Harvest Moon

Perhaps this is a harvest moon; perhaps the harvest moon is the next full moon four weeks from now. Whichever -- this was two nights ago when the sky was clear and it was lovely. I am cursed with an electric pole and a swag of lines in my view. I wish the town had been fore-sightful and buried them like bigger cities do. Ah, well.

I am infected with autumn and there are, so far, only a few trees turning color. During the week I wrote a 12 page short story called "Equinox" in which I gave myself permission go linger on descriptions of autumn at a lakeside summer-people area. This was, of course, a metaphor for the only character, a woman who was in the autumn of life deciding what to do with her immediate future. It was not autobiographical except that all the detail of place were known to me although I've never lived at a lakeside cabin. It included past travels and I indulged in those desciptions too.

I am stunned that in the writing seminar I am taking no one is writing imaginative material. It's all memoir, confessional, possibly therapeutic and without any critical response either offered or, it seems, wanted. It's all pat-on-the-back time. I'm sure encouragement toward confession is good for people who have led somewhat repressed lives. But it seems to me anyone can profit from learning skills that allowed them to write more vividly and to think more deeply -- maybe even to exercise imagination. Apparently not. Alas. I'm accustomed to trekking up the writing mountains alone. I had hoped for one helpful person -- there is one woman who has worked at various writing-type jobs an who read a well crafted personal memoir first chapter ... perhaps she will be a bit helpful.