writing on the river

This weekend I spent on the Missouri River, at a writer’s retreat. A writer’s retreat is a place full of artists, other tribe members. These retreats exist so we can be learn from each other, inspire one another, read, write, and watch the birds fly south overhead.

On the first night, we each wrote on three scraps of paper what we were leaving behind: a role, maybe, like mother or wife or job title. Or maybe it was grief or blockage or being a public figure or guilt or chores.

We dropped our scraps of paper into a jar and Karen screwed the lid on tight. We gave ourselves permission to focus on writing, to do writerly things.

We have to do this, give ourselves permission to focus on what doesn’t pay bills and what doesn’t serve anyone else (yet), but what is important because it fuels us, this exploration, how we find our place in the world.

Because then we go back to our lives and our roles, the ones that distract us from our writing but also give us something to write about, fuel us differently. We are finding our place, these misfits who write because we must, it’s a current running through us.