To a Monastery . . .

I'll be at a monastery this coming week, in my own little hermitage in the woods. Listening Point, a hermitage ministry on 80 wooded acres with beach access near Erie, Pennsylvania, will be where I wake up to yoga, pray and breakfast with the sisters of Mount Saint Benedict Monastery, walk, and write. My hope is to work on a memoir and a book on writing. I will be changed by a week of solitude. I will be with God, my muse.

Writing Life

If you don’t know where to begin, where to start up a true writing life, just write.  Write every day, retreat from the world in the cocoon that envelopes you and the words that you need to get out, the words that will die inside you if you don’t let them out, the words that might just cause you to blow up like a balloon and burst and fizzle out to nothing if you don’t allow them to be written.  Let the words be your own private retreat.

How To Manage All This Stuff

I asked my on-line writing group whether I had to do it all--blogging, e-mail marketing, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter--and they said I do. This was yesterday after having a real heart-to-heart with my husband about having too much to do. Instead of letting it get me down, I got busy. I had a social networking day and sent out an e-mail about the Fall retreat and book appearances, and put announcements on Facebook and Linked In. I saved blogging until this morning, and I'm glad I did because someone from that same on-line group told me she has multiple blogs as well and blogs on each once a week, and it works out because each blog has a purpose and she uses the blog to get her going on the project she'll work on that day. Not only did I move forward on my social networking chores over the last two days but I did so knowing how helpful my social networking was to me. I hope this blog post serves you well.  

“All serious daring starts within.” –Eudora Welty

C. S. Lewis wrote, “People read to know they are not alone.”  We write for the same reason. We love words because they are our way of communicating with the world, whether we’re hearing the stories or telling them. The reading and the writing are intertwined like a well-written story so that the writer becomes the reader and the reader gets into the writer’s head.

She Looks Ready

“Any mood is a good writing mood. The trick is to simply enter whatever mood like a room and sit down and write from there.”  --Julia Cameron

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow; Learn as if you were to live forever.”  --Mahatma Ghandhi

Burning Desire to Write

The first thing that’s necessary is to have a burning desire to write.  You wake up in the morning and want to write about yesterday’s discoveries.  When something spectacular happens to you, you want to write about it, and when you’re having a bad day, you want to get it out and let it go.  Stories come to you at odd moments, and you want to get them down right then and there with no interruptions exactly the way it was in your head and you get frustrated because it’s hard to hold onto those ideas because they’re more than ideas, they’re sensations and beauty and complicated relationships and the orange in the sky over the lake streaked with lightening, a hint of the afterlife.  Your ideas are more than you can handle in the span of a very long lifetime, and you know they’re good ideas if only you can write true and deep and get it down.   Your writing is a seeking to know and wanting to connect with what truly must be God. 

Word Lovers - Fall 2011 - Idlewyld B&B at Lakeside

We ignite possibilities one retreat weekend at a time at the Word Lovers retreats.  The Fall 2011 retreat is  November 4-6 at the Idlewyld Bed and Breakfast in historic Lakeside, Ohio.  The food and wine experience will include cooking together and optional winery tours and tastings. Friday evening begins with writing prompts, and Saturday sessions include a session on writing a non-fiction book (based on Claudia’s experience of writing her book Ohio’s Lake Erie Wineries) and writing about food and wine. The cost is $110 for the weekend (which includes three meals) plus the cost of a room at the Idlewyld. Hold you spot with a $50 deposit and your desired room choice. The deposit should be sent to Claudia Taller, Igniting Possibilities, 26408 Chapel Hill Drive, North Olmsted, Ohio 44070.

Lakeside Memories

When I was a child, I slept on a cot on a sleeping porch of a Victorian cottage in Lakeside while crickets serenaded me. Rows upon rows of cottages with postage-sized front lawns and comfortable front porches cozied up to the quiet narrow streets. I sunned on the dock that stretches into the Lake, played miniature golf in the afternoons in Central Park, licked ice cream that ran down a cone on a hot day, and paid $.50 to see last season’s movie.

Retreating

A decade ago, I fell in love with the idea of retreating from the world in the company of other seekers of the creative muse and a life free from outside tethers. Maybe that’s called running away to some, but for me, it feels like I’m walking towards who I was meant to be. In those moments in time, my spirit lifts, and if I start putting words on paper, I am connecting with a creative force, with God. The words flow, and it’s almost as good as being in love.

“Any mood is a good writing mood. The trick is to simply enter whatever mood like a room and sit down and write from there.” --Julia Cameron