Hi, all! As you may (or may not) know, we just returned from our 13th annual writers retreat in Grand Lake, where 40 of our now extended family of writers commune in the Shadowcliff Lodge for a week of writing, hiking, and talking books. We solicited blog posts from participants, and here's the first in what we hope will be a series of reflections on the week. For the calendar-ready: next year's retreat will be July 15-20! Save the week.
[caption id="attachment_2712" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Dan-o creating his temporary bliss station in Grand Lake"]
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Blog: The Occulting Light
Author: Dan Manzanares
Topic: Grand Lake: Bliss Station; Instructor: Chris Ransick
It is ok to create a bliss station. It is ok, writer, to measure out a space in the world, to bring only pen and paper and nothing else and no one else, and write into bliss. It is ok to define the Wasteland (distractions, excuses, reasons, interruptions), why you don't write, and eliminate, however temporarily or forever, those external and internal Wasteland dredge. It is ok not to apologize for doing this.
Empty a space then fill it with Creative Space Time.
Do not hope the energy drains keeping you from the bliss station will change on their own, change what you can, accept what you can't, then write without regret.
I'm a cafe writer. I enjoy the feeling of being in a public place, people milling about, baristas spinning around, while being encapsulated by my pen and paper. Alone but not. What tends to happen, though, is a cafe's mojo changes. I go somewhere else, mojo changes, I try another. This is why I now know where my bliss station eternal is going to be: Lighthouse.
Lighthouse is renting out writer space on the 3rd floor of its new and upgraded home. Ferril house I called Hogwarts, the place when I entered I shed my cloak of ho-hum and became magic, my pen became my wand and I wielded it without fear of collapsing the roof when the syllables punched through the page and bounced around the room. Ferril contained the power. Now, we have [1515] Race. And I already feel the container strengthening. When the Muse hits us, when the daemon draws breath, we will shake the foundation but will be held too.
I'm a cafe writer. I'm a Lighthouser. When I write in the writer's room I will see my brothers and sisters next to me. These people are not random cafe patrons. They are writers! They are blazing pages! They are part of my bliss station, with them, with Lighthouse, I am wizard.
