Unless you knew what the mound represented, you’d have no idea that civilization once existed here. That this was a highway overpass, and that was a two-hundred story skyscraper. In the red light it was a long, pitted slab of stone, and a mound of dirt strewn with the ubiquitous brown vines.

Those are the last lines from the notebook I brought to the 2008 La Jolla Writers Conference. 2010 is headlined with a quote:

You cannot pretend something is true unless it is. — Laurel Corona (La Jolla Writers Conference)

That was from her opening-day discussion on Fact vs. Fiction. I had to miss Mike Sirota’s Self-Editing for Writers to be there, and Mike is always worth learning from.

One of the highlights of this year’s conference was Steven Boyett, author of Ariel^• and now Elegy Beach^• (and hidden things in between). His Sunday morning talk on self-indulgent writing was the first thing I listened to when I received the conference CD in the mail today. If you weren’t there, you can hear his keynote at the LJWC web site. They’ve made it at least temporarily available on the front page.

Don’t be in a co-dependent relationship with yourself! You will have no peace until you listen.

Also, I’m not a big fan of writers conferences, but I do come back to this one every couple of years. If you come, bring your best work.