Does Home have to be a place?

Writing prompts, free writing workshop Writing Place - Setting The Scene | AUGUST NEWSLETTER |

Hello friend,

After months of hard work, I’m excited to announce that we’re nearly ready to launch our brand new website. To celebrate, we’re offering a FREE virtual writing workshop & a special subscriber discount for our 2025 retreats (Italy, yes, Italy, Bali & Vietnam).

Join me and my partner in crime Edwina Shaw on Monday September 2 @6pm AEST time/10 am Germany/9am UK.

We’ll be Zooming from two different locations to bring you a workshop jam-packed with information about issues that many of our students are grappling with:

• how to ground your reader in the world of their story

• how to use specific, unexpected sensory details to build setting in prose

• how to use setting to illustrate emotional undercurrents

The writing prompts below will help us get into the creative flow.

We’ll announce a special subscriber discount at the end of the workshop to celebrate the launch of our new business.

Our Italy retreat will sell fast, so get in quick and take advantage of the one-off discount!

Don’t worry if you can’t attend, we’ll send you a recording and you’ll still be able to take advantage of the discount (for a limited time).

What is home?

I’ll be joining the workshop from my old home town Gelnhausen in Hesse, Germany. I am spending time here with my parents, but after months on the road, I am itching to get home. Except, I don’t actually have a home at the moment. The day I get back to Australia it’ll be exactly one year since I gave up my beloved beach-side home.

I had many reasons for letting go. Most importantly, I wanted freedom. From possessions, from responsibility and from worry. And now I am asking myself, what is home?And I find myself Googling literary quotes about the idea of ‘home’, instead of trawling through the real estate sites.

The first random quote that came up posed a question that was easy to answer.

“Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?” Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss).

No, not really. We form temporary homes with our intimate partners, but to build a solid home, we need to inhabit ourselves. We each need to be home to ourselves—solid, cozy, secure shelters for our tender hearts, our fragile emotions and our singular lives. A partner can only ever be half a home.

A friend's home in northern Germany and the forest near my parents home in Hesse near Frankfurt

But does home have to be a place?

Is home the place where our ancestral roots are? Some of my German friends were surprised that I’ve never considered that home could be where my life began, in Germany.

Having left the place of my birth many decades ago, one thing I know for sure is that my home needs to be under a vast, sun-filled sky on the other side of the world.

I’m with Naguib Mahfouz who writes that “Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.”

Another thing I know for sure is that I am not a digital nomad—though for some years I worked hard to be one. In truth, I’ve never enjoyed working whilst travelling. It sounded so romantic. A month here, two months there, my office wherever I open my laptop, every day a new adventure. But I need structure, order, and routine. I’m like a toddler. It’s the only way I get anything done and the only way I feel at peace.

So when Google led me to the poet May Sarton, writing so movingly about happiness, I started to journal about home as a place with curtains softly and continually blown:

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall —
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.

—May Sarton, The Work of Happiness

After a busy few months of booklaunches, retreats, and travel, I am craving the ‘dear familiar gods of home’ to gather around me, allow me to find strength in solitude, so that I may begin the work of my personal faith: write a new book.

I’ve got an idea for a second book (though not the one I initially had in mind). All I need now is find that room with a shelf of books, a table and the white-washed wall—because essentially, that’s all I need to feel home.

And yet, I remain unconvinced that home is an actual place. I am with Maria Popova who writes that home ‘is a locus of longing, always haunted by our existential homelessness.’

What if home could be a feeling? Or as James Baldwin puts it ‘an irrevocable condition’?

Or maybe a set of conditions. If they’re just right—billowing curtains, lightfilled rooms, gentle birdsong, dappled shade filtering through trees—I feel home. And when I’m home, I’m able to put my restlessness to bed and create my existential home, day after day, by putting pen to paper.

What about you? What is ‘home’ for you?

Robert Frost writes, Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. But first, we need to learn to take ourselves in. Home is a roof over our heads, a comfy chair, the company of those who live with us, but we often neglect to create our spiritual homes. Writing is a tool that can help us build our inner homes. So, let’s get on with this month’s writing prompts.

Whether you’re battling writer’s block, struggling to get started or brainstorming a new world for your characters to inhabit, or if, like me, you carry an unanswered question inside, use the quotes below as writing prompts.

Writing prompts are a great way to get into the creative flow. Think of it as a quick, hot warm-up to get the dopamine flowing, before your main writing session.

Or make it a self-care session. Light a candle, assemble your favorite tokens, say a mantra, take a deep breath, or two or five, and listen deep inside.

Whatever your writing goal, set a timer—anything between 5-10 minutes will get you going—and freewrite without thinking or editing.

Use the guided meditation to get into the flow. I hope you’ll join us for the live workshop to share your writing and to benefit from the craft tips we’ll be sharing.

WRITING PROMPTS:

“Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?”
― Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

― Robert Frost

“Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.”

— Naguib Mahfouz

Complete these sentences:

Home is…

What I need to create my spiritual home…

Share in the comments what came up for you and help me get the conversation started! And don’t forget to join the FREE workshop, Monday September 2, 6pm AEST; 10 am Germany.

Whilst I can’t imagine returning to live in Germany, it’ll always also be home. I’ve loved spending time in the village where I grew up, speaking the local dialect, re-connecting with old school friends, wandering the forest where my parents have chosen a tree as their final home.

In my hometown Gelnhausen catching up with an old school friend and spending time at the green cemetery

The entire forest near my parents’ house is a green cemetery, the so-called Friedwald (literally peace-forest; or freely translated ‘forest of eternal peace’), where ashes are buried in a disposable urn underneath a tree that is chosen during one’s lifetime. The only decorations allowed are seasonal flowers and whatever grows in the forest. It’s such a cool concept and a very peaceful place to sit, be in silence or write in my journal.

I even wrote the first draft of this newsletter in longhand on the bench in the photo (above right). The forest has always been a place of awe where I can expand into my inner, spiritual home.

I am resuming this column next month. Here are two (edited) reader questions I’ll be answering in the next newsletter:

1. I am retired and decided to write a book about the interesting life I’ve led. Some days I feel I am going nowhere because I have no dialogue to include, because the events are so long ago, I can’t remember what was said. What do I do to create dialogue?

2. I'm not famous, but my life has been ‘one for the books’ and I’d like to write about it—so many facets in many places and various careers along with meeting famous and regular people. But how do I find a title?

These are all great questions about memoir. I love answering reader questions because it gives me something to write about, and, more importantly, I’ve been there and asked exactly the same questions. Stay tuned for my answers in the next newsletter. And please keep sending me your questions.

That’s it from me for today. I hope you’ll join Edwina and me for a FREE writing workshop on Monday September 2.

With many blessings,

PS: follow my journey on Instagram @kerstinpilz.author.

PPS: I nearly forgot, it’s 6 months today since my book was published! Another reason to celebrate. In Australia you can order my memoir Loving My Lying Dying Cheating Husband (Affirm Press, 2024) from Abbey’s bookshop or listen to the audio version now out on Audible (worldwide), narrated by the wonderful Jo van Es, or on Kindle. Readings ships hardcopies worldwide. If you’re in Germany, reply to this email and I can send you a copy!

And finally, if you’ve liked my book, please leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon. It doesn't have to be polished or very long, but it would mean the world to me! Thank you so much in advance. And many thanks to the wonderful readers who have already done so!

Heavenly Hoi An, Blissful Bali, Incredible Italy - will you joing us in 2025?

Our retreats are temporary homes for a small group of strangers who over the course of a week bond as a community of like-minded souls.

Next year we’ll be expanding our range of temporary homes to, drumroll…ITALY!

We’ve been busy creating a brand new website for our brand new company and we can’t wait to launch! It’s happening in early September and it comes with a one-off discount (to be announced on September 3) for our valued newsletter subscribers.

Heavenly Hoi An (February 10 - 16, 2025)

Blissful Bali (June 23 - 29, 2025)

Incredible Italy (10-17 October, 2025)

Please hit reply on this email if you’d like to be added to the waitlist (please provide name, email address and retreat location). Hope to meet you on retreat next year!

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