"We have art in order not to die of the truth" --Friedrich Nietzsche

I spent the weekend immersed in a writers' conference sponsored by the leading journal in my genre, Creative Non-Fiction. I felt at home among members of my tribe, writers who write from their own life experiences, inspired by the motto, "True Stories, Well Told." And after all the time spent in airports and planes recently, I especially enjoyed that I didn't have to leave town.

People came from around the country, many of them with ties to Pittsburgh, including our workshop leader, Dinty W. Moore, editor of the online journal Brevity. He was a major attraction for me since after spending so many years writing a book, my goals for this year are to write, submit, and hopefully publish shorter pieces.

We started out focusing on the new world of publishing and how to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the destruction of the old system of literary gatekeepers. We learned that 40% of the industry's editorial and design staff has lost their jobs in recent years due to mergers and consolidations. This means that many experienced,  talented people around the country are available for hire at reasonable rates.

Sunday's format involved meeting in small groups to workshop our pieces and systematically learn from the difficulties and flaws our work samples demonstrated. Moore's handout, which was worth the price of admittance, easily divided our works into categories of how artful writing goes wrong. A couple of us had trouble with Scene, a couple more with Point of View and another with Interrogation and Discovery which relates to the questions the writer is raising and the answers that emerge. The issue in a number of pieces was the Invisible Magnetic River, which flows under all writing. This is the unstated reason for the story's existence, which in our writers' group we deal with by asking one another, "What is this story really about?"

It didn't take long after the conference for me to have an opportunity to act on one of the suggestions book agent Emily Loose made. I had asked her what might help me promote my book and she responded, "Have you ever heard of the Moth? I had, but didn't expect I'd be a participant in a moth-like storytelling event at a local pub,Riley's Pour House two days hence. I learned of this Writers on Writing storytelling opportunity from my hairdresser who was a friend of the emcee, writer and musician Larry Connolly The chance of this unlikely occurrence happening is why we say when writing about our real lives ญญ- "you can't make this stuff up."