flash.  A whole story in something like 800 words or so.  Give or take.  But around 800.  If memory serves.

I wrote a piece in the second person about hitting a deer on a motorcycle.  My professor at the time said something about it after class.  Either he was going to share it with Sherrie Flick or it was like Sherrie Flick or something.  About Sherrie Flick.  But the point to me was (1) Sherrie Flick was a big f*****g deal and (2) this dude either thought I wrote something that she would like or something that was like her.  Either way that was a score.  

This was a big f*****g deal.  To me, anyway, since the only people who'd ever read anything I'd written up to that pint had been contractually obligated to do so as either my professors or my classmates.  So, yeah.  It was a whole thing.

Then, when I was a graduate student for a minute, I worked with Sherrie Flick at Chatham University.  I really do mean "a minute."  I finished the first residency and, I think, maybe, three weeks of the first semester?  Before I became a statistic?  That girl that never really belonged in the cohort to begin with who had to drop out to go "visit her aunt in the country," if you will.  And it was only the residency that was with Sherrie Flick anyway.  But she gave a reading the one evening that I was there and shit.  Just, shit.  It was this one piece that probably wouldn't have meant much to me had I read it myself but her voice - the voice she read it in - has haunted me to this day.

Sherrie Flick is a big f*****g deal.  And I get to go see her give a sort of lessony, chat type thing on Tuesday, followed by another reading.  And I am so thankful for whoever winds up watching my kids in order to enable this blessed event of freedom and writing to happen.  I love my family - my husband person and my child people.  But I love Clarion maybe just the smallest amount less that makes it socially acceptable.  I miss Clarion.  I like being in Clarion with my Clarion people.

You should all read some of Sherrie Flick's stuff.  Because it's good.  And read this.  This is some other shit she's said that's cool.  And I think I'm going to buy a pack of Post Its tomorrow.  I need diet Canada Dry anyway.  I'm out.  So I'm already going to the store.

Hear that, girls?  We's goin' out tomorrow!  Yessuh!

Addition:  I somehow jumped from something ridiculous like 12 page views to 28 page views.  So thank you, to whoever shared or randomly found me!  Hopefully some of my lurkers will become repeat offenders.  Recidivism.  It's what I live for.  =)