I'm home from the Women's Writing Retreat and sure enough I'm making some changes. I have decided to leave a web site where I had been posting my work and reviewing others. I felt that I spent too much time talking about writing rather than writing. I am cutting back to two writing projects now - my memoir "Up Home Again" and my Writing Thru It project that includes my workshops and this blog. It feels good to be more focused.
It also means that, for now anyway, I have to set aside my novel "Red Right Returning" and a workshop on "Transforming Your Personal Myth" that I was planning to do with my friend Cheryl Fuller, a Jungian analyst. When I look at all that I was planning I realize now why I was getting so little done. Too much planning - too little writing.
I taught Writing Thru It again in the Adirondacks this month. What a blessing. I don't usually say stuff like that, but it was a wonderful experience.
For now, I will be blogging more often and writing, writing, writing.
Ellie O’Leary often writes about growing up in the village of Freedom, Maine. She has won the Martin Dibner Memorial Fellowship in poetry, is the previous host of Writers Forum on WERU-FM, and has taught at Pyramid Life Center (NY) and Belfast (Maine) Senior College. She currently studies poetry in the Stonecoast MFA program. Her memoir in progress is Up Home Again. www.EllieOLeary.com
Monday, July 28, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Getting Ready To Go On Retreat
Ten days and counting - I will be returning to the Pyramid Life Center for the 13th time. Every year I go there for renewal, reflection and writing. I write much more now than when I first started going in 1996.
This year I plan to put some umph in my memoir and maybe even finish it, although I'll only be there for a week. I'll have more notebooks and books with me than I could ever really get to work on, but I'll have lots to read and lots to think about. I will have the company of great women.
I will do the annual quiz that I ask myself. What to keep and what to throw away? What parts of my life do I want to embellish and what parts do I want to diminish? Where will my writing be headed this year?
This year I plan to put some umph in my memoir and maybe even finish it, although I'll only be there for a week. I'll have more notebooks and books with me than I could ever really get to work on, but I'll have lots to read and lots to think about. I will have the company of great women.
I will do the annual quiz that I ask myself. What to keep and what to throw away? What parts of my life do I want to embellish and what parts do I want to diminish? Where will my writing be headed this year?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)