NOTE: This is an older post I’m resurfacing for you. Why? Because I just signed up for a retreat on the Pemaquid Peninsula with Jodi Paloni in May.

After a brief inner debate about money and timing, my writer-self screamed, “Do it! It’s exactly what you need.”

When synchronicity is at play, I’ve learned to pay attention. When the right circumstance comes along, I’ve learned to leap.

I’ve experienced a Jodi Paloni workshop through the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance in the past. For me, the retreat descriptions that rose to my attention on her site –  http://www.jodipaloni.com  – made my soul sing. For you, the universe may have something very different in mind. When it dances along the periphery and lands in your sight line, consider leaping.

Right now, as I draw within for my January hibernation, I dream of my emergence in May. A lovely B&B. A gathering of writers by the ocean. A gifted & generous facilitator. Time to write and renew.

What are you dreaming  … ?

BEGIN OLDER POST(October 18, 2012):

Ahhhhhhhhh.

I just had to do that. I just had to take that moment to savor and sigh. I just returned from a writers’ retreat by the ocean.

I feel rested. I feel reflective. I feel restored. I feel like writing.

I can’t say enough about the benefits of retreats and workshops and this particular one included both. Offered by Anne Hollingworth of “Mermaid Retreats” in Maine, it featured an afternoon workshop with Rebecca Rule and lots of space and time to write.

My intention for this blog post was another subject entirely. But, the fruits of this weekend’s deliciousness just had to be shared.

I had a friend who always bristled when I suggested a writing workshop or retreat. She would say, “I already know how to write. Why would I waste time and money being told how to write?” To me that’s a sad example of closing yourself off to possibility and to community. The workshops and retreats I’ve attended have never tried to tell me how to write. But I’ve always come away writing.

Workshops, whether day-long or offered in a series, can be invaluable as motivators and energizers. Before I left for the weekend retreat, I spent the morning at a poetry workshop (the first in a monthly series) with Kimberly Cloutier-Green. I came away enriched and enlivened and ready to call myself “Poet.” Attending a poetry workshop was way outside my comfort zone and that’s why I went. I highly recommend such pushing of the boundaries that can limit us as writers and creatives.

Offerings abound. You’ll find some right in your own backyard. Prices vary and there are even retreats that are free for qualified retreatants.

Of course, I suggest doing a little homework in advance, especially when it comes to retreats. Consider the recommendations of people or organizations you know or respect. Read participant comments/reviews. Ask questions. What’s the facilitator/teacher’s philosophy? Is it compatible with yours? Because sharing our work or testing out our voice can be a fragile business, a responsible facilitator will create an atmosphere of safety conducive to mutual trust.

Meditate on the rightness of it for you. Trust your instincts. Then go for it!

 

In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg says, “Don’t identify too strongly with your work. Stay fluid behind those black-and-white words. They are not you. They were a great moment going through you. A moment you were awake enough to write down and capture.”

In The Four Agreements, a Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz, the second agreement is: Don’t take anything personally. Ruiz offers the sage words, “When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

The words of these and other wise teachers accompanied me as I put my novel, Other Wise, out into the world. Thus, when I found my first negative customer review online, it took only a moment for me to right myself. But it did take a moment. I acknowledge that first pang wholeheartedly. I acknowledge it as a valuable teaching wrapped in a wounding, however brief.

Until then, I’d received a deluge of positive comments in my inbox and in person. A local book group gave Other Wise rave reviews and urged me to hurry up with the next one. I was flooded with relief as enthusiastic messages poured in. Readers were loving Margaret and this cast of characters who’d come through me onto the page. The metaphorical child I’d sent out into the world was being warmly received and embraced.

Except, of course, by Judy, the Amazon customer who gave it three stars. The woman who only finished it because she had paid for it. The woman who found it slow and boring and would not recommend it.

Ouch.

And … onward.

Actually, I thank Judy for her honesty in critiquing the book that did not speak to her need. She was the first but she will not be the only. And though I did not need her commentary to humble me, I needed to experience it and pass through it. I needed to remember, too, that the positive reviews are also not about me.

This keeps me humbly grateful that I get to live the writing life. It reminds me to stay fluid and awake to those great moments of which Natalie Goldberg speaks. It reminds me to keep sending those captured words out, trusting they will find those who need them — those who will take them into some deep corner of their being. A corner that has nothing to do with me.

I love doing readings. I love the breath – the pause – as I’m about to begin. I even love the nervous flutter in the moment before.

I love seeing hands go up after I’ve finished — interaction, q&a, lively discussion. And so I loved it when a woman at my October launch raised her hand and said she loved being read to … . Heads around her nodded as she spoke, her words clearly resonating.

The sound of a voice telling a story – the experience of “being read to” –  fills a quiet need, it seems. For adults as well as for children.

As a writer, I love that I sometimes get to be that voice.

I am pleased to announce that I will be reading from my novel Other Wise on 

Tuesday, November 27th at 6:30 pm at the South Berwick Library

— an early evening in a warm, well-lit place + a good book read with love —

ahhhhhhh, …

Come fill yourself with story …

http://www.southberwicklibrary.org