Fin-de-WWW??

I don't believe there could've been a better final visiting author for WWW2007 than Esmeralds Santiago.
Spirited.
Happy.
Content with her place in life.
And loaded up with perhaps the most potent information for writers--at least for me.
She didn't see my writing, but her words about writing were highly applicable to my approach.
Two things, in particular:
1) Always go with your first instincts--I think I'd been waiting for someone to say this all along.
2) Not every reader is going to get it (chosen references), but the readers who do will get a deeper meaning--maybe I'm stretching things to support my penchant for dropping arcane references in my writing, but I do so more or less to deepen an understanding for the cultural elements I like to drop. If you get it, there's a gold star in it for ya!
Yeah, I know, I'm no memoirist--although the only thing I've had published in Brushing fell under the creative nonfiction category, go figger; normally I tend to helplessly exaggerate anything real into a fiction--so it's a weighty compliment to Esmeralda that her comments reached me, spoke to me, the way they did.
And as for memory feeding memory, what an irresistable turn-of-phrase. Truth brims in those words. And it's not just for memoir, anymore!
(And, if I remember correctly, didn't Esmeralda reference during the Valentine's Day Dinner the increasing importance of technology on the writing experience? I got distracted with Brad's camera--apologies to the camera-shy. If she did, though, COOOOOOOOL!!)