#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
My favorite tree on this trail: Fagus grandifolia
“Collaborative workshops and writers' peer groups hadn't been invented when I was young. They're a wonderful invention. They put the writer into a community of people all working at the same art, the kind of group musicians and painters and dancers have always had.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew
Farm Pond Writer’s Collective this morning
O, the day, early. Out in the saturated landscape, the leaves clinging so brightly, so splendidly, to the trees, we walk eagerly, admiring, appreciating every step under a light-filled tree in the warm, late October air. I meet my friend at Medfield State. We walk swiftly through the wet grass, across the meadow, into the woods. We are forest bathing, we are walking in light and gratitude. We stop under my favorite tree, my beech, and we stroke the silvery bark. A perfect beginning to this amazing day of creative writing. It’s Wednesday morning, and I have prepared my prompt. I’m looking forward to facilitating it in the writing studio full of women. As it turns out, half the group is absent, for various reasons. Which makes the room so intimate, so relaxed. We have a loosening of time. We sink deep into our connections, quickly. And then I go off script. I follow the threads of intuition and instinct. There is creative work that can be done, can only be done today, here and now, with these writers, with this potency. A remarkable shift. There is so much trust and support here. The struggle with self-doubt. The struggle to give the self, the self, not others, the self, permission to create, to trust the creative drive, the creative impulse, the voice of the self, the compulsion to express, the need to believe: what I have to say matters. It matters to me. I must believe. I must trust. I must say it. I must speak my truth, my beauty, even if into a void. And, in this room, in this writing circle, there is no void. We are listening. I love this picture my friend offers to take. She wants me stand in the blaze of the red leaves with my dogs. Here I am. With my special listeners. They always always want to listen to me. When I am wise, I listen to them.
