Eating a Plum

Whenever she was sad to see something come to an end, my mom would say, "It's like eating a plum." Meaning the experience was so delicious, but it's gone in only one or two bites. The sweetness lingers after the fruit is gone, but the memory of the sweetness is what we hold onto.

It's hard to believe that a whole week has flown by since the Breathe Christian Writer's Conference at Cornerstone University. I'm back in my daily routine of teaching, reading, meal prep, laundry...but with a renewed energy to make time each day for writing. Last weekend blessed me in a big way--the speakers, the workshops, but mostly the people. I've never met such an encouraging bunch of wordies! This was my first time attending Breathe, and I'm already looking forward to next year's conference. I plan to make this a regular retreat, something I can look forward to all year.

I had the great privilege and honor of helping to open the conference by reading my poem "The Work of Our Hands." Thanks so much to all of you who gave me encouraging feedback on that. The workshops I attended were top-notch...and there were so many to choose from! I was particularly encouraged by Matt Landrum's excellent poetry workshops and how he demonstrated the importance of friendships for the writing life. Cynthia Beach's workshop "Creating Believable Emotion in Fiction and Nonfiction" applies as much to poetry as it does to prose. And Mike Wittmer's talk on Saturday morning was deeply meaningful as he pointed out that hope is one of the most important words for us as Christians and as writers. We need hope to survive. We need hope for the process of writing. And since we have to answer to God for every word we write, let's be sure to give our readers hope.

One of my goals for the weekend was to make connections with other writers, and I did. I even found someone willing to meet me halfway between Cadillac and Grand Rapids to have a mini writer's group. We hope to start in early November, and the thought of having that mutual encouragement and accountability keeps me writing.

Thanks, God, for working it out for me to attend Breathe so that I could catch my breath. Help me in turn to breathe out your words of hope and light in this dark world.