For Elizabeth

These are only suggestions:

In the Essaying the Essay panel, the panel spoke of how the essay "form talks about itself," how it is "self-referential. self-reflexive, and meditative."

Your essay should take on this attributes, maybe in the last revision? Or while crafting?

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First, I recommend typing out your notes. Save this in one file.

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Second file: Shape the notes into descriptions of panels, what was the gist.

Add you reactions, contemplations, emotions.

Add descriptions of the bookfair, of the people there. Try to balance the external with the internal.

What happens at AWP?

What doesn't happen? What fails?

Exhaustion, time. What is AWP for others?

From the "Post-Memoir Memoir" panel: Use high and low speech.

Save this.

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Third file: Go back to your notes, and take note on the different suggestions for writing.

Try different techniques to revise. Keep a "Notes" page which describes the technique you try.

For example: pg. 3: I wrote an imagined scene at AWP, as I learned in the panel "Essaying the Essay."

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Allow yourself the chance to be nonlinear, nonchronological.

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From the "Essaying the Essay" panel:

An essay can have wit, mischief, and is contrary to seeing things.

Intuition and instinct to sustain an idea of curiosity. To evade one's self to get to an alive thing.

A balance of an open encounter with an awareness of shape.

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Feel free to include fragments, snippets of experiences, etc. Like when you tried to listen to the Waywiser Press reading while "the game" was on upstairs. Or going to another reading at a bar and being turned away. Maybe this is as much of the AWP experience? (I know there were moments of letdown for me, as there always is when attending something intense.)

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I hope this helps, Elizabeth! We can also meet at any time.

My personal suggestion: Start small. Then revise with play!