Kyra Wilson Cook is the Executive Director of the MetroWest Writers’ Guild.
To know New England in the summer time is to know seasonal, regional mass migration. The students leave–back to their hometowns in various states and countries, some already looking forward to returning to crisp and colorful autumn. Everyone else seems to have a summer place. North, to the lakes. South, to the Cape. East, to the beach towns with their sticker-requirements for parking and lobster rolls and fried clams. West, to the mountains, where there is music and art and hippie things. Everyone has a place where they go and they stay there, coming back to their homes for a week or so to do something perfunctory, and then they gleefully get back on 93, 495, 2 West, 70 West, or Route 3 which turns into Route 6 and the extraordinary line for crossing the Sagamore bridge.
The point is, people leave. They go. The culture is to be present to summer because the winter is dark and the spring is muddy and the autumn is lovely and busy. So summer is for family and away.
For the Guild, that has meant low participation. Who wants to be on Zoom learning writing when the Cape is calling? Not being a New Englander myself, I had no away place and always found myself, jealously, waiting for my community to return. Meanwhile, there were folk who wanted to be away and writing, so I’ve done my best to offer some sort of passive programming to give folk something to do… even if they aren’t home. This has yielded mixed success. That’s ok, I’m willing to experiment.
This summer, the Guild is turning to journaling. Portable, personal, the journal feels like a great place to put energy in these mobile summer months. We invite you to join us for our summer programs, offering one free one and one affordable one to keep you writing and observing this summer!
I’m grateful to MetroWest teacher Krysta Betit, who is offering a 6 week journaling class this summer. Meeting weekly starting on June 16th, this class is focused on bringing you back to those “write about nothing” days we had back when we were teens. What are you thinking about? How do you feel? What did you see today? What do you look forward to tomorrow? This is perfect for the person who wants to remember the writing practice and habit without the pressure of narrative, product, and deadline. Grab a journal, a favorite writing instrument, and some stickers (maybe!) and join us. This class is $50 (so we can pay an honorarium to Krysta in gratitude for her time) and starts on Tuesday, June 16th. Get your tickets here.
I am running a free journaling program starting June 14th that encourages Guild members to start a “moon journal” or other natural observation this summer. Inspired by Harvard Ed School’s T-440 class taught by the extraordinary Dr. Eleanor Duckworth, this program is a call to meditation and observation of something you can observe with (joyful) curiosity for the weeks of summer. Modeled on our Chase the Light program, I will offer thoughtful essays every Sunday, writing prompts on Wednesdays, and plenty of opportunities for members to share their thoughts. This is totally free for anyone who wants to join us. Just click the Join us! button above to join the Guild and journal with us this summer! And you don’t have to observe the moon, by the way. You can choose a tree in your backyard (how do the colors of the leaves change as we move deeper into summer, how do the shadows of the trees change from hour to hour as the days elongate to solstice and then contract as summer wanes?) or your dog (how do you know when they need to go to the bathroom? When they want to play? When they are anxious? When they are overtired?) or your garden… whatever you want to observe with depth and curiosity for a significant period of time. You can journal with prose, poetry, doodles, elaborate sketches… you can embroider your object of fascination. You can write a song, make a video… you can do whatever you want. The product isn’t the point–the observation and your relationship with that observation is. And by putting down your reactions and observations, I’ll bet your craft abilities to make sentences and paragraphs and versus describing our world will transform. We start on the next New Moon–that’s June 14th.
We look forward to spending the summer with you!