Notes from the Sinop workshop

The workshop has one rule: nobody defends their own text. The text is read, the room speaks, the writer stays quiet. In the first hour it makes everyone tense; in the second the air in the room changes.

This year's best piece was three pages by a retired postman. Thirty years on the same street; he knew which door was waiting for which news. He had a sentence — "knowing a street by its addresses" — that I wanted to borrow. He wouldn't let me. Quite right too.

I'll open it again next year. Eighteen places, as before; the room won't hold more, and neither will I.