Joyce Carol Oates.

It was with some trepidation, but also a sense of fun, that I attended my very first writer's workshoppy thingy with three friends: Kara, Adam and Kevin. It was very informal, and I didn't really know what to expect, only that we were going to use Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within as a bit of a starting point, and indulge ourselves in writing a bit of fiction.

There were lots of laughs, and we each wrote 5 stories about 'in the forest', 'the dead elephant', 'the disciple', 'memory' and 'at risk'. We alloted 2 minutes for each story, and then read them to the group. For the last story, we gave our prose to another person to read - that was interesting. Kevin mentioned it changed the dynamic of the story because the reader didn't know "where to punch".

All in all, an exciting prospect of lots of creative juices flowing about, and I look forward to Wednesday fortnight for the next one.

And who knows? I may even post some of my gold here for you to read.