A Few Words From Nightwriter's Founder Phyllis Theroux
Everyone has a story about how they came to writing. I backed into it, after my more ambitious dreams - to be a saint or at least a wonderful wife and mother - didn't pan out. One sleepless night I got out of bed and tried to figure out, on paper, why someone who had followed all the rules for having a good life had wound up having a bad life.  The next morning, I re-read what I had written and decided that perhaps it was publishable and sent it into a magazine. They not only accepted it but paid me $500. I used the $500 to pay for a babysitter and began to write every day.

Once my writing' career was somewhat established. I started teaching others what I knew. Nearly everyone had day jobs and had to write at night. The name, "Nightwriters" stuck. But what began 25 years ago as a small group of people trying to breathe life into words around my dining room table has grown into a large network of friends and writers here and abroad. Writers must devote the greater part of their time to being alone.  But they wither without a community to share their lives and work.  Nightwriters tend to stay connected to each other because the connection they make - on and off the page - at a Nightwriters seminar are profound.

Not long ago I received an e-mail from a writer in California who asked if I thought a Nightwriters seminar would be appropriate for her. I wrote back to say that a typical table of Nightwriters consists of about half-published writers who are looking for new direction or inspiration and half novices, who have a strong desire to write but have never given it the attention it deserves.

There are other ways, beyond attending an intensive writing seminar, to skin the creative cat, but I have found that the most long-lasting results come from setting aside a chunk of time and having everything but the writing taken care of by someone else. This is what Nightwriters attempts to do.

Creating the proper atmosphere is like picking the right restaurant. Most writers need a combination of quiet, stimulation, privacy and community. They don't want to feel trapped on a mountain, or caught in a crowd. I'm always looking for new sites, but I have rejected many beautiful places because they lacked one or more essential ingredients.

In 2007, we are meeting twice: once in California at the Bishop's Ranch in Healdsburg and again in Italy where we stay in a Tuscan villa near Siena.  The rest of the year, I will be trying to follow the words of Henry Miller. "The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." That is what I will be doing, except when I am sitting around the table, paying attention to you.