Last month I went on an intimate writing retreat with one of my best friends. We are both writers working on our debut books and wanted to create a space where we could focus on our writing for an entire weekend. It was lovely and hard and absolutely wonderful.

Here are a few lessons I learnt about writing from that retreat:

1. Writing, in particular personal essays, sometimes feels like fighting yourself. There were so many times I had to push past so much resistance in my writing to get to the real answers. And to push past the BS answers we give ourselves to cope with life feels like OKAY ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO GO THERE BCOS ONCE YOU GO THERE YOU CANT BS YOURSELF AGAIN?

2. Writing is messsyyyy – you basically get on paper and let your heart bleed there so why do you expect it to be neat and clean? Because its so unorganized and its not a cute process. I like clean lines and sentences that don’t run on, and paragraphs that are easily digestible…but baby that’s the editing part. Right now, the writing process will not give you that. Thanks. 

3. Writing is a deeply uncertain journey – you have to trust that the things will come together because there are so many times in the moment that I’m writing and just feeling like “QUE???? That makes no sense and I don’t even know why these words are coming on the page right now” and an hour later it dawns on me that I needed those earlier words to access the words that make sense now. 

Anyways I love writing and I love even more that i’m on this writers retreat with one of my best friends because to have your person as your writing partner is a sweet blessing.