Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

Things Always Change

And There Is Always a Lifespan…

Over the decades, I have been involved in numbers of groups and writer’s events. I helped start a workshop in Moscow, Idaho. Kris and I started a group and workshop in Eugene, Oregon.

And we started a publishing company named Pulphouse Publishing that, by its nature, had a limited lifespan built into its DNA. (When we started WMG Publishing we made sure it did not have that fatal flaw.)

Then twenty-three years ago we moved to the Oregon Coast. We had no desire to start anything here, but as the years went by, it just sort of happened. Workshops, Sunday lunches, and over the last four years we held Friday night business meetings about once every six weeks or so.

We have moved the workshops all now to Las Vegas where they are starting a brand new life with a fantastic Master Business Class in October. We hope that the run of the Vegas workshops will be long and full of fun and learning. Both Kris and I are really excited about that. (I will announce one of the cooler things about the new workshops later this coming week.)

And tonight (Friday) here on the Oregon Coast, we will do the final Friday night business meeting. Then a couple more Sunday lunches and those will fade off as well into fond memories of a lot of great conversations and learning.

Things Always Change.

And that is a good thing.

So I am looking forward to the meeting tonight for the learning. But when it is done I will feel a sadness of something good closing a final chapter. Damn I learned a lot in those Friday night discussions. And on the Sunday lunches.

And I plan on having the learning continue in different forms in Las Vegas.

Everything has a lifespan. The Friday night business meetings finally will end tonight. I hope the writers who have attended over the years will fire up a new form, maybe in Portland. I would love to attend when I am here. But I won’t be starting it. Time for someone else to do that.

I have new Vegas things to start.

 

 

3 Comments

  • Kate Pavelle

    I am so grateful that I got to experience two workshops in Lincoln City, meet the town, the attendees, the Anchor Inn… I will miss the roar of the Pacific and it’s threatening ways, and the sense of imminent disaster I have always felt when at the beach, waiting for the earthquake to come. It made me more present in the moment. Every grain of sand, every wavelet, every broken shell were sharp in the crystalline light.
    Now I can use Lincoln City as a setting guilt-free.
    And then there were words, so many words. And new friends, copious notes, and the effort to get in my almost-7 hours of sleep. It was such a good time.
    See you in Vegas in March!

  • Michaael Kowal

    Thanks, Dean, for both the Friday meetings and the Sunday lunches. A thousand different inspirations during both for me. Amazing conversations, and a great way for a ‘younger’ writer to a little more come of age.

    Can’t thank you both, and Matt, enough.

    But maybe I’ll try – thank you. 🙂