What a heady week it was. My class on Memoir Writing at Yale was so big it overflowed the assigned room and we had to move across the street to an auditorium: Sudler Auditorium in Harkness Hall which is very near Sterling Memorial Library, the main library on the Yale campus.

For six days, each morning, I stood on stage and shared my passion for the art and craft of memoir along with its hidden and remarkable transformative power, for both the writer and the reader. We talked about “shimmering images”—key memories that form the spine of a book-length piece of narrative nonfiction; inherited stories—the filters through which we interpret our memories; reflective voice—the key to depth and complexity of voice in memoir; and structure. With the latter we focused on linear and modular structures. Students from Africa,  Europe, and across America attended.

After class I had time to attend only a small sampling of my colleagues’ classes: screenwriting with Linda Bergman; personal transformation with Jan Phillips; and Melissa Rosati’s brilliantly clear and insightful class covering the emerging landscape of publishing, including marketing in the new world of social media.

There simply wasn’t time to take in all that was available—from craft classes in fiction, poetry, journal writing, the essay, nature writing . The list goes on and on.

To chill out I walked the campus and shot images of architectural details that captured my attention or scenes that evoked pleasure. I’ve included some here.

If you are a woman who writes or wants to write, don’t miss the 35th annual International Women’s Writing Guild conference next year.

Here’s my summer writing desk at the cabin in the Sandhills.

I’ve had time to turn back to my new book. You know what that’s like—life often gets in the way. I’m writing about love and inheritance and playing with modular and linear structures in this new book.

Are you familiar with modular structure? It’s like a collage where you piece together separate, yet related, chunks of writing that create a meaningful juxtapositions and move the story forward. Very freeing to work with. Modular structure is often non-linear, and that is, of course, how many of us think.

Five hours via train and express bus operated by Deutsche Bahn Railways and I was in Prague. A quick weekend dash to the East from the Village of Schwaebisch Hall where I have been submerged in German. Sometimes I can not keep my sentences straight in my journal. A perfectly fine English thought comes out half German. My professors would be pleased . . . . But in Prague all that study was useless. It was like falling into a fairy tale and discovering everyone speaks some fantastic language the key to which is just beyond reach. And then, as if in dream, I awoke again in Deutschland less than twenty-four hours later jostling along on a train, raindrops trailing down a darkened window.

Photos posted November 13, 2010