As much (and as loud­ly) as I grieve our autumn migra­tion, leav­ing our Sit­ka fam­i­ly for the win­ter, it does­n’t take long before I remem­ber that this tran­sient lifestyle brings the best of sev­er­al worlds into my life. Our win­ter-life offers lux­u­ries like reg­u­lar show­ers, per­son­al space, and access to Thai food. But one of the biggest bless­ings has been the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate with Belling­ham’s Red Wheel­bar­row Writ­ers (RWB).

If you’re a writer who’s even remote­ly with­in the Seat­tle — Van­cou­ver BC I‑5 cor­ri­dor, I strong­ly rec­om­mend keep­ing an eye on Red Wheel­bar­row oppor­tu­ni­ties. (They’ve got a FB page here — “like” them to get the lat­est event updates.)  They’ve offered some of the best writ­ing work­shops I’ve attend­ed (how to write a query let­ter, non-fic­tion pro­pos­als, and build­ing plat­form) and always have stel­lar speakers.

Beyond class­es, RWB fos­ters a vibrant, inspir­ing writ­ing com­mu­ni­ty. The first Sat­ur­day of every month is Hap­py Hour — an oppor­tu­ni­ty to share your work with a joy­ful­ly sup­port­ive crowd. These are the folks I spent years long­ing for.

When you feel a dizzy­ing affec­tion for some­one — or, in this case, a group of some­ones — there’s noth­ing bet­ter than learn­ing they like you back. So when author and RWB co-founder Cami Ost­man invit­ed me to be their Decem­ber writer of the month, I was honored.

A lit­tle intim­i­dat­ed, too. How to artic­u­late my writ­ing process for oth­ers, when I spend so much time ques­tion­ing it, for myself? How to pub­licly pro­claim an iden­ti­ty that, in truth, is still a very new jour­ney — exhil­a­rat­ing at times, ter­ri­fy­ing at others?

For­tu­nate­ly, email inter­views allow for slow­ly mulling over the ques­tions, sec­ond-guess­ing your answers as ter­ri­ble, delet­ing, recon­sid­er­ing, rephras­ing. Repeat­ing as need­ed. (If only spo­ken word encoun­ters came with a sim­i­lar rewind!)

The gift of this process was that, by the end, I had a much stronger sense of what my writ­ing life means to me. If you’re hav­ing a peri­od of writer’s block or your inner crit­ic is being par­tic­u­lar­ly ruth­less, I rec­om­mend assign­ing your­self these inter­view ques­tions. Like the clas­sic “Why I Write” exer­cise, these ques­tions are pow­er­ful med­i­ta­tions on why we hand our­selves over to this con­vic­tion that words mat­ter. (Oth­er sug­ges­tions, friends? What are your tricks for encouraging/understanding your writer self?)

The inter­view is avail­able here. This is a new fea­ture for RWB (author Jen­nifer Wilke kicked off the series in Novem­ber) so please check back for future pro­files of our tal­ent­ed mem­bers.  Many thanks, RWB, for this and all of the oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties you’ve shared!

“So much depends upon a red wheel­bar­row…” Pho­to by Susan Tive