REALLY good for the soul

Last weekend my writing group had our first ever writing conference.  

It was at the beach house of one of our members.  We decided we have to do it again.  Annually, bi-annually, quarterly, weekly?  We're not sure what we can get away with.  It was fabulous though.

Fabulous.

This is 2/3 of the group:

JoLyn, me, Heather and Frances.  Heidi was taking the picture and Maryanne had taken a short break from the conference to take care of her sick daughter.

I recommend groups.  Particularly groups of women.  It doesn't have to be a writing group, but whenever you get a group together of like-minded women that are united in a cause, it turns out to be something special.

(And there's usually a lot of good food to eat.)

We met Friday night.

We had dinner and visited and enjoyed the view.

Late that night, the wimpiest member of the group (me) drove home to sleep in her own little bed.  The rest of them stayed up until the wee hours and were surprisingly chipper and pleasant when I joined them for breakfast the next morning.  I promise if I'd stayed up until 2:00 a.m. I would not have been chipper or pleasant.

Each of the six of us presented an hour long session on some aspect of writing.   

And there was a whole lot more visiting and eating and...visiting.  We're all mothers so of course we talked about children.  We talked a little about husbands.  (JoLyn and I discussed, while we were cleaning up the kitchen together after lunch, that if she died, she'd want her husband to get remarried because she would want him happy and not lonely.  I confessed if I died first, I'd already promised Adam that I would haunt him if he remarried.  The moral to this story is that JoLyn is a very nice person.  And maybe I could be nicer.)

Mostly, we talked about writing.  We've known each other for years.  We're in bookclubs together and we've served in church together and we have all the sameness of motherhood but there is a certain bonding that takes place when we talk about writing.  There's this vulnerability to all of us.  We admit how scary and hard it is.  We admit our small tender dreams that you can't admit to just anyone without fear of derision and doubtfulness.

The classes that were taught were inspiring and helpful.  Several of us gave writing assignments to each other and I was again astounded by the talent in the room.  What is going on in the brains of these women that can produce such brilliant writing?  We laughed a lot and applauded each other and the wimpiest member of the group (me) was even brought to tears once by Heidi's writing.

We were together all day Saturday.  We feasted on delicious food and each others' writing and on the decadent knowledge that our wonderful husbands and/or children were ably taking care of the homefront.

Lunch on the deck:

The last day of summer did not disappoint:

Failed attempt at a selfie:

My arms just aren't even close to long enough.

I wish I had the words to express the way I felt Saturday night when it was all over.  I felt renewed and inspired and grateful.  I'm profoundly grateful for the opportunity I have to know these women and benefit from their friendship and writing help.  We talked about how we need each other.  Our group is a safe place where we can share what we've written but we're also pretty honest with each other and we let each other know when we need to rework something we've written.

Before we left, we signed the guestbook at the beach house.  Someone quipped that someday when we were all famous writers, that page of the guestbook would be valuable.  I jokingly said, "People will say, 'I can't believe the six of them knew each other!'"

Even if becoming famous writers doesn't pan out (which would be unfortunate because we all want beach houses), I still think it's pretty incredible that the six of us have each other.

Lucky us.