Last week, we held the first gathering of the As-Yet-Unnamed Heartland Writer’s Group. The group is sponsored by our local college and hosted by yours truly. When I threw out the emails, web postings, and church bulletin announcements, I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe one or two other brave souls would join me at the Solid Rock Cafe to drink Diet Coke and discuss All Things Book for an hour or two.

Instead, I found a tribe. (I stole that concept from Jeff Goins.) We don’t look much alike in this tribe. You would never pick us out of a crowd and say, “Those people belong together!” We came from three generations and a crazy number of backgrounds.

But it only took a few minutes before we discovered our common blood. Well, our most important common blood comes from Jesus. But, beyond that, it is words. We have tons of them inside, and they simply must find a way out.

Some of them will come out in novels. Others will become beautiful poems. Several thousand are sure to come out in made-up worlds of fantasy and sci-fi. And many will become blog posts, devotionals, and letters to our grandchildren.

I don’t know for sure what our words will ever accomplish. And I don’t know what will come of our little group. But I know when I came home from that first gathering I felt envisioned, encouraged, and so full of words that I spilled a few thousand of them describing it all to my patient husband.

I’m saving the rest for the next meeting of my tribe.