Getting Your Peeps Together

        As a writer, it's important to get together with my writing critique friends. I'm lucky. I am part of two groups, I go on at least one writing retreat every year, and I have some long-distance writing colleagues who help me out from time to time.

My son, husband, daughter and granddaughter...
My husband played Santa at a Masonic Christmas party.

       However, even more important than writing get-togethers is gatherings of family and friends. If we spent all of our time hunched over our laptops, tapping away, we wouldn't have anything to write about. Life--and living life--primes the pump. It fills the well. It gives us fodder to write about and it gives us time to reflect on our writing.

      I hope that 2016 is the best year ever for you. Some of us have new struggles to deal with. Some of us have had new issues rear their heads in 2015 and are still working them through. Some of us have scary things to consider (for me: retiring from public school in May and finding a private school job). However, obstacles make us stronger--if we survive them--and oftentimes we find we have more inner strength to draw from than we knew we had.

      Happy New Year!