Behind the story: “Learning to Sail”

“Learning to Sail” is the second of three short stories in my short story collection A Little Bit of Love. The impetus for this story came out of an assignment I did in Dean Wesley Smith’s Character Voice and Setting workshop in Lincoln City, Oregon.

This workshop was the best writing workshop I’ve ever taken. It’s now being offered online, which is a lot cheaper than flying to Portland, renting a car, and staying in a hotel for a week. I might even take it again myself sometime, it was that...