I hear about Sage Hill Writing Experience, a ten-day writers’ retreat in Saskatchewan from Betsy Warland, my instructor at a creative writing class at Simon Fraser University. This sounds like a perfect next stage for me. I look up Sage Hill Writing Experience. There is a group of “emerging writers”. I email Betsy Warland. “You mentioned Sage Hill as an amazing experience for a writer.  I am intrigued and interested in the concept of spending 10 days focused on writing.  But I wonder whether this would be appropriate for me at my stage, as a beginning writer.  I would appreciate your thoughts on whether this would be too ambitious for me at this stage or whether I could benefit from this experience this summer.”

Betsy said, “Go for it.” I sent in my application and, to my astonishment, was accepted.

About a month before the retreat, we were asked to submit eight to ten pages of writing that we would like to workshop with the group. It could be new work or part of a longer work we intended to focus on during our 10 days at Sage Hill. It could be fiction, creative nonfiction or poetry. We were asked to choose a sample that included the writing issues of most concern to us, and one that we felt would benefit from the comments and critiques of the writers around the table. I take the piece on my childhood at the lake I had written and received a critique of in my creative writing class. I go over it line by line. I spend days rewriting. Finally, I press the send button.