Writing is my chosen profession. I thrive on words, but at times, the romance of composing disappears beneath rejection slips and revisions. Sitting before a computer meeting deadlines, my fingers exercise, while the rest of me stiffens. Necessary solitude limits mental stimulation. Gray matter slows toward freezing, and ideas start to slip like kids in an ice storm. Now and then, time comes to get up and walk away, far away, from the blinking cursor. I hear the call of Thoreau, into the woods to live more deliberately.

I last heard the call in September. When I told my writer friends, they agreed that we might benefit from a retreat. For ten years, we have worked together as a critique group. Acceptance and rejection, we have celebrated and nurtured one another through all stages and genres of writing. As a writer's group we have become far more than the five individuals who write alone.

© 2000, Diana Renfro
Used by Permission