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center for writing | minnesota writing project | mwp invitational summer institute | institute fellows 2017

Bryan Coyle

©2017

readingWriting Group

I’d been avoiding finishing it, so I’d left myself only the hour over lunch to pull open my draft and figure out why my essay was important. I’d gotten the story out, and now I needed to pivot to the So What? What was my So What?

Should I make a new section? Yeah. Should I separate it with 3 asterisks, centered? Absolutely.

I went to get a coffee.

                                                                                ***

“So this is a continuation of what we looked at last week. I kind of set up everything before, and now I’m trying to like… get at the bigger picture, I guess?”

The three of them got it. I didn’t have time to read the whole thing, so I would just pick and choose a few key points to read now that I had a better understanding of where it was all going. I read all the funny parts.

I paused. “Okay, this is all new stuff from here on out.”

I made it two-thirds of the way, hit a spike, and stopped.

“I.”

I pretended to make a note in the margin.

“I, I...”

“Would you like me to read it?” she asked.

“No. Yes.”

And she did. I looked down and heard my words, shocking and new. I should probably come up with a joke, right? She finished before I could. I looked up.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize I’d written that.”