I crack open the notebook I used for the Quoddy Writing Retreat this past August, led by Ralph Fletcher and Georgia Heard. The notebook I haven’t touched since landing back in Miami, even though I made promises — to myself, to my writing group — to set aside time to write. My streak of Tuesdays got away from me sometime in the early fall. Life happened, as they say.
But Ralph told me that writing will always wait for you. If writing is important, it will come back to you. The muse will come knocking.
I hope writing has been patient, as I’ve set her aside these past many months. I hope she doesn’t mind me picking her back up, dusting her off with the fabric at the bottom of my t-shirt.
Because it’s the third Slice of Life challenge I’ll be participating in, and this time around, I have an even larger community doing it with me.
I’m skimming these pages and gems are jumping out at me, quotes from Ralph and Georgia and other published writers. I’ll jot them here, in hopes I can return to them on the days when slicing just feels too hard. Reminding me that I’m in great company.
***
Do the writing that only you can do.
“Tell your stories. You own everything that happened to you.” – Anne Lamott
Write with abandon.
“It is, really, about heart; about a human being looking at life through her own lens and thinking and feeling it through and then making something – even something very simple – that says something new and truthful – something that reaches out to the reader in a spirit of commiseration.” – George Saunders
“Be you. Be all in. Fall. Get up. Try again.” – Brené Brown
“The bigger the issue, the smaller you write.” – Richard Price
Let the image do the work for you.
Revision is like chiseling away at stone, at clay.
“Revision is not a way to fix a broken piece. It’s a way to honor a great piece.” – Ralph Fletcher
The notebook is a playground.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” – Joan Didion
***
It’s with these writers at my back that I embark yet again on this challenge. I will write with abandon, “just have fun with it,” as my dad says. I’ll do the writing only I can do!
Writing With Abandon 
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