The Best Appetizer to Bring to a Writer's Community: Yourself

I have a complicated relationship with writing. I’ve posted several blogposts throughout the years describing the successes and failures of different tactics I’ve used to actually enjoy writing: Writing: To Love or To Hate, Overcoming the Dementor and Essay Writing: From Frolicking to Mental Breakdowns. The common factor that’s helped me be successful in writing, is one I haven’t blogged about yet: being apart of a community of writers.

Great Britain, Visited.

Almost to the top of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Scotland

At the end of the first day of my study abroad, I laid down in a hostel bed in Scotland and wrote, dazedly, "My pictures cannot capture the beauty my eyes have seen." I feel the same now. I've started so many blog posts trying to summarize the trip. I don't know if my words can capture the beauty my eyes have seen, the hills my legs have climbed, and the animal poop my nose has smelled.  Am I being dramatic? Cliché? Possibly, probably. But sometimes life is wonderfully dramatic and magical and to be unreservedly gushy is to be truthful. Because this was a fairy-tale that was real.