Our First Edition is Dedicated to Al Massey

Participants of the Eastern Michigan Writing Project's 2007 Invitational Institute were fortunate to work beside a dedicated educator and musician, Al Massey. When this electronic newsletter became a reality, we were looking for a name that would capture what the Writing Project is all about. Once Al softly spoke "eMuse," we knew we had a winner. Sadly, Al died before he could read this first edition. His death came on the eve of our first continuity meeting in September, 2007.

As an educator, Al loved to teach writing. Paraphrased from a conversation with one of this summer's participants, he remembers Al saying, "Writing a good story is easy. Think of a character and then put him 'up a tree.' The goal of the story then is to get that character down from the tree. You let the story happen from the point of that problem."