Home From a Writing Retreat with Renewed Creative Energy!
Plus: How the experience prompted a shift in how I talk about my book.
Hi, it’s me.
On Tuesday of last week I returned from a delightful seven days on a Pacific Northwest island where I attended a five-day artist retreat and workshop with poets, songwriters, fiction writers, and memoirists.
Ferrying to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands is always magical, but traversing the waters for a personal creative retreat brings back memories of the Little River Band song I used to listen to on repeat when I was younger and Figuring Things Out:
If there's one thing in my life that's missing
It's the time that I spend alone
Sailing on the cool and bright clear water
There's lots of those friendly people
They're showing me ways to go
But I never want to lose their inspiration
Time for a cool change
I know that it's time for a cool change
And now that my life is so prearranged
I know that it's time for a cool change
From the song, Cool Change, by Little River Band (YouTube Link)
It was the second time I attended this particular retreat, the first time being last November 2023. I came away from that experience with my creative bank filled up enough to start writing a book I’d had in my heart (and in a Google outline) since January 2020. It’s been a challenging few months trying to write a book within the fullness of my life - family, hobbies, and a full-time job. Around March I realized I was creatively burned out.
Going into this year’s retreat, I was looking forward to having my inspiration and stamina renewed and was ready to enjoy some workshops through the perspective of a nearly finished book draft.
Side note: I’m terrible at estimating the number of people in a room. Last year when Bryan asked how many people attended, I was like, “I don’t know, maybe 75 or 100?” Friends, the retreat is capped at 30 participants + teaching artists. How on earth did I guess 100?! Do not rely on me as a reliable witness in your crime investigation. 😂
My Mug Story
Each year the retreat kicks off with a clever writing prompt: Bring a used mug to gift to another writer and include a note that tells the mug’s story. Mugs are then wrapped and placed anonymously on a shelf to be chosen at random by another writer.
I brought one mug of a matching set we had at home and wrote the following poem as my mug’s story:
Hi friend.
We may not know each other yet, but we are friends.
We’re writer friends.
Island friends.
Ferry friends.
Looking for whales, friends.
And now, we are mug friends!
This mug I give you, I have one, too.
We have matching mugs.
Friendship mugs.
Memory mugs.
When you fill it with wine
Or coffee
Or ice cream
Or pens
I hope you smile and remember your friend from Write Doe Bay!
The first morning during breakfast, I looked around the room to see who my new mug friend was and saw a man wearing a wedding ring drinking coffee from my friendship mug, and my heart started racing a little with embarrassment. My friends, the mug I gifted was from The Devoted Kiss Cafe in Gig Harbor, Washington and was 💋 stamped 💋 with 💋 red 💋 kissing 💋 lips!
I was so preoccupied with feeling clever about invoking the memory of my childhood friendship necklaces that I forgot the retreat is co-ed and a married man might receive my smoochie mug and BFF note! 🤦🏼♀️
(Dear wife, I promise I don’t want your husband to think about me. At all. Not even while drinking his coffee.)
Attempting to make a joke of it, I said “Hey, you’re my new mug buddy!” when I finally caught his eye. I was hoping to call out the silliness so we could both laugh about it. But before I could, he rushed in with, “I haven’t read the note yet!” in a way that made me think he definitely read the note and did not want to talk about it.
Ugh. Why am I so awkward?!
An encounter worth the price of admission.
The retreat schedule allows for an afternoon of either personal writing time or the opportunity to join a small cohort of writers to share work and offer critical feedback to each other. I joined the cohort of eight people and heard some fantastic stories – fictional short stories, a thriller novel excerpt, a few memoir excerpts, and mine.
I read the entire Introduction to my book, which is a pretty solid draft of 2500-ish words on six pages. And let me tell you… IT WAS THRILLING!
This feels cheesy to say out loud, but I felt you in the room with me as I read to this new group of people. Seriously. As I’ve shared draft excerpts of my book with you over the last few months, your comments and constructive feedback have been instrumental in helping me shape and improve the story. Your support of this process is the reason I feel confident to share my work more widely.
I paraphrased some of the praise they gifted me that will continue to fuel my confidence as I move forward on this project. Their observations are delightfully consistent with my intentions and track with the positive comments you’ve provided on other pieces. This tells me that I’m finding my audience (HUGE goal of mine), and my story is connecting with people in a way that I intend. Here are some of their notes (paraphrased by me):
You have an excellent reading voice and should narrate your own audio book. Hearing you read it out loud added to the experience of reading it on the page.
I feel like you captured a balance of respect for being a parent and the absurdity of how hard it is.
I would read this book and I’m not a parent.
I’m not a parent, but it made me curious about my own parents’ experience of raising kids.
I was hooked at the first paragraph!
All of this was, of course, balanced with some equally thrilling constructive suggestions for improving clarity and pacing, which I’m incorporating into the draft before sharing it with you (hopefully next week!).
But that’s not all!
For the last year or so I’ve been describing my book as…
…a parenting memoir about all of the interesting, difficult, and uncomfortable conversations or scenarios we’ve faced together as a family. It includes topics like death, faith, racism, and mental health, among others.
I shared with the group how this feels too parenting-focused. Even though I’m writing about my experience as a parent, it’s really more of a launching point to talk about the larger topic of family culture, and I don’t want non-parents to dismiss an opportunity to read it.
Someone in the room (I wish I remembered who!) suggested that it was a book about parenting whether you are a parent or have a parent. (!!!) (!!!) (!!!) (Can you tell I’m excited about this?) With that in mind, here is how I’m describing my project going forward:
I’m writing a memoir about parenting, whether you are a parent or have a parent. It includes the difficult and uncomfortable conversations or scenarios we’ve faced together as a family, including topics like death, faith, racism, and mental health, among others.
I think it needs to be smoothed out a bit, but you get the idea. It’s a big mind shift for me to finally embrace the full spectrum of readers who might resonate with my story.
Three take-aways from my experience you might find useful:
If you’re feeling creatively burned out, give yourself permission to take a break and find a way to refill your creative reserves. Maybe you don’t have the time or money for a writing getaway, but there are so many other ways to get out of your head. Walking, hiking, paddle boarding, gardening, and generally being outside is refreshing, good for your mental health, and gives your mind the time and space to wander. It was mentally difficult for me to step away from writing in the weeks leading up to the retreat, but letting my project percolate in the back of my mind helped me recover a creative spark.
Experiment with other genres. One of the many things I love about this particular retreat is learning from teaching artists who are poets, songwriters, and fiction writers. I’ve learned about creating strong characters and empathetic villains, world-building, and establishing a sense of place within a story. If you’re feeling stuck or need inspiration, try watching videos by voice coaches on YouTube. Attend a poetry reading. Watching comedy specials teaches me a lot about timing, story structure, and a thing called “call backs” (look it up). The Song Exploder podcast is an excellent way to engage with a songwriter’s creative process. Same with music documentaries like Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana and Billie Eilish’s The World’s a Little Blurry — I gleaned so much from these (and you don’t have to be a fan to appreciate the creative process). Do you have a favorite music documentary?
Share your work with others, even if it’s a work in progress. Be brave. I know how vulnerable it can be to put something out into the world that is close to your heart and feels unfinished, but if you choose the right people and are specific about the kind of feedback you’re looking for, the experience will make you a better writer. You’re some of the people I share my work with. I also have in-person folks I share with. All of it is valuable to me. For more on this, I wrote about how stand-up comedians work out their material HERE.
Thanks for reading this far - you get five gold stars this week! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Would love to hear from you in the comments if any of this resonates with you.
Until next time,
Jen
If you liked this one, you might also like…
This one about my first retreat experience:
Or this one where I share last year’s mug story and a reading I did at the open mic session:
Or this one where I share what inspired me from each workshop last year:
I may have laughed entirely too much at your mug buddy! Poor thing! I love that you were able to take this time for you (and for this book the world needs). It's a good feeling when you share the work you've poured your heart and soul into and receive some great feedback about its universality.
Good that you're rethinking how you talk about the book. It reminded me of a local Listen to Your Mother show where I read an original piece about motherhood alongside 12 other writers. It blew my mind how "motherhood" stories were so diverse. There was the woman caring for her mother with Alzheimer's, the 50-something-year-old mom who was fostering a four-year-old, a woman who lost her mother to addiction/death when she was only four years old and her struggle to let her stepmom be her mom.
One mom spoke about her experience of parenting of a toddler with cancer; I talked about raising a strong-willed teen with my ex-husband; and one young man offered spoken word poetry that was the most beautiful tribute to his mom. It was a whole experience, and this is what I think of when I consider the people who will read your book. You have a way with your words that draws us in, whether we've lived it or not. You connect with your readers, and they will (I'm sure of it!) have a "Me, too" moment when reading your book.
I love to read about renewed energy and focus on a long haul project. I also love to read about bigger revelations about your message and reach, now, before it has gone to press. Sounds like Spring has come to your writing life, I'm excited to read the fruits of your labor.