Conferences tomorrow

The full day of student conferences is scheduled for tomorrow, so I'll be beat by this time Thursday night.

Got no writing done today, which is fine. Read student papers and was excited to find what appears to be a "natural screenwriter" in class, someone already writing at a high level of craft. Almost everyone else is overwriting to a large degree, the usual beginning problem.

Have a few breaks in the full day conference schedule, so maybe I can get some writing done then. Otherwise, I'll write a lot this weekend.

I started the novel about the black soldiers in postwar Berlin, and it's quite good. Never heard of it or the writer, but this may turn out to be a first rate book. One of those wonderful books that appears, gets appreciated or not, but then gets forgotten. There must be thousands of them. 90% of the pop lit I try to read doesn't measure to this novelist's knees. William Gardner Smith, Last of the Conquerors. I'll have more to say about it when I'm done.