Creative practice & intentional community
Especially when you just can’t
Last night I ended the call on the novel revision coaching group I run with my sister Leah and I felt inspired, expanded, connected, purposeful—in a word, amazing.
This is big news. I’ve spent the last several weeks feeling uninspired, unmotivated, disconnected, overwhelmed, sometimes hopeless. I’ve been sick, and the malaise has lingered long past the can’t-get-out-of-bed stage. My capacity has been low physically, mentally, emotionally. I’ve looked at what I’ve achieved in the past and truly can’t understand how I ever managed any of it. U.S. and world events haven’t helped. It has all felt too much.
I’m crawling back into wellness. I (mostly) no longer eye the remaining edits on my next novel and believe them to be impossible or—worse—pointless. Even better is when appointments in my calendar have me showing up for other people, forced to set aside my own self-doubts or stuckness, get still, get present, call on the practices and principles my past self has trusted and flourished in, and be of service to someone else.
Which is what happened last night. After the group call, I remembered: oh yeah, the medicine I have to offer is good. I need my own medicine. I’m so glad I got it! The simple act of gathering with others (especially when we feel like hiding), naming where we’re at, breathing in unison, reflecting with awareness, setting intentions, working on our books—the medicine is good. I needed my own medicine last night.
Writing a novel is hard. Being alive in 2025 is hard. I need all the medicine.
I’ve been reading Sarah Selecky’s book Story Is a State of Mind: Writing and the Art of Creative Curiosity, and I relate wholly to this passage:
Our creative practices work even when we don’t believe they will. This is the power of showing up and engaging with them: They can guide us, surprise us, and create change, despite ourselves. We show up, we practise, and we open ourselves to new possibilities.
I’m fortunate to also work with open-hearted people who show up in their own wisdom and experience, and together we create a creative ecosystem and a sense of possibility that is hard to access alone.
All of which, I think, is another reminder of the power of not just creative practice but intentional community. That might be what this is really about.
I’ve got two upcoming opportunities to gather in creative community. I share them here in case this is what you need too.
Novel Alchemy 3-month first draft novel coaching program
In this intimate group coaching program led by me and my meditation teacher sister Leah, we come together to heal creativity wounds, establish a flourishing relationship with creative practice, and lay down the raw first draft of novels in a really short period. The trust, vulnerability, and transformation that develop inside this group is really special. Novel Alchemy is supportive, intense, real, deep…and novels get written!
The next group runs from March 25 to June 24. We’re starting to fill up and the application deadline has officially passed, but we do have a couple spots left, so if you’re interested in writing a novel in community, check out all the details here.
Writers’ Retreat on a Historic River
I happen to live on a historic river on the Canadian-American border, but in April I’ll be travelling to a different historic river on the Canadian-American border for this long-weekend writing retreat. It takes place at the South Landing Inn near Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario from April 24 to 27, Canadians and Americans coming together in these troubled days to pause, learn, nurture themselves and one another, and write. The retreat is hosted by writer and editor Susan Scott and by Caroline Topperman and Andi Cumbo, writers, editors, and publishers at Mountain Ash Press, with me as a special Saturday guest.
This retreat has sold out in the past but there are still some spaces left for this year’s. The focus is on connecting with yourself and other dedicated writers, and the days include quiet writing time, guided writing to help you explore aspects of your work and yourself, and workshops on the craft and business of writing on both sides of the border.
I’m looking forward to meeting Caroline and Andi, but I’ve known Susan Scott for years, ever since we were introduced in a parking lot outside a writer’s festival and connected instantly, sparking about four different collaborative projects in a twenty-minute conversation and beginning a relationship that has been supportive and inspiring ever since. Susan believed in me and my work before there was a whole lot to believe in (she is the first editor who ever took me out for dinner, and when you’ve been writing in silent obscurity for years, trying to get someone in the publishing industry to notice you, that is very exciting!). Her bio says her life’s work is “guiding stories out into the open, working with activists, artists, and scholars to transform trouble into art,” which is a perfect encapsulation of who I’ve experienced her to be as a champion, cheerleader, and nurturer of art and authentic expression. As I told her when she invited me to be their surprise special guest at the retreat (it’s not a surprise anymore, but how fun), anything with Susan is a YES for me. If you’re looking for something like this, I recommend!
How are you holding up these days? Are you also craving community and connection? Are you not craving it but you kinda know it’s what you need? Are you wishing you could hibernate for the next four years?
Yours,
Heidi