Home Retreat

lizshine74by lizshine74

In Coaching, On writing.

People standing around a firepit

I said I would post this last night, but by the end of our solstice party, I was too tired to do much besides lay in bed and read. Even that didn’t last long. I got maybe six pages deeper into Hope in the Dark before I lost consciousness. So, here I am this morning, getting us both set up for a couple of days of retreat at home. I’m doing three days, going for six hours each. Each day I’ll post a reflection on a theme and then describe the day. My hope is that it will inspire you to make time for yourself even when you can’t get away from home.

Begin by setting your intentions and then cutting those down to the most essential. When I woke up this morning, I was so excited to start that all my projects came to my mind at once. I could feel the tension start in my body at this moment. “But what do you most want to work on?” I asked myself, following up, “choose two.” This helped. From the buffet of things I wanted to do with the time I am making, I chose two things that when I thought of doing them, the foreshadowing of the relief and accomplishment I would feel in finishing them washed over me. Finish editing the short story collection I’ve been working on for sixteen years and finish editing/organizing the poems I’ve not currently ready to send out into the world. There’s a third thing skipping rope outside the door wanting to join the party, but I’m just leaving that for now. I chose two. If we get to three, that’s a bonus.

Minimize your distractions. My email is closed. My phone is on silent downstairs. I’ve got my noise cancelling headphones at the ready. My timer is open in a tab.

That’s it. That’s really all you need. Set your intentions. Minimize your distractions. Then, begin.

I also work as a writing coach and love helping writers gain confidence, set goals, and develop their work. For more information on coaching, email me at eatyourwords.lizshine@gmail.com.

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.