Apprenticeship Reading

Since Jan­u­ary, I’ve been men­tor­ing two six­teen-year-old appren­tices, Becky & Tan­ner, in cre­ative writ­ing under a pro­gram by ACI. It’s been a great time, and we’ve cov­ered a lot of ground: char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, world-build­ing, plot out­lin­ing, essay writ­ing, the whole copy­right / licens­ing / Cre­ative Com­mons imbroglio, edit­ing, tax­es and what you can legit­i­mate­ly claim, infi­nite libraries, and a pile of oth­er topics.

Today, we held a small friends-and-fam­i­ly read­ing. I read my short sto­ry Exit Inter­view, Becky read a 2^nd-per­son short sto­ry (“The Great Ant Race”) and a snip­pet from her nov­el-in-progress The Cigám Tri­ad, and Tan­ner gave a pre­sen­ta­tion titled “Why the Edu­ca­tion Sys­tem Sucks”, which was about the dif­fer­ence between inter­est and pas­sion, and how the edu­ca­tion sys­tem needs a rev­o­lu­tion to nur­ture the latter.

It was a great end to a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence. I intend to stay in touch with my appren­tices, and I look for­ward to read­ing and hear­ing more of their work.

Thanks, ACI, for this oppor­tu­ni­ty. And thanks, Becky and Tan­ner, for being great appren­tices, or men­tal­ists, or man­a­tees, or what­ev­er the right word is.