Storylines

March 24, 2001

Participants: Heather McConnell, Leigh Neithardt, Julie Leff, Kevin Sharpe, Leslie Van Gelder

 

Truth is usually stranger than fiction. For those of us who write, most of our best characters come from observing the people around us. On this trip we were expressly going in search of characters and stories based on our studies of people in Manhattan.

We each went off to our own places of observation - from Zabar's Deli to the waiting area at the Museum of Natural History to the halls of St. John the Divine. We watched people just being themselves.

Later, after a good lunch on the upper west side, we headed to the New York Public Library's reading room where we hoped to write. Most of us discovered that stories take a long time to settle into us. While we had plenty of fodder, no one felt much like writing. Instead, at a Dunkin Donuts below, we told our own stories.

On the way home in the back seat of the bus, we had a wonderful conversation about what are imagination and creativity - surely the soil in which stories grow.

 

Our Situques

	LN			LVG
HM				JL
				KS