Alas, I must bid farewell to my brave young writers.

Today was my last session with my high-school word warriors. I've spent the last, oh, six or seven hours (less a brief break to make a very slapdash dinner) going through the final versions of their stories and providing my opinion thereupon to their teacher. It meant that I didn't get one single word written on my NaNoWriMo opus today, but the month is young, and the kids are important.

What I have loved about teaching this workshop:

• Nostalgia for Clarion South and all my Clarion buddies.
• Revelling in all the different writing styles the kids came out with.
• Feeling like each story was a Christmas present to be unwrapped, a mystery, a wonderful surprise, a new jungle or hidden valley or secret cave to be explored.
• Helping new writers allow the thought into their minds that they are, even though new, still real writers, with the right to dream of writing well and getting published.
• Giving them specific, concrete tools and skills to start making that happen.

What I have learned from teaching this workshop:

• You can't transfer everything you've learned over decades of writing in just a few hours, and you have to be okay with that.
• Not everyone who signs up for a creative-writing course is actually interested in writing, and you have to be okay with that, too.
• The ones who do have the spark, the drive, the yearning to write, will be very clear about it.
• Most of the people in the class will choose to politely allow your feedback to slide right on past their stories without visible effect, and you have to be okay with that, too.
• When the kids hand you a big card with all their thank-yous, and they applaud at the end, that's just plain-and-simple fantastic. That's all. Just fantastic.