It's a rainy day on the cosmic shore
On a mini writing retreat.
Since my mid-twenties, I’ve regularly gone on solo creative trips, a way to recharge my soul battery. In 2012, I went to Iceland for ten days; in 2014, to Oaxaca for a weaving retreat; in 2017, to Joshua Tree, tacked onto the tail end of my cousin’s wedding; and then in 2019, to the Catskills to paint for a week. As I was sitting at my writing table yesterday, tucked away in a snug farm house 30 minutes north of Baltimore, I realized I hadn’t done this in a long time—not since the pandemic, or my graduate degree, or my Jewish conversion, or my mastectomy. (It’s been an annoyingly busy several years.) I was overdue.
I arrived at Good Contrivance Farm on Friday evening to the ba-loo! of Ron and Jill’s two basset hounds, Oliver and Maisie, greeting me at my car. Ron, a writing professor at Loyola, and his wife Jill have restored an old farm property in Reisterstown, Maryland as a writing retreat. Ron joined me outside and helped orient me on the property before we started talking craft. I settled in, made myself dinner, and read in bed for a couple hours before falling asleep at 8:30. My kind of vacation.
In the morning, I bundled up and headed out for a stomp around the property before the rain joined us for the rest of the day. And the rain came, in drumbeats across the metal roof of the hen house, with thunder, and with a blue-gray fog that wrapped around the fields like a blanket. No warm sun to coax me outside or lull me into a nap. No one to chit chat with. Just the meditative waves of rain to encourage focus.
What I’m writing
It was a good week for writing. I showed up at my desk every morning except for Friday, when I swapped in movement for my writing desk.
On Saturday, I worked on an outline of my novel, an attempt to define what Jami Attenberg calls its “aboutness.” In her new book, 1000 Words, she writes:
I’ve had ideas appear fully formed to me twice for long-form projects, and both times I wrote the book in record time. But otherwise: it takes forever.
Uncovering the aboutness can mean creating a document that will be in motion throughout the process. Here is what this project is about—or at least what I hope it will be about. It will require tweaks along the way but by the end it should be clear what the throughlines were all along. It’s a document I can return to, as a resource, and as a stabilizing force. Another trail we can leave for ourselves.
I got over 1000 words in and a lot of it is still context building and defining characters, but that’s okay. I’m still early in my process and learning who they are. I’m still foraging for family secrets, for a villain, for my “aboutness.”
In the afternoon, after a workout, lunch, and a hot shower, I returned to my desk with less urgency and pressure to make this mini writing retreat worth it. I had met my goal—writing 1000 words—and felt relaxed enough into my process to pivot to something more creatively generative than structural. So I wrote a dream scene, something I didn’t expect to write before I just started writing it. I played with voice and point of view, guided by a chapter of this book (found on the shelves of the hen house). And it’s some of my favorite writing of this book to-date.
What I read
I read The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde, a nightstand book companion for months. Even though I had only 30 unread pages remaining, I knew I had to be well enough, and steady enough in the confidence of my health, to finish it. My copy is marked up with lines and stars. In this slim wisp of a book, Audre takes up enormous space. She made every sentence count.
This passage resonates deeply as I rededicated myself to my writing practice, five months after my surgery. There is something about dancing with a haunt of cancer, or battling and excising it, that puts your priorities into radical perspective.
There was an answering rhythm in the ghost of those dreams which would have to go in favor of those which I had some chance of effecting. The others had lain around unused and space-claiming for a long time anyway, and at best needed to be re-aired and reexamined.
For instance, I will never be a doctor. I will never be a deep-sea diver. I may possibly take a doctorate in etymology, but I will never bear any more children. I will never learn ballet, nor become a great actress, although I might learn to ride a bike and travel to the moon. But I will never be a millionaire nor increase my life insurance. I am who the world and I have never seen before. [Emphasis mine.]
Footnote: I love imagining Audre yearning to be a deep-sea diver or to learn ballet. I equally love that she set “travel to the moon” at the same bar of learning to ride a bike. An icon!
What I’m reading
The Quickening and In Ascension, both unexpectedly (to me, anyway) filled with scenes of a scientific exploration team out at sea. One of my sweetest little joys is when two books I’m reading “talk” to each other.
Listening to People We Meet on Vacation, because we can’t read “serious” writing all the time.
Also, this article on writing about climate change for children.
Also, Mosab Abu Toha’s Gaza Notebook (2021-2023).
A helpful thing
After cycling through silence, classical music, rain music, and ambient music, I settled into the latter as the sounds most likely to get me out of my thinking brain and into my generative, creative mind. Here’s my playlist-in-progress that I’m continuing to add to. Save it for when you need to chill out your nervous system, untangle some anxiety, or unlock a fast pass into a flow state.
I named this post for Ana Roxanne’s track that felt apt for my rainy retreat.
So glad you had an enjoyable and productive weekend! Looking forward to hearing more about it. xo