Once a year, thanks to the American NewMedia Foundation, two writers and I embark on a journey. The program asks the writers to set goals for the next year in terms of what project them want to work on, and what they want the outcome to be.

And then we work. Hard.

We always start with a writing retreat, a kickoff to a year of wordsmithing and prioritizing and crafting. Not all the fellows have been women, but I think it is harder for women to make time for our own writing. It’s a “hobby” that produces less tangible objects than knitting or crocheting, and it’s something we can’t “prove” we have a “right” to be doing by the standards of return on investment.

Sod that for a game of soldiers. We write for fun, for mental health, because we have something to say, because it’s satisfying, or just because we friggin’ want to. Why women have to justify time spent in this way, I don’t know. But never mind. Tonight the words will start flowing, faster than the wine, and we three will dive deep, down into the waters of creativity.

It is like diving. What feels cool and clean one minute as you slice in with surgical precision can become deep and suffocating and murky the next, and that glorious feeling of control disappears into something approaching panic. It’s dark in the creative spaces. That can be good or bad.

What it never is, is boring. This year promises to be as challenging and invigorating as the previous ones have been, me learning from the fellows, the fellows learning from me. It’s kind of a full circle of growth return.

And so we start, late this afternoon, down the path toward the sea of words. Wish us luck!