“The best part of your writing is going to be what you find, not what you think you’ll find,” Steve O’Keefe says in his book Set the Page on Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers (New World Library, 2019). I believe that too and it really ties in with the overall theme of the women’s writing circles I offered this summer: Destination Unknown: a writing journey of practice, discovery and possibility. We may have an intent when we set out and then all sorts of possibilities come into play. We don’t end up where we thought we might. And we make discoveries along the way. It’s making those discoveries that helps make the process all so very enlightening.

Steve has been inspired for twenty-five years by Brenda Ueland’s book, If You Want to Write, first published in 1938 and republished in the 1980s. He writes: “ ‘Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say’ is Ueland’s core message.”

I haven’t used that quote in the writing circles for a long while and it’s time I did again thanks to the reminder from Steve O’Keefe.

The July writing circles were on three mornings in a row so if women wanted to create a writing retreat for themselves they could do that – coming to the circle in the morning and writing at home or at a cozy café in the afternoon.

 

The themes for the circles were Poetry as a Contemplative Practice; Departure: Leaving Home to Find Home; and The Pilgrim’s Way. Writing poetry is an ongoing practice of mine and the other two themes are from Writing Home: A Whole Life Practice. That’s the title of my mentoring program which has a book to go along with it as well as other elements you can read about here. If you’re not able to attend a circle, or perhaps not ready to be vulnerable in that way, following Writing Home is a way to write on your own and have telephone chats with me once a month for nine months.

To begin the circle I ring the Tibetan ting sha and we take three deep breaths. I light a candle, read a poem, and we do a “check in.” All of these practices help to mark an intentional beginning. I offer some guidelines to add structure to the space so as to create a safe container for taking risks. As my journaling and circle mentor Christina Baldwin has written in Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story (New World Library, 2007): “We cannot follow the story if it loses it narrative thread; we cannot hold the space if it has not been laid down with intention.” All of the guidelines and supports help to alleviate any anxiety about writing and sharing stories.

A vibrational  flower essence aids with our focus and intent and helps to integrate the experience. Flower essences help us to listen, opening us to hearing a whole new level of awareness accessed through conscious partnering with Nature.

For the writing circle with the theme of “The Pilgrim’s Way,” I offered one of the Spirit of the Island flower essences I co-created with Nature in my Nanaimo garden. Golden Chain Tree invites us to be “In Praise of the Small.” You can read about The Golden Chain Tree essence here and order a bottle online. Or if you live in or near Nanaimo, you can visit Lobelia’s Lair in the Old City Quarter and choose this one or one of the other four Spirit of the Island flower essences.

This month, just last week, there were two circles: Maps of the Possible and Maps of the Imagination.

There are so many approaches to life writing which can begin with journaling and then become poems, personal essays, a memoir, or any number of “outlier forms” as writer Nicole Breit refers to them. Do check out the many resources she has to offer.

In his book, Steve O’Keefe refers to “easy outlets” as journaling, writing letters, exchanging homemade postcards (as Steve did with his brother), blogging, reviews, and even recipes. Referring to blogging, Steve points out that although Amazon doesn’t yet offer blogs, if you have a blog you can attach it to your Amazon Author Central page, “and your posts will automatically appear on Amazon.” That’s something I didn’t know.

My partner Sarah Clark has created her own genre bending form with her own magazine called Compendium. You can read about it here.

While women in the circle have ventured into the world with readings and performances; publishing their work in newspapers, literary journals and chapbooks; and leading journaling workshops, while we’re together we write. In the Maps of the Possible circle we created charts that listed “taking up something new,” adding what age we were at the time and how long we pursed the pastime. That prompt was inspired by Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krause Rosenthal (Three Rivers Press, 2005).  Hers is a fascinating and innovative approach to memoir, going through the alphabet of her life. It doesn’t have to be chronological!

The poem I opened the Maps of the Possible circle with was “A Course in Creative Writing” by William Stafford. Here’s an excerpt:

They want a wilderness with a map –
but how about errors that give a new start? –
or leaves that are edging into the light? –
or the many places a road can’t find?

The Writing Life flower essence combination supported our writing in that particular circle. It’s made up of Rhododendron (Self Trust), Butterfly Bush (Celebration of the Sacred Familiar), and Rose of Sharon (Inner Teacher). You can find The Writing Life flower essence in the Spirit of the Island section of this website.

Maps of the Imagination was the final circle and I enjoyed planning the circle and finding many quotes by writers on the subject of imagination. John O’Donohue wrote: “The imagination is like a lantern. It illuminates the inner landscapes of our life and helps us discover their secret archaeologies.”

We do write fiction at times in the circle and are always using our imaginations as “imagination completes the picture” when we’re working with the “limits of memory” as Wendell Berry has said.

I made up a special flower essence combination for Maps of the Imagination with Raven Essences co-created with Nature by Andrea Mathieson in Ontario.

This time, I didn’t literally make up the combination, I used the Raven Essences manual as a divinatory tool and intuitively chose what would make up the combination. Reading through the definitions of the various flower essences together, highlighting what resonated with us, helped to shift our consciousness as Andrea would say. With the definitions we could write aspirations or affirmations based on Bitter Nightshade (Conscious Reckoning), Globe Thistle (Changing Perspective), Othello (a rose essence to honour our latent talents), and others.

I make up combinations of Raven Essences for people with a particular intent whether it’s for writing or another life concern, and you can get in touch with me if you’d like to explore that further.

A six-week Writing Life women’s writing circle will begin on Wednesday, September 11th and run to October 23rd (excluding September 25th), from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at my home in Nanaimo. The theme is Come as You Are: no matter what writing experience you have, no matter how you’re feeling.  We write together in the circle with guidelines established to create a sacred space for risk taking. I’m curious to see what elements will be part of the Come as You Are flower essence which will offer Nature’s support and insight for our creative journey. You can find further details about the Writing Life circle here.

As for success, I feel “successful” in that I’ve had time for explorations and discoveries since I left my office job in 1997. I started offering women’s writing circles in Toronto at that time and I’m still doing that in Nanaimo, still connected to several of the women from those early circles, and writing, appreciating the process, and the new discoveries and small epiphanies, every day. Both Sarah and I have been unable to follow prescribed models for life or business and have created our own ways to share our gifts in the world. As Brenda Ueland said: “Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.”