Writing Communities

Writer Laurie Elmquist stopped by my house today to give me a card to congratulate me on some recent good writing news. It was a lovely gesture, and I appreciated it a lot. I opened the card and put it on my mantle where I can look at it for the next week or so, and then we went out for a walk with our dogs.

After our walk I came back to the card because I had started to appreciate it more deeply. The card was a lovely gesture from a generous friend, but it was also something more. The reason Laurie knew in the first place that I had writing news is that we write together. We walk and talk about writing, we shop and talk about writing, we drink tea and talk about writing. If we are together, we are probably talking about writing. We both write, and we both teach writing. And we are part of a larger group too--the Wildwood writers.

The Wildwood writers is a group of women who have been writing together for years, through many rejections and false starts, and yet we continue to write and we continue to write together. And the truth that I realised when looking at my card today, is that it's not despite the rejections and false starts that we stay together, it's because of them. Because we need each other. Writing is hard hard work, and it takes a long time, and most of us would have given up long ago if it weren't for the Wildwood writers meeting each week and listening to our tales and our writing.

So thank you to Laurie for always being there for me and for bringing me a beautiful card, and to the Wildwood writers, without whom I would most definitely no longer be a writer.

a day on the beach

A day on the beach reminded me that even 13 year olds can soak up the beauty and stillness of a deserted island. They chaffed at first, too tired to be enthusiastic, but soon they were competing to see who could walk on logs longest without stepping on sand, and who could hit a far away log most times with a thrown rock and who would jump first into the freezing cold water.

summer blogging

Truth is, it's hard to sit down at the computer on a sunny summer day to blog. I'd rather be outside digging up the potatoes or walking along the beach, or having a quick swim at a lake. That's the problem with living in a climate like this. Ten months of the year it's cool and it's okay to sit inside, but those two months of warm weather, you just gotta get out there. And I want to not only for my sake, but also for my kid's sake. Anything to take him away from sitting in front of the tv or computer. So out we go. And, to be honest, I'm happy to give up my writing life for those fleeting summer moments. Who can say no to a mid summer picnic on the beach in the company of loved ones? Or a day at the river watching growing kids swim? Or an afternoon browsing the pictures at the Moss Street Paint in? Not me.

Bees in my garden

I have bees in my garden. If that seems like a celebratory statement, it's because it is. I was just listening last week to a Quirks and Quarks podcast about how bees around the world are disappearing,, and then today I was sitting in my garden, and there were bees. The thing is, over the past few years I've been changing my garden over from flowers to vegetables. But the bees were in the flowers, which I still have a lot of. There they were, pollinating the lavender and roses, and ignoring the vegetables. Seeing the bees there reminded me why I had planted the garden in the first place, which was to create an oasis of scent and beauty, and that still seems like a good idea, even if I also know that growing food is important. A bit of both perhaps, because we eat the food, and it's good for our bodies, but the scent and sunning beauty of the flowers is good for our souls--and the bees.