Why a DIY Writing Retreat May Lead to More Actual Writing for Some Writers
Residencies and retreats are like big, caffeinated hugs, encouraging us to carry on in our vital endeavors. I’ve had two such opportunities, once for a week at Hedgebrook in Washington and once for an entire month at Ragdale in Illinois. I’m still in touch with writers I met at Ragdale, and I have cherished memories of our after-dinner conversations, often lasting late into the night.
But did I get much writing done there? Some people did, but I didn’t because of the way I operate. I buckle down to work when there’s a deadline looming, such as when I was a newspaper columnist, but not when I’m writing chapters of a book that has yet to find a publisher. The payoff is distant or nonexistent, and time stretches out luxuriously in front of me as if there’s no rush.
Also, I’m an extroverted tree hugger, constantly tuning into people and nature. My curiosity immediately got the better of me. I heard there were secret animals drawn by author and cartoonist, Lynda Barry, during her stay and discovered a brown cat painted on the desk in the Yellow Room. Then I went in search of the art of Sylvia Shaw Judson who grew up at Ragdale. In the garden by the Barnhouse, I found her most famous sculpture, Bird Girl, well known as the image on the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Nearby I found a treehouse and made a habit of meditating in the mornings up in the little house in the sky.
During the day, I was often out exploring the 50 acres of Ragdale’s prairies while more diligent residents were at their desks or easels. Janet Lombardi, author of Bankruptcy: A Love Story, was one of those diligent people. I asked her if she was able to focus on her work during the residency, and she said, “I felt because others were working that I too needed to focus. I probably wouldn’t have finished my book but for Ragdale. I was much more focused there than I am at home.”
Janet is now working on another book and looking for another residency where she can make good progress. Somehow, I ignored the peer pressure Janet felt. While my fellow writers were occupied, I befriended local people, such as our stellar Ragdale chef, Linda. We had friendly chats in her kitchen or while harvesting the gardens or beehives.
Perhaps my boundaries are too porous to make good use of residencies and retreats. I felt honored to be admitted, but once there, I was not as productive as I thought I would be, following my whims instead of my book outline. I’m more prolific when I arrange my time to stay home and avoid distractions. In that way, I’ve immersed myself in stay-at-home do-it-yourself retreats.
The isolation of the pandemic was a kind of a retreat for me. I wrote my memoir, Reconfigured, during that time. The need to tell my story overcame my tendency to procrastinate. Rather than feeling like an aspirational writer, I told myself I’m a working writer, thus shifting my sporadic scribbling to a daily practice.
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Of course, solitude is harder to find when raising children or working full-time. For me, our kids are grown, I’m retired, and I’m married to an introvert who is happy to be left to his own devices.
Where and when do you get your best work done? Think about it before you sign up for a workshop, retreat, or residency. Where do you hear your muse? Find what works for you! A classroom? A coffeehouse? A cabin in the woods? Or maybe in a bathtub, like screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
Attentive writing generally requires quiet time and space, along with what I call the three P’s: preparation, pampering, and persistence. We prepare our minds and our workspace, gathering knowledge, training, and resources to have on hand. We pamper ourselves by lightening our workload, such as ordering nutritious take-out food rather than cooking supper. Most importantly, we persist in our creative endeavors, which, for me, means butt-in-chair, typing away on my laptop.
When my mind wanders, I add another P to the mix: the Pomodoro Method. It’s a technique for time management consisting of 25 minutes of focused work followed by a five-minute break. (After four consecutive work intervals, longer breaks are allowed.) With no parameters, I tend to start scrolling on social media. When I set a timer, I hunker down and complete a chunk of writing.
In those ways, we create our own writing retreats.
Whether there’s a pandemic or not, I get more done at my own blue desk. The fewer stimuli the better. Much can be achieved by having retreats at home—without having to apply for admission or travel to get there—and I recommend it.
Still, I must admit I miss the pampering, especially Chef Linda’s sumptuous suppers.
This course guides beginning and intermediate writers through elements of how to write a personal essay, helping them identify values expressed in their stories and bring readers into the experiences described. Writers learn how to avoid the dreaded responses of “so what?” and “I guess you had to be there” by utilizing sensory details, learning to trust their writing intuitions, and developing a skilled internal editor to help with revision. There will still be knowledge and ideas, but they will rise not from reason, a product of the mind, but from the experiencing of the writer’s life. The course also helps the writer investigate the origins of the personal desire to write and to identify goals for the writing itself and for publication.