Progress

Writer's studio at Icicle Creek Writer's Retreat

The whole neighborhood seemed to smell like lilacs when I got to the Ballard house tonight. Kate and Jason had the front door open, and it felt like time to look at the garden, so Kate and I wandered out into the back yard to look at her little bed of shallots and greens and climbing pea vines. I thought about our new peony plant at home, a gift from Peggy's lush garden, and how tomorrow I would be home in Bow and could check on it, the first thing I've planted there myself. I want it to live forever and ever, and I don't care what color the flowers turn out to be.

Our writing retreat was good, ultimately. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I have a notebook nearly full of scribbles from my new Montblanc pen - thank god for that pen, I'm not sure I would have kept going if it hadn't been such a pleasure to write with. There wasn't much in there that I was tempted to go back and edit or fiddle with, not typically a good sign, but being in those little writing studios was so pleasant, and reading was so pleasant, and the conversations with the other writers there were so worth having. A little writing habit was built up, just somewhere to start from, as though I had taken a long walk every day for a week, on my way to building up to a run. More words, every day, that's all there is to it.