I’m not even certain how this all happened. One evening, apropos of absolutely nothing, my husband says to me that I should go to England for the month of January and write the bulk of my next book, Undaunted Joy, a collection of essays on joy.
I say, I don’t have a publisher yet.
He says, yeah but you have time to write it now. When you get back, things will get busy promoting the Brian Doyle bio. You won’t have a lot of time to write.
I say, we don’t have money for a month in UK.
He says, we have points.
I start to think about it. He’s right. (Of course, he always is.) I will have a good chunk of time to work on such things in January. Being away from the family would give me time to write. England makes me happy and distracts me from the ache of not being with my family. We do have enough airline points to fly me there without cost.
I didn’t have funds for a quiet place to write while I wrote the Brian Doyle bio either but found a place to write for a weekend each month. A friend’s house while they were on vacation, a gifted Airbnb but mostly I wrote at monasteries. They are usually donation based. They often provide meals. They are quiet. They are safe. At monasteries, I can both stay close to Jesus praying with the community and I can talk to someone if I am getting lonely.
I started looking into it and without much work, things just lined up. That’s when you know it’s right. I’m doing this all on the cheap. One pack. I depart January 11 and stay for a full 4 weeks. I’ll be staying a week in each; London, Chilworth, Buckfastleigh and Bath. If you live near any of those places, I’d love to share an evening meal after a day of work.
I can’t write the entire book in a month but I have a goal to write 30,000 completed words while I am gone. I think this is completely doable.
Thank you to all of you who subscribe to this Substack. I love hearing back from you and processing some of these ideas further.
If you are not a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one. During the next month I will be sharing excerpts from my morning pages, “Joy Comes In the Morning” through the course of this adventure. Your paid subscription enables me to write what I would like, joyful, thoughtful writing, instead of listicles to pay my student loan. Every cent from my Substack goes toward my MFA loan.
So this year starts a new adventure and I’m glad you are joining me for the ride. Please pray for me as I set off. Pray for safety, that I hear God more clearly and my heart would be open to even more of the bounty of joy.
Now that’s un daughter joy! What a gift. I’ll pray all goes well!
I'm very excited for you! I'm going to add your specific prayer requests into my journal.