Iowa Writer's Workshop

The application is done...finally.

After months of pouring thought into what I'd send to apply for hands-down the best fiction writing program in the country, the envelopes are sealed. Tomorrow I will go to the Post Office and mail them.

I am relieved.

There are thirty seats in the fiction section and the same in poetry. Thousands apply each year.

It's a breeding ground for Pulitzer Prize winners. Vonnegut taught there. Anthony Swafford, author of Jarhead, is guest teaching there this year. This is the writers' program.

I am nervous.

I barely gave any thought to applying to Winona State University. When the acceptance letter arrived, I was happy, but just barely enough to mention in a blog some seven years later. Getting in was just something I did and barely gave much thought.

This is different. This is completely different. Immediately after I decided I was going to go, I began getting signs, or at least what I took as signs about the Writer's Workshop.

Thanks Shawn for telling me to apply. Thanks Shawn, Becca and Pennie for the letters of recommendation. Matt, Leslie and Katheryn, thanks for editing.

Thanks everyone for the support. Thanks everyone who've told me I'll get in.

Until then, there's one less thing on my plate to worry about.

Until then, I wait. Anxiously.