Such a good evening, such a sad day.

Last day of criting: I had a story, and they picked me first. I rushed the story to get it turned in for this. Not a lot, I just didn't have time to sit around and wait for the ending to show up, so I rushed some bits and didn't spend as much time on it as I should have. All this because I really, really wanted to get the story in for a crit. I wrote it all here, from Sunday to Wednesday afternoon, 6800 words. And I wrote it thinking about the critiques I get, telling me not to second guess myself, to explain things better, to put more setting detail in. So I did it, really buckled down and paid attention to everything. Tim and Karen had discussed the idea of imagining the scenes before and while writing, so I thought about where he was physically, and packed the damn thing full of details. It hurt to put that much detail in it. But everyone said it was their favorite piece here, and that they were all physically grounded by the detail. Of course, it was *littered* with little sloppy not-enough-proofreading comments. I was so embarassed. I I hate making mistakes that I know enough to correct, even in rough drafts.

After class, lunch at the Indian place--It was yummy. I've always associated indian food with my dad's version of indian food, which I don't think was quite right, as he's weird and puts too many veggies in curry. walked back, started sorting through my critiques. by and large, I'm good with word choice and all that, so I don't really need all ~15 pages of every critiquer's copy of all 6 stories. So I went through today's stuff, consolidated all text changes that I want to make onto my own copy, and removed the last page. Presto! 5 copies instead of 25, and an extra 20 loose pages. Hopefully I can get through a lot of them before packing tomorrow. I also went through Sea Change, because I've changed some things so much that it doesn't make sense to pay attention to any of the line edits. Tomorrow, the other 4 and packing and partying, and probably crying. A number of us are passing around notebooks for others to write in--almost yearbooks. I like the idea so much. I hate having to write something in them..