On a sunny, genuine Door County fall morning the house is filled with six writers on retreat. Outside trees are rustling in a definite breeze while inside the furnace and the dog provide the noise. It is a wonderful gift to be surrounded by writers and given two solid days to work.

Everyone in this group is in a committed relationship and our spouses or partners are supportive of our creative work. But here we can indulge in a twenty-minute discussion of word count without feeling kind of dorky. And we can be supportive of a writer who is so eager to finish a work that he started before six this morning. Sitting right in the middle of people making coffee, getting a little breakfast, watching an amazing sunrise, he kept his fingers on the keys and his eyes on the screen as the words flowed. Awesome.

There is a smooth energy under the quiet like the subtle chocolate hints in Door County Brewing’s Polka King Porter. One or two of those were consumed last night while watching The Packers beat the Bears. That’s rowdy behavior for a mature group of creative introverts.

I’ve put Inky aside this morning to concentrate on a final review of a short story bound for competition. In the arts rejection is the norm and one came in via email as I began working. A handful of successful writers I consider mentors have told me that they do over one hundred submissions a quarter for a handful of published stories. My counts are puny on that scale.

Today or tomorrow I’ll begin working my novel’s revision plan. Wednesday I shared the work’s graphic and background information produced in the first days of work to a person interested in starting his first novel. Being a part of Write On, Door County has opened the gates for these kind of discussions at the most unexpected times.

This is community. Six writers working on an unknown number of stories in the parts of a house made for this kind of gathering.