Brain-storming. Brains storming.  A component of writing that is essential, whether acknowledged, or not. For some it happens easily, for some a struggle.  Huddled over their work, in a fluorescently lit, tan cinder-block room, the none-too convinced class of community-college writers awaited their next wrestling match.

            I had been teaching writing, in one form or another, for a decade. I was still adjusting to the fact that I had been doing anything for a decade, professionally, but that’s another story. On the Mainland, as the contiguous United States are called in Hawai’i, I had wrangled minds into the finer arts of language and writing. The concepts were the same; now, however, my playing field contained coconut trees and luscious greenery.