August Newsletter: a new home-from-home
When one door closes, sometimes (just sometimes), a far shiner one opens.
Last week, I thought I’d be telling you about a small, sold-out Afternoon Writing Retreat coming up three Saturdays from now. I thought it was going to be at my local club, where the size of the room meant places were very strictly limited, so selling out pre-newsletter had been very nice but not a great surprise.
The surprise came in the form of an email I got last week from that venue. It told me they had now decided they would be closing for the week of my booking and apologised if that caused me any inconvenience.
Reader, it did cause me inconvenience.
But it also made me realise what being unceremoniously dumped is always really good for making us realise. It made me realise I could do better. It made me think what better could look like.
A new home-from-home
My other home-from-home, a club on Dean Street in central London, has been absolutely wonderful. Both in commiserating me for the reasons for the urgent venue change and in helping me make the changeover smooth and positive for my writers in all the ways I and they could think of.
The Afternoon Writing Retreat on Saturday 24 August still begins at 3pm, in even more beautiful surroundings and with a few extra places at the workshop table. There’s also the option of joining online.
If you’ve been wondering about what the Writers’ Gym feels like to be a part of, here’s the perfect time and place to find out.
Opening shinier doors
Nobody ever wishes for a door to shut in their face. But that means it’s rare for us to look as hard as we might for shinier options. Ones that might actually be better for us, and us for them. A door often has to shut for us to notice the shinier ones were right there, all the time.
All of which has been a great reminder to me of how much less rewarding autopilot really is than taking the time to ask myself:
What’s good about where I am?
Where do I want to go next?
What’s one small step I can take today towards where I want to be?
I hope you enjoy Thinking on the Page about life, work or art in response to these questions. And if you want more of what Think on the Page can do for your creative confidence in writing and in life, the downloadable summer course is now available to enjoy in your own time right here.
Autopilot is something I used to envy when others mentioned it thinking it would make me more productive, only for me to suffer from it and never wish it on anyone. Reflecting truly is a much better option and if not ask yourself some reflective questions, then just taking the time to journal would make a huge difference.