If we opened people up, we would find landscapes
June 18, 2021
Dear Friends
By the time you receive this letter, I’ll be well into the second day of hosting my June virtual writing retreat, teaching and learning alongside a powerful group of women writers. So, I am in my happy place. And I hope you are, too.
More and more, I find myself thinking about place. I’ve always felt drawn to ideas of place, of wandering, and/or of sinking roots into the ground where we are, of what “place” means to us--and what it means to be “out of place.” This has been especially acute in a year of “sheltering in place.” I wonder at the places I inhabit, both inside and outside myself. Perhaps you wonder this about yourself as well. Do we inhabit places that sustain us, or places that drain and deplete us? How do we know when we have found our place?
In my daily writing prompts this week, I offered this prompt:
“There is a village somewhere that is calling to you. Describe that village. Where is it? What does it look and smell like? How do you feel when you are there? What is keeping you from going there?”
What is your answer to these questions? Write them down. See where it takes you. You may learn something important about what you most long for.
If you would like to receive a daily writing prompt every morning (Mon-Fri), text “writing prompts” to me at 828-248-7513.
CLASSES AND EVENTS
Calling All Writers!
Write Where You Are: Virtual Writing Retreats for Women - I am hosting small virtual writing retreats throughout 2021. As you read this, I am in the midst of the first such retreat of 2021. The rest of the 2021 writing retreats are now open for registration. The limit for each is 10 participants.
LINKS TO LINGER OVER
A writer whose words I will always stop to read is Robert Macfarlane. He just never disappoints: “Humans don’t possess inbuilt bio-compasses, but we do have something arguably more powerful: storytelling. Our remarkable navigational ability as a species is closely connected to our ability to tell stories about ourselves that unfold both backward and forward in time.”
Y’all, America Needs Y’all.
I’ll be making this soon. And some version of this. And this.
I’ll see you next Friday from my Orange Desk. Wear sunscreen. Every day.
Patti
Patti Digh LLC
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