Left Bank Writer's Retreat 2017

A third trip to Paris feels like going home, especially when you go to meet friends you seldom see, but fall into accord with like no time has passed at all. Especially when you spend evenings together playing petanque and eating cheese and charcuterie plates on the sidewalk. And especially when your sister and brother-in-law have come as well, celebrating life and monumental birthdays.

The Left Bank Writer's Retreat this year had a completely different feel - most of us were return retreat members - and the activities were changed enough to make us feel like we were expats of our own, exploring inspiration and talking our way through Hemingway's cafes.

One of the greatest experiences was performing in a play in the Luxembourg Gardens. The play, Finding Sylvia Beach, was written by one of our group, and I was honored to have a role!

Collaboration

Writing is considered a solitary act...and it is...to a degree. There is one person making marks on a page, either via pen to paper of fingers to keyboard. This doesn't seem to capture the essence, however, of inspiration.

Guidance in writing is an active sort of thing. It entails listening ~ to the "random word" of inspiration, a companion to art. Action begets action, as well, and that often comes from outside sources. Those sources can be natural, physical, or human. A sunset...a smell that throws us back in time...a passing phrase of a stranger.

And then there is engagement. Creative collaboration of a group of like minded people. One who can see the next step clearly when you're stymied. One whose talent's enhance your own. One who can keep you accountable.

We've had a rare week here at Firefly Creek. Like-minded and ready to embrace our callings, there have been daily writings, discussions, readings, and assignments between me, my siblings, and my brother in law.

This is how life should be. Dinners should be bacchanal events. Dusks should be spent on the deck by torchlight, listening to readings of Byron. Days should be spent on devotionals to connect us to the life force we celebrate in word.

Phrases and observations emerge ~ "Early May honeysuckle, one of the greatest gifts of creation..."

"He doesn't sound like the most noble of people."
"What's that got to do with it?"

Tasks emerge ~ "Set up your own webpage ~ record this reading professionally with R playing the background music..."

Ideas emerge ~ "Why not this layout? Take your story this direction."

Questions emerge ~ "Do you have a vision for the end, or is it a revelatory process?"

Oh, it's a process...and it's enhanced by collaboration.

The Spring Freshet

I write more in fall and winter. I'm inspired more by those seasons. It seems like spring and summer should inspire more, with their riots of colorful blooms at every turn.

I suppose I feel like they speak for themselves. I go for the understated. The beauty less loved. I adore the solace of snow. I chat with engaging, crackling fires ~ and note the sublime in crackling morning frosts.

This is a lesson for a writing life. Look at more than the obvious, the showy. Focus on the undercurrents, the building blocks for the "greater" seasons to come. This will create a fullness in your work, enriched by quiet introspection and observation.

Then, when the riots of morning birdsong and evenings of spring peepers in the pond come, as they have now, the fullness of their songs will be enhanced by the comparative depth of silence.

Emergence

Why didn't I think of that?

I have to admit, I'm rather ridiculously excited about a concept I wish I'd come up with - that editing writing can be fun. What?! That torturous exercise of revision ~ of grappling with vocabulary for the perfect word or turn of phrase? How?

By comparison. I just finished the chapter Form Versus Formula in The Right to Write where Julia Cameron compares writing editing to film-making editing. Again I exclaim, What?! There is nothing I love more! Then the flash came ~ I understood what she was saying, and it has changed everything.

In film-making you get shots ~ lots of them ~ from every angle imaginable. If you are filming people, you film each person from the front, side, and/or back. If one person has a monologue, you film the other character's reaction to it. If they are handing off objects, you get a tight shot of the transfer. Then you take it all back to the computer and begin splicing and dicing and weaving the clips into scenes. THEN you give the scenes filters and effects to really set the tone and mood. And it's thrilling.



Why, then, can we not think of writing this way? I think there's the idea that it has to come to the page in perfect form, from start to finish. Why not just throw everything out there, from every angle, from every perspective, and not even worry about refinement til we get to the editing process? Yes, you can keep the best parts, and leave the others on the cutting room floor.

If there is something beautiful you "can't part with," tuck it in another file for potential use on the next project.

Add light, add effect, add emotion...and above all, enjoy. "Action!"

Who I am instead

My sister sent me this quote last night, sharing in her frustration over it. Sometimes security is absolutely worth it ~ like caring for a loved one through illness or in their twilight years; or, making sure your children have a life that will grow them into thriving adulthood. There is something about security that brings its own satisfaction.

I would also argue that dreams aren't so easily murdered. I think everyone has an alternate persona apart from their everyday life, apart from what they do. Ask anyone "who are you instead?" and you'll likely get an answer that sounds something like the idea of these dreams.

The key is to live in keeping with your desires as far as possible anyway. Weave your dreams into your secure life. These are not mutually exclusive things.

I am a park ranger ~ that is what I do. I am a writer and an artist and a traveler ~ that is who I am. While I was caring for my father, part of what got me through was styling myself as Emily Dickinson, L.M. Montgomery, or Charlotte Bronte, secluded in my home, writing, caring for my father and the land, and finding beauty where I could.

Do you have a dream in the midst of your everyday life? Take an online class, take a picture, watch a how-to. Buy a notebook and a fresh pen, buy a sketching pad and some pastel pencils. Step out in the direction of your dreams, and I think you'll be surprised at how resilient they are.

Prepping for Paris

Returning to the Left Bank Writer's Retreat in June has me already dreaming of the City of Light. I'm swimming in related literature until I get back there in person...I'm longing for violet ice cream, art, and the sound of bells chiming the hours.

March 1st

In like a lion 

Or in like a gentle lamb 

The air seems quiet 

Unnaturally so ~
A weather breeder we called it

A restless stirring

Disquiets my inner peace

Storms are predicted. 

The Effort of Ease

Tonight I realized there's more to this literary journey than just seeking out author's haunts ~ although that will always remain an on-going quest and pilgrimage goal for me. But every day is a literary journey through life! Every day there is some connection, some insight, some passing thought or quote that stirs the soul. This is to become my pool, my well, as Julia Cameron would say, into which to drop the random word.

My current inspiring read, with a Kendra-original bookmark

"When we write, we 'place' ourselves in our world. We say, 'This is where I am right now, and this is how I feel about that.'" Julia Cameron

Gadding about in Sleepy Hollow

"IN the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee,...there lies a small market-town or rural port...which is...generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town..." Crossing the Tappan Zee bridge, the longest in the state of New York. "Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley, or rather lap of land, among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquility...
From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW..." "A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his pow-wows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole nine fold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols...
The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head..." Bewitching indeed. This mesmerizing tale hooked me and my sister when young with suspense and lore that was tantalizing and yet not tooo macabre. When my niece moved across the mighty Tappan Zee Bridge from Sleepy Hollow, we knew we had to visit. Sleepy Hollow is not only surrounded by the high hills that Irving wrote about, the cemetery sits on one of them, arching above the Old Dutch Church.   It is everything you might imagine a cemetery to be...      The wind was blowing balmy and mysterious as we stepped into the setting of the story itself. We visited and paid homage at Washington Irving's grave - where else COULD he be buried? - and thanked him for his creative and fantastic imagination.     In that storybook place you could easily imagine "the ploughboy, loitering homeward of a still...evening, [who] has often fancied Ichabod's voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow."