Take heart! Little things in life give you courage

Our first Tuolumne Writer’s Retreat was a huge success! On Friday night, a full moon hung low in the trees over the gold rush town of Columbia, CA where we gathered among the gravestones on cemetery hill for a poetry reading. A vacationing writer who lives in Alaska opened a window on life in that wondrous landscape with her poem about a marauding bear. On Saturday Wendy Brown-Barry introduced us to the gut busting humor and touching pathos of cowboy poetry while we ate lunch in the Douglas Saloon dressed in different versions of Victorian garb.

It wasn’t all rhyme and rose water. I walked to my next seminar with Suzanne, who is on hiatus from her life in Tanzania where she works with the courts to bring human rights violators to justice. She has stories to tell.

Professional storyteller Cynthia Restivo inspired us with exercises to help us develop the stories that spring from our personal histories and connect them to the themes our listeners or readers care about. Lou Gonzales got us down to business by showing us how to use Microsoft Word style sheets to create eBooks. That’s just a peek at what our little writer’s conference had to offer.

I taught a seminar called Facing the Hills, a Novelist’s Journey. In that seminar I encourage writers to find some balance by celebrating what they achieve each step of the way. I wrapped it up with this advice:

Take heart: take the hills one step at a time; focus on the hill ahead; count your milestones

Take courage: every hill is rocky; every path is tangled

Take Tylenol! Take care of yourself; take time out for the people you love.

Today I take heart. I have a little check from Poets and Writers for my efforts. I take courage as I head down the path of submitting my queries to a list of agents I got from Writer’s Relief. Today I’m missing the closing day of our conference. I took Tylenol for a bug that has sapped my energy and am enjoying a rare day relaxing at home in good company.