Last weekend my partner and I were invited up to Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island, Washington, for an amazingly luxurious purpose: to taste food. (She Writes Press is publishing The Hedgebrook Cookbook—awesome.) I guess this is how food critics must live, but for me it was the equivalent of being invited to a resort that needed willing subjects for their massage therapists to practice on.

There’s a long list of reasons why the getaway was amazing. The company and the food at Hedgebrook were exquisite; we had the grounds completely to ourselves—yes, all one hundred and forty-some acres; as a couple, my wife and I don’t spend enough time together (we have a toddler), and it was a rare opportunity for a workaholic like me to force myself to unplug.

But way bigger than all of these things put together was the energy of Hedgebrook. Here’s a place solely dedicated to supporting and nurturing women writers. In every room are journals in which residents share their insights, struggles, and general musings about their time, the land, the space, the women who’ve come before them and the women who will come after. We stayed in Meadowhouse, where Gloria Steinem, Ruth Ozeki, Dorothy Allison, Karen Joy Fowler, Ayelet Waldman, and many other illustrious, interesting, generous, and committed writers had stayed before us.

Reading what each of these women wrote made me realize (again) the power of being in community. It was not the physical presence of other women, but the energy of their words living on in these journals, their willingness to share their experience, process, desires, deadlines, accomplishments, frustrations. There was a recurring theme there, too, of women feeling taken in, somehow rescued from themselves. Were it not for the space Hedgebrook provided them, it seemed, many of them would have stopped, failed, toiled on despondently, often in the wrong direction.

Furthermore, the space allowed them something that’s so often elusive to women writers—the space to listen to their inner wisdom, to come back to their center. Isn’t this what anyone who writes is chasing, after all? The calm in the center of the storm. The place where words perfectly articulate a message. The joy of language expressed precisely, beautifully, simply.

I’ve always been a supporter of writers rather than a writer. I completed a book, but in my heart I’m an author advocate and publishing expert. I’ve cherished this role because there’s nothing more rewarding to me than the act of creating something that touches others. Being in publishing, however, has sometimes made the entire process of seeing a book project through to completion mundane. I’ve never really sought out inspiration, or found a way to cultivate it. Maybe none of us do. But when it hits, it hits hard. The annual Book Expo, for instance, every year, without fail, inspires me. To attend a convention dedicated to books, and to be among people who live and breathe books, moves me, without fail, every single year.

Hedgebrook, too, inspires me. This was my second visit, and it has that tingly, mind-buzzing effect that I’ve come to recognize as inspiration. She Writes inspires me, too. Being part of this online community of writers who cares about craft, process, and about each other moves me. Kamy has said that she founded She Writes because, as a writer, she created something that she wanted and needed. I, for one, am grateful. My pledge to myself in the aftermath of my visit to Hedgebrook is simple: to cultivate more space and time to listen, and hopefully, in doing so, to cultivate inspiration and invite it into my life.

Where do you find inspiration?