Where Writers Gather: Summer Reflections

This summer marked a meaningful turning point for Casa de María Publisher.

As Write... Reflect... Reimagine® continued to grow into an international community of listeners spanning 22 countries and 97 cities, those conversations found a new expression through Casa de María's inaugural writing retreats and residencies in Puerto Rico.

Recorded from the rural town of Toa Alta, this reflective episode invites listeners into the quieter moments that surrounded personalized writing residencies. While honoring the privacy and intellectual property of each writer, Dr. Vilma Luz Cabán reflects on what these experiences revealed about observation, trust, revision, thoughtful editorial dialogue, and the transformative power of accompanying writers through the creative process.

More than a conversation about writing retreats, this episode explores the deeper question of what happens when writers are given the time, space, and encouragement to slow down, pay closer attention, and rediscover their own voices.

Whether you're an emerging writer, an experienced author, an educator, or someone who simply believes in the enduring power of stories, this episode is an invitation to reflect on the importance of place, community, and the relationships that help creative work flourish.

In this episode:

• Celebrating the global growth of the Write... Reflect... Reimagine® community.
• Reflections from Casa de María Publisher's inaugural summer writing residencies.
• Why observation, place, and attentive listening remain essential practices for writers.
• The evolving role of the Editorial Companion.

Thank you for being part of the Write... Reflect... Reimagine® community. Wherever you're listening from, thank you for joining us in building a literary community where writers gather, stories are honored, and every voice is encouraged to grow.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Casa de Maria. This is a space for writers, artists, and cultural storytellers who believe that our words carry memory, meaning, and responsibility. Here we gather to reflect on craft, honored lived experience, and explore ethical pathways to publishing and creative growth. I am your host, Dr. Vimaluz Caval, founder of Casa de Maria Publisher. And I am grateful you are here.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Welcome back to Write, Reflect, Reimagine. I'm recording today's episode from Casa de Maria at our headquarters in the rural town of Toalta, Puerto Rico, where the soundtrack of daily life often includes the calls of roosters, morning doves resting in the trees, the evening choir of the cookies, the gentle hooting of Mukaroo owls, the unmistakable voices of two neighboring peacocks, and the occasional neigh of Esperanza, the horse, who has quietly become part of life and spirit here at Casa de Maria. These familiar sounds have become part of our writing retreats, gently reminding us that meaningful writing often begins by paying close attention to the world around us. Now, before we begin today's episode, I'd like to share a moment of gratitude and celebration with our write, reflect, reimagine listening community. It's a place where the sounds of nature often become part of our conversations and where writers are invited to slow down, observe, and reconnect with their creative lives. Now, before I share this moment of gratitude, I want to also take a moment to pause and just connect with nature and our listening community. When I launched this podcast, I didn't begin with a goal of reaching a certain number of listeners or checking analytics, but I simply hoped to create meaningful conversations about writing, storytelling, publishing, and the ways our experiences shape the narratives that we tell. And over time, something beautiful has happened. Those conversations have traveled far and wide more than I could have ever imagined. Today, Write, Reflect, Reimagine has reached listeners in 22 countries and 97 cities around the world. And to every person who has listened to an episode, shared a conversation with a friend, introduced someone to Casa de Maria Publisher, or returned week after week to spend time with us, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. These milestones are certainly exciting, but they represent more to me than just numbers. They remind me that stories travel. A conversation recorded in Puerto Rico can encourage a listener thousands of miles away in Europe and in Asia. An author's journey can inspire someone who's just beginning to believe in their own voice. A single episode can quietly remind someone who is tuning in from Africa or Latin America that their story matters and deserves a place in the world. And that has always been the heart of this podcast, not simply to talk about writing, but to create a community where writers, readers, educators, and storytellers can gather around ideas that encourage us to write with courage, to reflect with honesty, and to reimagine what is possible. As I've spent time reflecting on this milestone, I've come to understand something else. That this podcast isn't simply reaching listeners. It is finding a community of people who care deeply about the stories we explore together. Now, many of you are drawn to conversations about Puerto Rican identity, memoir writing, advocacy, education, community leadership, supporting underrepresented writers, the magic of independent publishing, hybrid writing, Latina voices, and the importance of preserving cultural memory. Now, those shared interests have become the foundation of this growing community. And it has been especially meaningful to see a growing audience throughout Puerto Rico. Listeners are joining us from communities across the metropolitan area, the northern coast, the central region, and the southern coast. As someone who returned to Puerto Rico to establish Casa de Maria Publisher, seeing these conversations resonate throughout the island is both humbling and deeply encouraging. It reminds me that while our stories may begin in a particular place, they have the power to travel far beyond it and connect us all. This summer, that same spirit of community moved beyond the microphone and into a shared space, a shared physical space. And for the very first time, Casa de Maria Publisher welcomes writers to our inaugural summer writing retreats here in Puerto Rico. Now, looking back, I don't see those two milestones as very separate accomplishments. The growth of this podcast and the beginning of our writing retreats are deeply connected. For nearly two years, we have gathered around ideas through recorded conversations, planning, logistics, dreams, visions. And this summer, those conversations found another expression. Writers who have been reflecting alongside this community in Puerto Rico are bringing their own questions, their manuscripts, and their hopes for the work they wanted to create. And in many ways, the writing retreats, some of them a writing weeklong residency, have become an extension of the conversations that have already happened in your hearts. Now, for the next few minutes, I'd like to reflect on what we learned together. I'm going to share why we intentionally designed these retreats differently. What I observed as an editorial companion walking alongside each writer during those retreats, and how this experience has shaped the future vision of Casa de Maria Publisher. If you've ever wondered what can happen when writers are given the time, because it's a gift, the freedom to observe and the encouragement to trust their own writing voices, I invite you to reflect alongside me. May we never estimate or underestimate what can grow from a single conversation, a single memory, or a single act of courage to begin writing. Whether you're listening from nearby across the world, know that you're part of a growing community of people who believe in the enduring power of these stories. And I want to thank you for being a part of this community. As you listen today, I invite you to notice, to listen deeply, and to trust the journey and the story that is being asked to be written. And may you leave this episode reminded that writing is more than an act of composition. It's an act of observation, of reflection, of cultural preservation, of human connection, and of resistance. May you continue trusting your voice and the stories that only you are uniquely positioned to tell. Oh, it has been an extraordinary summer. There are seasons in our lives that quietly reshape the way we understand our work. And for me, this summer became one of those moments, those seasons. This summer, that spirit of community moved beyond the microphone and into a physical space. When I first began envisioning Casa de Maria publisher writing retreats, I imagined, you know, the practical details that would occupy my attention. I thought about preparing the guest rooms and organizing the materials and planning these experiences throughout Puerto Rico and creating an environment where writers could step away from the demands of their everyday world and return to their manuscripts with a renewed sense of purpose. What I could not fully anticipate was how much I would learn from the writers themselves. And over the course of the summer, I've had the privilege of accompanying three writers whose projects represent distinctly very three different literary traditions. One week-long residency centered on the development of the screenplay, another one focused on creative nonfiction, inviting a writer to examine personal narrative while exploring literary forms that might expand the potential of the work. And a third writer carried a long-held dream of creating a children's chapter book. Now, at first glance, these projects appear to have very little in common. Screenwriters think in scenes and visual storytelling and very dramatic structure. Creative nonfiction writers ask writers to navigate those very delicate relationships between memory, reflection, and craft. Now, children's literature requires an extraordinary discipline, inviting writers to communicate with clarity while honoring the intelligence and the imagination of young readers. Now, each manuscript demanded a very different editorial conversation. It brought different questions, different experiences and aspirations. Yet as I reflected on the conclusion of each residency, I found myself returning to the same unexpected realization. The distinction among genres mattered far less than the actual shared habits of mind that every writer was cultivating. Each writer was learning to observe more carefully. Each writer was learning to become more attentive to the power of language. They were discovering that meaningful revision rarely begins with changing words on a page. And more often, it actually begins with asking a better question. And that observation that I've had the pleasure to witness has remained with me long after they have left. As educators, editors, and writers, we often spend considerable amounts of time discussing form. It's important. Now we distinguish between memoir and autobiography, between screenplays and CH plays, between chapter books and middle-aged fiction. Now, these distinctions, yeah, they matter. They shape craft, they shape the audience, the pacing, as well as the structure. But this summer reminded me that beneath every genre lies a remarkably similar creative practice. And that is the power when writers slow down, when they pay attention, become more curious about moments they might once have overlooked, begin noticing patterns that were always present but had not yet been recognized. And more importantly, they develop the courage to remain with uncertainty long enough for deeper understanding to emerge and stretch out and flesh out a scene. That kind of growth cannot be measured simply by counting the number of pages that were written or how many chapters were revised. It reveals itself more quietly. It appears in the confidence with which a writer rereads an earlier draft. Writing is rereading what you've written. It emerges when someone discovers that a passage that once considered not so important or insignificant may actually hold that emotional center of the manuscript. It becomes so visible when a writer begins asking increasingly thoughtful questions of their own work before waiting for someone else to provide the answers. As I looked across these three different writing retreats, I realized that the manuscripts themselves, while important, were just only part of the story. Equally significant were the conversations that unfolded around them, the moments of that careful observation, the pauses before responding to editorial questions, the shared reflections over coffee in the morning and dinner at the close of day, the unexpected insights that emerge while walking through places rich with history, culture, and memory. And those experiences reminded me that writing retreats are not simply places where books are produced. At their best, they become places where writers learn to see more clearly both the world around them and the work that's developing before them. I want you to think about that experience, not to examine manuscripts themselves if potentially you might have one, but because you know those stories rightly belong to you as the author, but to consider the quieter moments that surround this writing. Those moments rarely appear because our lives are so full and busy. Looking back, I realized that this was never simply a summer of three writing retreats. It was a season of listening, listening to writers, listening to place, and listening to the questions that good editorial conversations make possible. Perhaps most importantly, listening for the ways in which thoughtful companionship can help a writer recognize the great possibility of their work. Now, one observation stayed with me, and there were many enduring lessons from the summer. People arriving with their manuscripts, their writers' notebooks, but before that first page is read aloud or that first editorial question is posed, they arrive with that experience that has shaped both their lives and their style of writing. Now, some carry years of unfinished projects, they've tucked away carefully into a folder or in their notebooks, and others arrive with stories they have probably have revisited countless times, uncertain whether they are finally ready to create the form around it. Now, some writers bring decades of professional experience in fields far removed from publishing. Others are just returning to writing after setting aside while raising families, building careers, caring for loved ones, or just responding to that ridiculous amount of responsibilities that accompany adult life. A writing retreat does not ask participants to leave those experiences behind. Instead, it recognizes that those experiences are often the very source of the heart of their literature. And as an editor, I've come to believe that every manuscript carries two narratives. There is that story that's unfolding on the page, and then there's a story of the person that's actually writing it. And both deserve very careful attention. During our opening conversations, I often less was interested in discussing the chapters, but learning more about the writer that was sitting across the table. What has drawn you to this project? Why has this story remained with you? Why do you hope to better understand by spending time with it? Now, those questions are not intended to evaluate or measure the effectiveness of a manuscript. They help establish the foundation for the editorial relationship that is going to follow in our time together. Trust. Trust develops through conversation long before it develops through revision. And that understanding is what shaped every writing research this summer. You know, the screenwriter arrived with a very clear commitment to strengthen perhaps a dramatic work while remaining open to some guidance. The creative nonfiction writer came not only to develop existing pieces, but to explore whether one form might better serve certain experiences and ideas. And the children's author brought the excitement of imagining stories for young readers while thoughtfully considering how those stories might grow into perhaps a sustained chapter book. Although their goals differed, each writer shared something important. They arrived ready, ready to learn, not simply by receiving advice, but by becoming more attentive as observers of their own creative process. And that distinction is important because writers often believe they need someone to give them the answers. But more often, they will benefit from someone who knows how to ask questions that open up new ways of seeing their writing craft. I found myself returning to questions that I had posed that had invited reflection. And I realized that it's not about immediate solutions. Where does this piece seem most fully alive? What continues to capture your attention each time you return to the page? And which moment may you have moved away too quickly from and needs you to revisit? Questions as these rarely produce these instant answers. Instead, they are inviting writers to slow their thinking and to revisit earlier assumptions. Writers during this writing retreat began noticing more about themselves. They became more aware of their writing choices, the ones that landed on the page and the ones that were still simmering in their heart. And they recognized that there were recurring images that appeared across multiple pieces of writing. And that kind of awareness cannot be rushed. No one can simply, you know, simplify or distill that process. And that's why the writing retreat gave them that time. And through attentive conversation, curated experiences, thoughtful reflection, they were able to tap into their willingness to remain curious. They arrived carrying a lifetime of experiences that gradually find their way into literature. And it created a beautiful rhythm of our retreats. And that is the opportunity to slow down without feeling that we are falling behind. That rhythm is so important to writing itself. The morning routines, the close of your day, being able to see beauty in different sites, to anchor yourself. Those movements of rhythm is what seems so possible and puts us in a space where we feel not only free, but safe to open up. Being able to remain present. You know, the world offers an extraordinary amount of material for writers that are willing to just slow down long enough to notice it. In one of our days at the Marine. In the conference business center, you know, looking out the window, seeing the boats move in and out of the harbor. You know, that manuscript rested on the table between us, marked with handwritten notes, questions in the margins. And that moment right there was just powerful because it paused and it crystallized so much for the writer to say, we have a dedicated space where we can do a read aloud and walk through that script, that screenplay, just untouched and see what it is in its natural state. And those editorial moments matter. Lunch overlooking the harbor, without notebooks between us, just speaking freely from a creative space. But still, that manuscript was still present in those moments because those conversations were still in that space of creativity. And I'm sure a lot of that was going back to the writer's page when they went back to it. You know, maybe it was going to El Yunke and doing some rocking chair writing, overlooking a poor small portion of the rainforest and being in that canopy space, having movement breaks that lifted the writer up from that chair in a way into a different mindset was important. And just being we're in a place where those bird songs replaced the conversation and fill in. I think many times we think we need to have conversation or we need to have noise or we have to have something. But it's okay to be still. And writers, sometimes we're not okay with that stillness. And it took some time for them to settle in. But that writing I saw changed over time. Something quieter was happening. And they began to listen very deeply and differently. And so I'm grateful that this summer reminded me that growth also happens while we're walking, we're observing, we're listening, we're breaking bread, we're sitting quietly, enjoying, reflecting by your fire pit, having that daylight soften over the marina or a Casa de Maria, just naturally expanded our craft because writing is thinking. And being able to look at examples of books and using mentor text, all of that encouraged our writers. That's so important as we simply participate in this process of collective thinking and writing. Watching that rhythm is so important. Being their editorial companion as a part of three different projects, entrusting me with that responsibility was such a great honor. And I'm grateful for that time. As I look back over my notes, our conversations, and the many hours we spent together, I was struck by how often many of the same questions resurfaced. And that is continuing to inform our personalized writing retreat, craft sessions, as well as how the day continues to unfold, not only for a writing retreat that's four days, but a week-long writing retreat. I am just grateful for this time that we've had together. And those questions really continue to inform the work. We've also sent writing surveys so that they can give us feedback so we can help the next generation of writers and their experiences to be able to inform what not only the curated experiences are, but how we can continue supporting them in their revision process. So I'm grateful for this phase, for this time, the gift that this has given us. And this summer has taught me so, so much. I am so grateful for our time together as writers. Every writer benefited from their time with their writing craft, examining different models, and even refining their techniques. And sustaining that writing is important because as an editor, as a curator, I believe that it's important to hold space together. Many underrepresented writers don't have that. They don't have that mentor, or they just feel that their network is so far away. Having that here was a gift. So as I close this reflection, I find myself thinking about those writers who have not yet arrived. Perhaps one of them is listening today. Maybe you have a manuscript that has been tucked away in a drawer for years, or you may have pages scattered across different notebooks, computer files, or maybe handwritten journals that have never quite found their way into a larger project. And you may already have a completed draft and simply need that uninterrupted time to just see it with fresh eyes. But you are carrying something that has to live. It's a persistent idea that continues to return to you, asking you for your attention, despite the responsibilities and distractions of everyday life. It begins the moment a person decides that paying attention to what you've created matters. Attention to your language, to memory, to the places that have shaped you, all of that is important. And if there's one hope I carry forward from this extraordinary summer, is that more writers will give themselves permission to make space for that kind of attentiveness. Not because every writing retreat guarantees a finished manuscript. The goal here is that creative work, right, is not falling on a predictable timeline. You know, some writers are going to leave with maybe new chapters, others are going to leave with a clearer sense of direction. And maybe some will discover that the most significant change that was taking place was how the questions drew them to unfold their work deeper. You know, each of those outcomes represents genuine progress. And writing has always required more than just talent. It's asking you for patience. Writing is asking for your sustained observation, and writing is asking you to return again and again and again to the page, trusting that understanding often arrives after we've lived some time spending with the uncertainty in our writing. So to those future writers, wherever our paths eventually cross, I hope you will discover what these first three writing retreaters reminded me so much to do beautifully this summer. And that is that the most meaningful journeys in writing are rarely measured only by the pages that we produce. They are measured by the ways in which the work changes us while we are writing it. I want to thank you for joining me in this reflection. Until next time, continue making room for curiosity, for careful observation, and for that beautiful, quiet work of discovering that only you can place onto the page. Every writer has a voice, every voice has a story, and every story deserves the time to become fully itself. Thank you. I'm filled with gratitude for the writers who entrusted me with their creative journeys, for this growing community of listeners that continues to gather around the power of story and for the great privilege of walking alongside those who are discovering their own voices.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Thank you for spending this time with me. If today's conversation resonated, I invite you to explore our free webinars, writing retreats in Puerto Rico, and our curated anthologies at Casa de Maria Publisher. Your voice matters. Your story deserves care. Until next time, write with intention and courage. Pend your passion. Publish your promise at Casa de Maria Publisher.