Retreat to Write
A weekend in Ann Arbor at a private home surrounded by trees...the perfect setting to write.
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“Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first—at least for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you will use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve.”
p. 14, If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
This past weekend, I and seven other writers put our creativity first. We gathered at the beautiful and serene home of my friend and writing student Carol Anderson, for a retreat outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, to gather with fellow creatives and work on our craft.
Craft: An activity involving skill in making things by hand. Exercise skill in making (something).
We talked and we wrote and we sat and we pondered and we observed flowers and blades of grass and delicate beads of wet from an early rainstorm and the dog thundering through the yard and the birds in their ceaseless conversations.
We talked about meaning and how there are no new stories, only new ways of looking at things, new ways of storytelling, new meaning to bring to old and familiar ideas.
If you’ve never been on a writers retreat, I can only approximate what it would be like for you. When I was a young journalist, I used to take myself away to meet editors and learn from writing instructors, at retreats and conferences and sometimes, just in a new place to see things differently.
After my divorce, I took myself away for a week of solo travel, and wow did I write! I noticed and I watched and I listened and I felt. And all of that turned into words which turned into stories.
There is the being alone and then there is the community, and both are necessary to feel and to be drawn to the page. To know that your words matter, your voice is heard, you are not alone in this endeavor to derive meaning from life. And there is bravery in both.
This weekend retreat was quick, but it was nourishing. I think we all left satisfied, and enlightened. And more connected than we had been before it began.
Every year, I lead two five-day retreats for writers, and I try to add in weekend retreats here and there. And even though I was leading, I gained so much. I wrote when the participants wrote. I listened and felt and absorbed all of our words. I am as grateful to them for making this happen as I am when I go on retreat as a participant.
We all need each other. This writing life is exciting and beautiful and dramatic and lonely. It is sometimes soul-draining and often soul-filling.
What would enliven your creativity? Is there somewhere quiet and different that you could go this week to notice? To ponder? To write?
Noticing
While I create curriculum for every retreat and class and program I offer, I also let the teaching go where it needs to. And one of the lessons that kept coming up this weekend, which I did not have written in my many-page curriculum packet, was that of noticing.
Wandering and seeing and listening and just waiting for the world to come to you.
NOTICE: Become aware of. Treat (someone) with some degree of attention or recognition. Remark upon.
Similar: observe perceive note see discern detect spot distinguish catch sight of make out mark remark pay attention to heed behold
Opposite: overlook ignore disregard
We can’t sit at our desks to write the greatest story without feeling, listening, seeing, knowing. Taking walks in the woods. Being idle for a time—daily, if you can.
“What you write today is the result of some span of idling yesterday, some fairly long period of protection from talking and busyness.” p. 37, If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland
Here are some things I stopped to notice at the retreat…
Who knows how, or if, any of this will factor into my writing. All I know is my soul was quiet for a moment, and I felt better for it. There are many very good reasons to go on retreat including these and these.
Welcome to July!
Congratulations to the paid subscribers who won books in June! Mary Beth Halprin will receive Colm Toibin’s The Heather Blazing and Susan Epstein will receive Shirley Ann Grau’s The Keepers of the House. Thank you for supporting this newsletter! This month, I’ll be giving away Dara Levan’s It Could Be Worse and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. Two winners again! Become a paid subscriber to qualify for the giveaway.
Book Launch
We’re one month out from the launch of my second novel, CAVE OF SECRETS!! I’d be so grateful if you’d click here to add CAVE OF SECRETS to your to-be-read list on Goodreads, to help drive interest in my new novel!
Also, join me for two launch events on August 27th:
Attend the virtual launch at 11 a.m.
Attend the in-person launch party at 7 p.m.
Write With Me This Weekend!
This weekend, I’ll be hosting a FREE Writealong on Sunday, July 7th at 11 a.m. Details are here. I’ll also be hosting a Literary Salon at my home in Michigan, so if you’re nearby and would like to attend message me for details.
Thanks for reading the Rebel Author Newsletter! I send this weekly to spark conversation and thought about writing and publishing. If you have questions or topics you’d like to see covered, let me know! And, if you find meaning here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.