We were an odd assortment of semi-competent writers, and we performed variously at the conference. But we all agreed that it was a terrific experience: to be consumed with narrative for three straight days, with no distractions or interruptions.

Our food was cooked for us; our beds were made. Public phones were few and cell reception was poor. We met in our assigned groups for about four hours a day. The rest of the time we read or wrote or walked on the property or talked to our fellow attendees, but the subject was always narrative. Nobody followed the news.

We are Alan, Bev, Chris, Deb and I. Each is white. We’re all between 50 and 60. One is male, straight but celibate. Two are lesbians married to non-attendees. One is a married heterosexual with an only son. One is me.

Each of us had a hangup. Alan was stalled till he could come up with the perfect title. Bev was a free-verse rambling kind of gal, amiable and well-educated but not creative. Chris was naturally sardonic, short-sentenced, born for a career in satiric journalism if that career still existed. Deb and I wrote elegantly but had trouble coming up with plots. Or character development. Deb responded to the problem by always including and then cranking up the sex, drugs, and violence in her stories, just like the escalation in porn. And I, humble I, stuck to fly-on-the-wall close descriptions.

Alan and Chris landed in the group headed by the humor novelist. Bev was placed with the memoir-specialist. Deb and I joined the dozen attendees who looked to the female short story writer for guidance. Our class was crowded; our instructor was the biggest “name” and apparently there were too many powerful or poignant requests for her that couldn’t be refused. We packed the room and tried to wedge our chairs around the table.

I’m the author of this page, all-knowing and powerful. I can make Alan flirt with Chris – I can even put them in bed together, and make Chris forsake her wife for a dangler. I can turn Bev into a gifted writer. And more. I have authority.

Except that’s not true. I may not know plots, but I understand characters. As soon as one is created, he begins to reveal himself. And with each revelation, he loses some of the traits or tendencies that would contradict those revelations. He has to be consistent enough to be sane, or the story will lose cohesion. Authors are gods (especially in third person). We create characters with enough free will that they can then surprise us, if we’re not paying attention.

The truth is, Alan and Chris spent a bit of time together. They were in the same group at the conference and that led to conversations as they left the meeting room or when preparing for the next class. Everyone brought a piece to work on, but we were also spot-assigned some little exercises: impromptu, as it were. Alan didn’t make progress on his opus, or even on the perfect title search for it, but his spontaneous pieces were without titles and with promise. Chris is never intimidated by a blank page; she created some cute op-ed pieces while there and also worked on the series of stories she’s amassing about the characters she and her wife encounter at their country place, in the Sierra foothills. Alan and Chris did not become a couple in any way, but they were spotted together regularly, ambling on the dusty/spongy ground beneath the eucalyptus trees. Both of them are tallish, formerly thin people who are acquiring bellies now, slouched in posture, pale of hair. They looked more like siblings than a couple. They acted more like siblings than a couple.

Bev was the one from our group who was alone in class. She seemed to enjoy the memoir and journal guidance, but she didn’t improve as a writer. She’s a lovely woman, the oldest of us and showing it with corrugated cheeks; anyone can tell she was a beauty when she was young. And she’s a nice person. She always murmurs feedback when we read to her, chuckling at the humor or sighing at the pathos. Her behavior is attractive, encouraging. She’s a perfect audience but a lackluster performer. I think she got the least out of the experience, but we were glad she was there.

Deb and I are old friends. We met on the commute bus and immediately recognized fellow punsters. Our humor always meshed even though our lives don’t. She’s married with a young daughter; I’m divorced with two teenage sons. She was beautiful as a young woman but needs a gym and dermatologist and better bra now. I was always attractive enough but no head-turner; I’m growing into a relatively handsome old woman. Deb earns okay money but as a legal secretary, stuck with egos and time pressure and no power. I lucked into a consulting career that pays well enough and doesn’t require any overtime.

After the conference ended, we all agreed that it was not without stories. Things happened. Bev started to understand narrative even though she was in the memoir class, and it occurred to her that her wife’s story wasn’t holding together. Sandy’s answers about where she spent some evenings were overly elaborate or strangely evasive. Her character, as self-presented, lacked motivation. Bev started to fret. She paced regularly through the eucalyptus grove that abutted our dormitories, sometimes making bouquets of flayed bark, and the gullies in her face deepened. As it happened, she and Sandy split up soon after our return.

Alan didn’t have a title revelation, but he received motivation to make some changes in his life. He’d had a neurotic break when he was in his early 20s (his red hair was then as fiery as his attitude, but now it’s ashy orange). After trying shrinks and psychotropic medication, he’d opted to treat his condition with an abstemious Catholic life. He didn’t drink or do drugs. He attended mass weekly. He was almost fundamentalist in his beliefs, which made his love for his two gay sisters interesting. Not to mention his expectation that he would be reunited in heaven with his suicidal mother.

The second (and final) night of our stay, there were unusually strong winds even for the coastal slope on which the conference grounds stood. Alan’s room, a single because so few men attended, was located at the top corner of the two-story dorm. When the eucalyptus tree crashed down that night it took out part of the roof and Alan’s dorm window, and flattened his bed. If he hadn’t been out watching the storm, he would have been hit. He might have died. In the afterglow of survival, he decided to try marijuana again. For the first time in decades, he started to consider the acquisition of a girlfriend.

My epiphanies were shallow. I’d brought a piece to work on that was in memory of loving horses, of bareback riding, when I was 13. Our instructor acknowledged that the adolescent-girl-with-horse thing had been done and done before, but she said (wait for it) there was always room for it to be done again, if it’s done well. She looked at me when she said that, with her chin up like she raised it when she lectured us, but when she lectured she tended to close her eyes, as if we were a distraction. I basked.

I also backed away from the table. There were too many of us to sit around it; an attack of modesty made me join the three others who formed a kind of second tier. I soon realized it was a good move for me. It made me less of a dominant personality in that room. It let me listen to arguments instead of leaning into them.

I attended to conversations about plot, but there really are just seven, and I’m tired of them. I heard statements about character development, but we all know that everyone’s a sucker for the prodigal son story – it’s so easy to manipulate the reader with a bad boy who’s seen the light.

I toyed with my pen and I pondered. It’s an important tool for a writer of course. Back when I was in college, in the olden days before laptops and smart phones, before even fiber tips, I used a fountain pen. They don’t require pressure the way a ballpoint does, so your hand is less likely to cramp. But they do use wet ink. I learned to hold the cap in my left hand while I wrote with my right, because sometimes the ink leaked into the cap when the pen was closed, and then if you placed the cap on the back end of the pen to write, you could get ink on your hand.

My pen at the conference was not of the fountain type. Since my college days fiber pens have come into availability, with no pressure required and also no cap. I was using one of those, fine-tipped, blue-inked, at the conference. In fact I had two identical others with me. So when the instructor wanted to borrow mine, I readily allowed. And when after use she admired it and boldly asked if she could have it, I surrendered it with grace.

` It was a forgettable moment. I learned at the conference that’s what I want to write.