Seven Things I Learned At

My Grandmother’s Writers' Workshop

by Eva Bombeck, age 11

This Spring was my Grandmother’s Writers

Workshop. It was my first time attending the

workshop, and my first time going to Dayton.

I never knew my Grandma; she died before

I was born. But I heard a lot of things about

her from my Aunt Betsy, my Uncle Andy, my

Dad and of course my Granddad. My

Granddad could not attend the conference

this year because he broke his neck in our

neighborhood and ended up staying at our

house for four months.

When I got to Dayton, I was so excited!

They had a street near the University named

after my Grandma. There was also the Bombeck

Learning Center for kids whose parents go to the University. (I thought that was great!) Many of the speakers at the conference talked about how Erma influenced them to write. The writers who spoke at the workshop inspired me to do the same.

Here are seven things I learned at the workshop:

1) I learned that my Grandma wrote about being a mom. She wrote columns, books and appeared on T.V. I didn’t know that she wrote for the Dayton Daily News. She was also a feminist.

2) I attended some of the workshops like Shannon Olson’s class, ‘The Art of the Anecdote: Shaping Small Stories’. I learned how to make stories short but interesting to the reader.

3) The second day of the conference there was a workshop on greeting cards given by Matt Schneider. I learned that making greeting cards was a lot harder than it looks. Most greetings cards that get published are birthday cards.

4) Mike Peters sat at our table and he was fun to sit next to. I loved his comic strip, ‘Mother Goose and Grimm’ and I even bought his book.

5) Garrison Keillor said that writing is not as easy as it looks. I asked a question when he was on stage if he wrote as a kid. He said that he wrote about funny noises and smelly explosions. That made me laugh.

6) Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda make videos for the Internet. They showed some of their videos like ‘Chad Vader’ and ‘Christmas Bric-a-Brac Theatre’ to the audience. They were hilarious.

7) Tim Bete told a story about Brother Tom Price, an English teacher who told my Grandmother three little words, “You can write!” It really encouraged her to keep going.

I really enjoyed the workshop and I am looking forward to coming back to Dayton in 2010!

(c) 2008, Eva Bombeck. All rights reserved.

From left to right: Jackie Bombeck, Eva Bombeck,

                            Matt Bombeck, Garrison Keillor