Ta-Da! Lawyer Retires and Becomes—A Writer.
By Deborah Guyol
I spent ten years in the world of the downtown law firm, five years on Wall Street, five years in Portland, Oregon. I loved the intellectual challenge of the law but not the law-firm politics, so I quit and went freelance. I wrote briefs for solos or small-firm lawyers, and took up estate planning for people who needed simple wills. The heady sense that I was my own boss more than compensated for the seriously diminished income.
It was a patched-together practice but it suited me well. And it left me the mental energy for creative pursuits, including writing. I took classes and joined a private workshop. I wrote a memoir and a novel, and then more novels. I failed to find an agent or publisher.
In 2002, I fell into a part-time gig teaching creative writing. The community college called the program Mature Learning, meaning 55 and older, until advised not to discriminate based on age. I taught one morning a week and I loved it. The pay was negligible but the satisfaction level high.
I thought a lot about how to parlay this job into something more lucrative. The key word here is thought–-I didn’t take action until I met Charlotte in an ongoing writing workshop. Something she said led me to believe she was an old hand at organizing workshops in faraway places, and I said bingo! That’s what I’d like to do. I was wrong about her organizing experience but it turned out she, like me, was looking for a way to combine teaching with travel. There followed a year of weekly wine-fueled scheming-and-planning dinners, and in 2011 we created Let’s Go Write.
Our first week-long workshop in France was in 2013, and after that we returned to France every year until the pandemic struck. We’d teach for a week or two in a town in the South, spend a few days in Paris (or Montpellier, or Lyon, or Perpignan), and linger for some non-workshop time in our workshop town. All good!
In May, 2022, we added the lovely small city of Wells, England, to our workshop repertoire. And in our home base, the Pacific Northwest, we’ve held workshops in Astoria, Oregon; McMinnville, Oregon; Lopez Island, Washington, and the tiny central Oregon town of Dufur. (Seriously, Dufur? Seriously! It has a historic hotel that’s perfect for hosting group events.)
I turned in my law license at the start of 2019 without worrying about what I’d do next. The writing workshops were not only a ready-made retirement plan but also a perfect fit for my love of travel and my desire for plenty of time to write.
Next year I will report on my plan to self-publish my three lightweight capers set in, naturally, France.
Deborah Guyol and her partner Charlotte Rains Dixon run Let’s Go Write, offering workshops for aspiring writers in wonderful places. The next workshop is in Ceres, France, September 9-16.
