Tinker Mountain

Three years ago I went to the Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop at Hollins Univesity in Virginia. (Annie Dillard wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek about that river!) After attending a Saturday writing class in New York four years ago, I spent time working on pieces at home, but I wanted to spend some time with other writers again. I never felt that a traditional “writing workshop” was for me — all the horror stories of personality conflicts and people tearing each other’s work apart — why pay money for that? For someone just starting out at this, what a creativity killer.

Tinker Mountain’s programs, though, sounded so much more supportive, and I loved my week there. Plenty of quiet time to write but also a great group of people to share work with. Covid shut down the program for the next two years, and I might have been the first person to sign up when they opened it up again this June. Due to the cancellation of the creative non-fiction class I’d signed up for, I wound up in a fiction one that turned out to be exactly where I needed to be. I suppose that regardless of what genre you’re working in, the things that make good fiction also make good writing in general, and it was all relevant. I felt so inspired listening to classmates read their writing, and was absolutely honored when someone said that the piece I read felt like a magic carpet ride (thanks, Jane!)

The fields at sunset.

After a day of writing and class and reading and talking to people at dinner, exploring campus was my favorite thing to do. It filled up my well. The Hollins grounds were summer-lush, with soup bowl sized magnolia flowers and rocking chairs on shady verandas, a tucked away garden and a full moon (Margaret Wise Brown wrote Goodnight Moon here!) I found a piano in a dance studio and played in the middle of the night, I went for sunset-moonrise walks. I found a bird’s nest made of pine needle mulch and strips of crepe myrtle bark.

I found an inch-high ceramic ghost that some pay-it-forward soul left on a trash can for me to find — a handful of these friendly spirits turned up around campus and all I can say is: THANK YOU, I was not having the best day that day due to some worries at home, but finding this little ghost turned it all around. I carried that tiny guy in my pocket for the entire rest of the week.

Bird’s nest

My dorm room.

Tiny ghost.

I made new friends whom I know I will see again, and I’ve been smiling as I write this whole thing. This spring I was pin-focused on finishing up the blind school project (which I still need to post about), but Tinker marked the start of my switch to summer, to writing. I’m back at the page, and I thank Tinker Mountain and the Greater Columbus Arts Council, who generously provided funding to help make it happen.

Writing Again

This blog, for the moment anyway, is an assignment. Janet, my writing mentor, suggested coming back to it as a low-pressure way to return to the page. I needed a break from the longer personal essays I've been working on— they are heavier work and leave me feeling bogged down sometimes— buuut I wound up not writing anything at all during that break. *Sigh*

Deadlines are usually good at motivating me. I am more likely to finish a project if there's some outside accountability, so I made it may summer goal to finish a new essay and polish up older ones to submit as a collection for an award with a September 1 due date, not so much for the idea of "winning" but for the satisfaction of having finished. I started out pretty excited about this but as June and July came and went I just wasn't getting anywhere. I'd sit down to write and just feel pressure, which completely destroyed any creative inspiration I had. I finally made the decision to let it go. I knew it was what I needed to do but I still felt lousy about it.

I emailed Janet, embarrassed to say I was "quitting." I thought she’d think I was a complete flake, stopping and starting and stopping again (It wasn’t the first time I'd done this.) “But that’s exactly how books get written!” she said when we had a phone call. Yes, there are writers who thrive with a disciplined and more regimented approach to their work, but the rest of us write in fits and starts. The going away and coming back is just part of the process. My yoga teacher says that meditation is an act of constantly starting over. I like that analogy. I never quit this, I just keep starting again.