Quite literally, September was a month for the books.
Preface
From book club reads and making progress on my own book during a writing retreat to listening to writers speak about their books and those of others, the ninth month of 2024 had me turning pages left and right.
Book Club Meetings
Kicking it all off was the first of three book club events featuring The House in the Cerulean Sea, which, stylistically, reminded me of the first three Harry Potter books but with humor of a much darker sort. I’ll be honest and admit it wasn’t my favorite book of all time, but it was very cute, ended precisely how I imagined it would, and was leaps and bounds more enjoyable than the second Lit with Literature read: The Waters. The density and painfully prolonged tangential asides, coupled with a most unflattering depiction of a rural southern Michigan town where spotlit characters had little to no redeeming qualities, were the main stumbling blocks that prevented me from a positive reading/listening experience, and I was not alone in my assessment.
Sandwiched by the two boozy book club gatherings was Breakfast Book Club. We met at Sunnyside in downtown Boyne City and discussed Curse of the Wolf King, a Beauty and the Beast retelling with fae. I wanted very much to like this book because I’ve been a Beauty and the Beast fan since 1991 and I picked this book for the coffee crew to read, but it just didn’t speak to me. Perhaps it was the familiarity or expectedness of the foundational storyline, but I stopped reading about halfway through and embarked on my first of three October reads: The Silent Patient.
The L’Engle Writing Retreat
As a writer who graduated college over a decade ago, it may be shameful to admit this, but I’ve never attended a writing retreat.
In spurts, I work on my writing projects, but I have never dedicated time solely to working on my projects. And aside from sharing my writings with trusted and vetted readers, I haven’t had my work critiqued or absorbed by an aggregate or aggregates since my capstone class. Well, I’ll take that back. I did have college students read and review an earlier draft of my novel, but not receiving their feedback in person made that experience feel less vulnerable. But miniscule-ly so.
The L’Engle Writing Retreat—now in its third year—is derived from and inspired by author Madeleine L’Engle’s initial Crosswicks Journal, entitled A Circle of Quiet. This year, the retreat’s overarching focus was on place. We were challenged to consider landscape, location, setting, and how a place can become a character with its own moods and preferences. We were asked to engage our senses and write without thinking too hard. We were faced with the question of how a place remained with us and how it had changed us.
We were given various prompts to help focalize our writing, one of which was the suggestion of incorporating the concept of place into the fiction or nonfiction we were already working on, and that’s the direction I chose.
During the morning solo writing session, I set up shop outside in sunny Pennsylvania Park and wrote about different places in my fantasy WIP. I wanted to make the descriptions and scenes vivid and visceral so that a stranger could read the words and see the settings as clearly as I did. I wanted to paint with words.
That afternoon, I relocated to an indoor setting—the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church of Petoskey. This was home base for retreat participants, and in the cool calm of the space, seated on the carpeted floor behind the pews, I dove into the nonfiction piece I had started the night before. I chose to recount a moment shared with my oldest friend, one seemingly mundane while also moving for me. I strove to saturate the page with sensory injections, to put the reader there with us. It was a singularly simple memory, but it reaffirmed my personal belief in the strength and beauty of a simple moment.
The hardest part of the retreat was reading aloud to another participant. Far more low stakes than reading to the entire cohort group, this act was still intimidating. I had to overcome the vulnerability and fear that arose, making my words catch in their formation, but I did it, and sharing with a fellow writer was rewarding. I plan to refine this nonfiction piece, submit it to literary journals later this fall, and implement the fiction descriptions into my novel.
C.S. Lewis Festival
Having mentioned Madeleine L’Engle already—the author of one of my book loves, AKA comfort reads, A Wrinkle in Time—I must also mention another comfort-read creator, C.S. Lewis, and the Northern Michigan festival that celebrates his life and work.
I’ve been working with the C.S. Lewis Festival since 2022 as a contractor, but I now also bear the titles of Assistant Director and Board Member for this local nonprofit. For the 22nd festival, we focused on celebrated authors and spiritualists Lewis, L’Engle, and Thomas Merton. The theme/title for this year was “The Seeker and the Storytellers,” which was beyond fitting considering the pursuits and works of each author.
This bookish experience was more on the academic and educational end of the spectrum, including fascinating biographical information on the authors thanks to our featured speakers, authors Sarah Arthur, Sophfronia Scott, Léna Roy, and Charlotte Jones Voiklis, insightful discussions, book signings, and even a musical event to cap things off with original songs and lyrics inspired by Lewis’ writings. I also bought a new book and got a few signed to add to my author-inscribed book collection.
Festival of the Book
And finally, the month of the book concluded with the annual Festival of the Book in Harbor Springs. I absorbed several engaging sessions at various locations within the walkable downtown area this past weekend (Festival of the Book always takes place on the final weekend in September.). I volunteered early Saturday morning at registration—where I met some lovely fellow readers/book lovers—and also contracted with the festival to proof and edit its lovely printed program.
The sessions I attended included Secrets Revealed, Matters of the Heart, Finding Oneself in the Journey, ABC, 123: Passion, Obsession & Letting Go, Characters Who Save Us, and The Ins and Outs of World-Building. Some of my favorite takeaways were that you can’t edit a blank page, lean toward love, books need to end with hope, and that I am neither a plotter nor a pantser, but rather a combination of the two writing approaches.
In the days and weeks to come, I look forward to applying what I learned to my writing (I may have even landed upon my novel’s new opening line!). And, of course, I bought a few books at the pop-up bookstore because how can I pass up the opportunity to support authors and a small business?
Epilogue
September was jam-packed with all things writing, reading, and book-related. It was hectic, with multiple reads, lots of note-taking, and bursts of inspired writing—needless to say, it was my kind of month, but I’m definitely ready for a nap.
Coming up next:
October — Spooker Season, The Reader’s Edition
3 responses to “Organized Rambling: The Month of the Book”
I too rewrote my opening line in my novel – it needed to be shorter, more punchy. We’ll see how much I like it in a week…
Also, when you called the church a sanctuary, all I could think of was Quasimodo shouting sanctuary on top of Notre Dame.
Sometimes I feel like Quasimodo, so that tracks, lol. On another note, we’ll have to compare new opening lines soon!
[…] September was a whirlwind, personally and professionally, and my days were filled with meetings, deadlines, book club gatherings, family events, and full weekends, featuring literary-related, multi-day commitments, in which books and their words brought hundreds upon hundreds of people together. […]