Commitment

Last month we celebrated the conclusion of our fifth Taos Writing Salon. Along with twenty fine writers from all over the country, including one merchant seaman, we dug into the idea that great communication begins with great writing and that great writing rises from a commitment and willingness to embrace imagination, craft, skill, and inspiration.

Commitment, a theme that wove organically through our week in Taos, is the glue that holds a writing life together. If you’ve ever written anything at all, you know that success demands more than just putting pen to paper. It demands that you commit to something deeper than the surface of yourself. It asks you to plunge your hands into the buried treasures of your life and discover, with great courage, whatever you can find. Or as David Rain, one of this year's Taos participants put it, “to delve into the brown-black pit of the belly where the words come from.”

Whether you plunge into a brown-black pit or a bed of flowers, you have to be willing to plunge, sometimes without knowing just what you're plunging into. You have to be willing to trust: your imagination, your craft, and the inspiration that comes when you make yourself available to the work. Those of us who were lucky enough to be in Taos this summer (yes, sweaters were required at night and in the morning) took that plunge, and romped around like children in a pool; it was pure pleasure.

We have some exciting Salons coming up later this fall and next year:
Savannah, Georgia, October 27-28, 2007
Paris, France, November 17, 2007
Galway, Ireland, November 26-28, 2007
Normandy, France, March 25-27, 2008
Black Mountain, North Carolina, April 25-27, 2008
Taos, New Mexico, July 20-27, 2008

We're arranging some exciting tie-ins with other festivals in North Carolina, and we will be bringing in a fantastic new faculty member (watch this space). We hope you can join us there, or in any of our other Salons.

Write on!