I haven’t been writing much. The spring weather has been calling me outside with gardening, weeding, watering, and of course trail riding. My writing has suffered. But I watched for a window on my calendar and saw a mostly-free Wednesday and Thursday. My husband planned to be out of town golfing, and the weather was going to be too hot for riding. I would make my own writer’s retreat.
Writers’ retreats are usually group affairs in exotic, or at least fun, locales. Writers come together, write in their hotel rooms or quiet common places, and maybe share readings of their work. There might be facilitated writing exercises. My writers’ group has tried this by meeting up at a member’s cabin on the river, but we ended up just chatting, eating good food, and drinking wine. We decided that for actual writing, we were better off alone.
I hadn’t really done this before, setting aside a large block of time to prioritize my creative process. I tend to write in the mornings, but it’s haphazard, and often comes second to other things on my “to-do” list. I usually write regularly, but my task list has been long lately, with travel planning, or house maintenance planning, or working on the business and marketing side of writing. I really needed a block of several hours to focus on the creative part of writing. I knew what I would work on, a couple of early draft blog posts (like this one!), and a collection of poems and essays about living in Washington that I’ve started to pull together. I had projects ready, but I thought my personal writer’s retreat needed something more.
Like good food. So I made some rhubarb oat bars the night before. My retreat also needed some good drinks- we have a very large selection of teas, so that was covered. We also have alcohol, but that was not desirable in the morning during my planned work hours. Maybe if it was an evening retreat, and my writers’ group was around… oh wait, we already determined that doesn’t work.
Then there were the other ever-present distractions that I had to remove. I logged out of Facebook. I logged out of my emails. I moved my phone to another room, so I wasn’t tempted to check for messages too often. Off it went to the bathroom, where I could hear the message notifications (in case one of the roofing contractors called back) but I had to physically get up out of my chair to check them. That slowed down my urge to constantly look and see what I was missing out there in internet-land.
The morning of the retreat, I read a bit of a novel over breakfast to get in writing mode. I kept another book beside me, Cascadia, a collection of poems and essays about the Northwest. I planned to turn to that if my brain got stuck. Then it was just me, the keyboard, and my printed drafts of poems and essays. I love words, sentences, and playing around with lines and paragraphs. Once I get into a manuscript, I can focus for quite a while. Off I went into my retreat away from the world, into the words, for several hours. When I found myself thinking of other tasks that were calling my name, as I always do, I wrote them down on my ever-growing to-do list, then went right back to the writing.
I would have preferred it if my office was cleaner before I started, as a way to clear my mind, but that didn’t happen. It was tempting to use that cleaning task as a last minute procrastination, but I just left the piles of books and paper where they were, a comfortable clutter to shove aside when I need to move to the chaise instead of the desk. Really, I am most comfortable with some clutter surrounding me. I have the messy kind of brain, not the OCD brain. The disarray in the room matches the words and thoughts bouncing around in my mind. My version of creativity is not neat.
That was it, a few hours alone, letting the words flow. I knew if I got stuck, there were writing techniques that would work for me: 1) free writing, about anything and everything, for a discrete length of time; 2) find a line in a book (like Cascadia) and write on from there; 3) read a little bit, then write some more; 4) make a cup of tea, grab a snack, look out at the trees, then come back to my desk; 5) change location, move to the chaise, or move outside.
And it worked. I wrote for several hours over two mornings. I didn’t get stuck. I edited and revised poems, essays, and wrote a blog. I delayed the busy tasks that tend to fill my brain, tempting me away from writing. I found my Zen writer’s mind. Plus, I ate rhubarb bars.
Michelle Eames 