After the Retreat

Take risks with your writing...after all, what other reason motivates you to put pen to page?

On the last night of my Mackinac Island writers retreat, I walked past the buildings and artificial light to the quiet side of the island to watch the stars wink in the night sky.

A gray canvas, wallpapered in constellations. The international space station chugged overhead. Two shooting stars. The calm waters of Lake Huron lapped against the rocky shore.

We talked in hushed tones. Craned our necks to stare up and watch the sky darken, darken. All the years that I’ve come to this island, I’d never done that. It wasn’t far. It wasn’t hard. It made my night. So why did I wait until age 53 to walk beyond the boundaries of the known world and let my eyes adjust to the dark?

I could’ve sat there all night, really. Part of me wish I’d slept on the flat stones along the shore to watch the night in all its changes. But eventually, I returned to my hotel room, to the artificial light and warm blankets. The night was quiet. Not a sound outside my window. But I missed being so close to the water.

What You Find Beyond the Familiar

Where in your life do you take risks? Where do you live on the edge? Or where do you wish you did? And what is stopping you?

I want to be the person who takes risks not just on retreat, or when I’m away from home. I want to be uncomfortable, immerse in new settings, take risks, in my writing and in my life. It is exhilarating. Inspiring. Fodder for great writing.

Some highlights from my Mackinac Island Writers Retreat...happens every September!

I spent last week in the clean air and calm sun of Northern Michigan, on Mackinac Island in the midst of Lake Huron with writers.

A week with writers—what could be better?

Every September, I lead a writers retreat on Mackinac Island, focused on finding your voice. Writers came from a variety of locales, and representing a variety of experiences, ages and perspectives, and we found synergy in our love of words.

Join the waitlist for the 2025 retreat here.

My retreats are not sit-and-write type endeavors. It’s important to DO things because otherwise, what is there to write about? Sure, we have our histories and memories to mine, but that gets old. What is beautiful and inspiring about right NOW?

We hiked. We biked. We put our feet in the cold water. We kayaked over the depths of the cool clear lake. And we had good hard talks about how to bring feeling and truth to the page and why we should want to.

On the second to last day, I taught about taking risks with your writing. About writing the things you’re afraid to say. About daring to put words on the page that might offend or even end a friendship. About being vulnerable and honest and REAL…as the ONLY way to write a good thing.

Glen Young, a local poet, spoke to our group and he read a few of his gorgeous poems. What impressed me most was not how he found the most exquisite words to evoke an image about, say, his grandfather’s bicycle, but how he lives in real time. And that’s what he pours onto the page.

Glen taught high school English for a few decades, but he scribbled poems wherever and whenever he could. He taught students to do the same and wrote alongside them every single day in his classroom. He challenged them to FEEL. To NOTICE.

Now retired, he spends summers as a kayak guide, winters as a ski instructor, and his days are filled with movement in the open air—running, biking, swimming, hiking, you name it. And, in his words, “with as few people as possible.”

The few really good people who get it and get him.

It struck me, talking about risk-taking in writing, that what holds us back—not only in writing but in LIFE—is a fear of not being liked. It sometimes holds me back. I want to be liked. But the older I get, the more I make my peace with the truth that some people just won’t like me no matter what I do or write.

A small voice inside me cries out, “Wait! If you write that, you’ll offend…some people will stop being your friends.”

To that I say, too bad. I am a living beating heart with very good intentions, and if I speak the truth, who can fault me for it? It may be uncomfortable, but if we never face the discomfort, what do we have?

I write to figure out what all of this mucky life means. I write to understand what I believe. I write to record the beautiful moments so I can live in them any time.

I don’t write to make friends. I don’t write to be liked. I write to shake things up, to make people think, to offer a new way of looking at something that just might change everything.

Why do you write? Make sure it’s for the right reasons. Otherwise, is it really worth doing?

Thank you, Annie Cathryn!

It was a dream to have author Annie Cathryn blurb my second novel, CAVE OF SECRETS. And then to have her shout-out and mention my book in her own Substack! Give it a read. She’s a great person to know, learn from and call friend.

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