Day 3 was our first day of critiques. In an act of imbecilic self-sacrifice prior to the retreat, I offered to go first. Some method existed behind my madness; I hoped to get it over with quickly so that I could spend the rest of the week contemplating the feedback and working on revisions.
After two days getting to know everyone, I already had a good sense of the other Fellows and felt very comfortable with them in the critique environment. The comments and criticisms often made me smile, and always made me think. It’s a wonderful and valuable experience to be a fly on the wall in a room full of people who are discussing your work. Not only did I come away with a fantastic idea about how to fix a device that never worked properly in my book, I now have a great idea for a companion story to go along with my novel should I ever be fortunate enough to get published.
The evening unfolded with a post-dinner happy hour for our workshop group that began with some awesome conversation and ended with a great deal of silliness that resulted in this majestic photo taken by Malinda:
Connecting with the other Fellows outside the workshop helped ease some of my anxiety around being at a retreat. I still struggle to take myself seriously as a writer, and feeling comfortable enough to assert myself in a writing community can be challenging. Being photographed in a unicorn mask may not seem like great example of me taking myself seriously, but spending some time goofing off helped me feel more at home. This is an amazing group of people, and I’m so happy to be here.
We need more Unicorns in the bushes. Yup. We do.