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And what is to me my own dad my own my own workspaces is totally is totally foreign to me and not all together I have to say not altogether pleasant. But I'm guessing but it seems to be my only choice. You could buy a coffee shop in here. OK phones OK. OK all right go ahead. Oh yes yes yes yes yes. Is this I carry my glasses hope this isn't one of my students. Yeah I'm sure somebody scared you out of it. I steal stories from my students. I. Swear to god they write some great stories. But you know they have no name so they can't get published. You know. It's interesting because the teach and I'm not actually I'm sort of exaggerating a little bit but I did have a student in fact named either matter Ryan.

Because he was male. I mean it wasn't right it wasn't Matt Ryan. It wasn't I right. That's a B.S. joke if you went to B.S. You knew about B.S. you would know that all male students are named Matt Ryan or cabin not unless mom was drunk and then it's Seamus but all right. And there's this great kid not Matt Ryan who turned in a story it was a fantastic possible story. It was like a one interesting moment in it and I kept saying to this kid get rid of everything else it's the one moment you know the daughter walks in on the father who's just found her engagement necklace or whatever. That's it that's your moment that's the whole thing and Kevin or Matt said OK got it chief and came back next week with his revision which was the scene was extended by two lines of dialogue he nailed it. And this went on and on through the course of the term until I finally got so frustrated I just wrote the fuckin story myself because it was a great story you know but he wasn't ready to execute. The teaching

process for one thing it's a great delight to see people considerably younger than myself who have the kind of sort of crazy courage to be trying to do that kind of work and it makes me feel like well I'm their teacher I better not waste as much time as I'm constantly wasting like I sort of keeps you honest in a basic way. But it's also you're having to explain to them over and over again their bad decisions compassionately with real detail because they're giving putting a lot of trust in you and that in fact is how you get better as a writer. You just see other people's bad decisions and start to articulate to them why they aren't as good as they could be and how they could be made better. And that's because you can't see your own work you're totally blind to that. So that's been very helpful. You know I think for me one of the first class I taught was in the School of Continuing Education at University of Virginia. And so I had students in the class. There would be a couple people their 20s were mostly people or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s and even

a couple scenes in the 70s. And it was I don't think I have the most current Internet was the best workshop I've ever taught. These were the best writing students and not because they're always the most talented although some of them were quite talented. These are people who are taking three hours out of every Monday to meet and talk about stories their own work their their kind of classmates work and the stories I was assigned to read and they had jobs and they had mortgages and they had kids and they had so many reasons not to be there and they were showing up and doing it. And there were a couple in the classroom so in touch with and they were just knockout great writers who had no idea how good they were. For most of them was the first time they ever taken a writing class they hadn't gone through the whole process as undergrads and had spent their whole you know their whole young life doing that and thinking a lot about themselves they'd already been through the process of realizing that there are a lot of other people in their lives who mattered and now they're finally taking the time to reflect on that and write stories about you know all sorts of things and I had students who were you know Army vets who were wood workers who were antiques dealers who were

doctors who were just I mean the whole rant really ran the gamut. And what I took away from that was just their commitment to writing was hugely inspirational to me that mattered so much to them. They were all they were like me and I was working working full time and I was teaching this class at night and I was carving out time to be there because I felt like I should probably see what it's like to teach the if I like it. And I just fell in love with it with that experience that people who had this time to talk about work and find a language for talking about it and had that kind of commitment so that's I still think about those classes I'm still in touch with a few people there because that was for me a really galvanizing experience and I could never.