Where’s your posse? Your tribe?

The Lit Salon was here this morning (above), my Vroman’s workshop was yesterday, and I’m organizing a writing retreat in Lake Arrowhead for October – so I’ve been thinking a lot about what writers need, what we can get out of retreats and workshops, what can actually be taught about writing.

I can tell you to get rid of most of your adjectives and adverbs, tighten things up, cut to the chase and don’t confuse the reader. I can give you some guidelines for memoir and fiction, I can suggest what you should read to understand what good writing is really about – but the most important reason for taking a workshop or going on a retreat is to find your community.

No one in your family cares if you write (in fact they may be actively dreading the idea of you writing and publishing). And your friends don’t care. So you’re trying to devote yourself to a job that’s basically pie in the sky, there’s no paycheck, no promise of one, and you’re working in a room all by yourself.  Yet you need and love this business of nailing down life into words on paper.

What happens in workshops or retreats – after introductions with everyone telling why they’re here and why they want to write and how scared they are – they let down their guard, they write and read stuff that their families and best friends never knew about. Being together doesn’t get rid of the insecurity, the uncertainty, but they give each other courage and energy. They connect, they’re generous and honest with each other. Writing feels more legitimate, and they feel safe to write what they need to write.

I love writers. I love their stories. I love their honesty and courage and generosity. This is my tribe.

 

“In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot – and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.”– David Bayles & Ted Orland  Art & Fear

 

 

Some snapshots of my tribe at Lake Arrowhead Retreats…