Antioch Writers’ Workshop

At the beginning of July, I attended the Antioch Writers’ Saturday Workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was the first time I’ve ever honored the writer inside me by going to such an event. In fact, I don’t even belong to a writers’ group here in St. Louis. Maybe there was something about it being far from home that made it feel safer for me …

Tim Waggoner (Nekropolis) was the keynote speaker. I studied the concept of “Voice” in the morning breakout session with narrative poet Chuck Freeland followed by “Creating Great Characters” with new young adult author Kristina McBride (The Tension of Opposites).  The afternoon session I went to was called “Unstuck and Undone” with Rebecca Morean/Abbey Pen Baker (In the Dead of Winter).

I didn’t think that it would take courage for me to attend the workshop but for many reasons, it did. Even though it’s a straight shot from St. Louis to Ohio I still managed to get myself lost along the way. The navigation on my phone conked out just as I was arriving in Xenia, Ohio where I’d booked my hotel. Stuck in the middle of what felt like a hundred miles straight of cornfields, I learned my first lesson: always bring a real map. It seemed like a good metaphor for my life as a writer. I’ve never had a map. I didn’t even know that maps existed in the creative world.

I’ve always wished for a safe place to call home; not only as a writer but in life too. I’ve never believed St. Louis was that place, and I’m used to being an outsider. Wherever I go, I never seem to quite fit in. In tiny Yellow Springs, Ohio though, I was really just a tourist, which I haven’t been for a long time. It brought up all my fears that I’m ‘just a tourist’ in the writing life too. But since I’ve come back from the workshop, I’ve been writing every day. I’m beginning to feel at home in this exact place and time; I’m beginning to feel at home with where I am as a writer. I’m not quite a tourist, not quite a resident, but at least I know there’s a map through the cornfields!