Circumnavigators

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Here is something I didn’t expect when I began coaching writers— I never thought I’d travel so far.

It’s a cliche to say that reading lets you travel the world, but when you rally a group of writers around a table, you’re really in for an expedition. Writers write stories, and stories need people inside them, and those people need a world where they can live and move and have their being. Sometimes, that world has the same trees and planets as ours. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

Sometimes, there are sea dragons, tomb robbers, or ghosts. There are ancient ruins and Victorian castles and sleepy harbors off England’s windswept coasts. Being in the same room as writers is like huddling around a sailor’s map, plotting the oceans you’ll cross. This can happen in an organized way, as I seek to do in the Inklings Writing Coaching Group— but it can happen accidentally, too.

I met one of my Inkling friends, Anna, at the coffee shop last Monday to talk about (what else?) writing, and when we walked in, there was another Inkling already there. She was huddled over her laptop, working on edits. I asked about her progress, then left her to her work.

It occurs to me that from across the shop, we looked stationary, sitting at separate tables under separate windows. It also occurs to me that we were really shooting across different worlds, sailing the uncharted waters of our stories.

Anna and I have spent years working on her writing together, and the couch in her family’s great room has become the helm of a vessel that has taken us around the world and back again. Just yesterday, through her writing, we dove into an underworld of dragons and magic that was 20,000 leagues under the sea.

So writers are circumnavigators. As a coach, I’m just along for the ride.

On that note, we’re off on another adventure this fall in the Inklings Writing Coaching Group, and we’d love for you to sail with us! The best way to stay posted is to join the email list here, where you’ll receive Inklings updates, stories, and a few free things.

The seats are few. The adventures untold.

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