September 25, 1999

Reflections at the End of a Writing Retreat

By lunchtime Vic will be up here, and my typing days are numbered.  I looked over my calendar yesterday and it seems impossible to wait until November, a month from now, for another full week of writing at the cabin.  Perhaps, encouraged by my progress this week, and with a small routine developed over these six days…perhaps back at home in Tempe…after Justin leaves for school and Vic for work, I should be able to get in several hours of writing each morning.

I’ll just have to insist that writing happens first.  Otherwise, once I answer the phone or write a check for the phone bill, I’m pulled into the flow of family responsibilities, and I never get settled down at the computer.

I think the biggest thing I’ve learned this week is how to put myself in the mental framework of writing.  It’s such an all-consuming effort.  My fingers, my eyes, my mind, lungs, and heart all have to agree that they’re willing to cooperate in writing how it felt as a freshman to come down the stairs of the Manzanita dorm and see Victor in the lobby waiting for me on our first date.

Instead of a conscious act of agreement between my body parts to tell the story of a college romance, in the past few years, writing has been my ultimate emotional release.  With passionate life daily surrounding us, in the heat of an argument, in the flood of despair, I could sit down and write up a storm.  I had forgotten how to choose to stir up the writer’s passion on my own.  Now when life is pretty much clipping along, sunny side up, kids happy, and Vic cheerful, the peace and quiet just wasn’t able to fire up the writer’s heart for me.

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A few days ago, on this retreat, in front of the picture window looking over the valley and down to the small mountain town, I plopped down in the green recliner chair, my mind blank, certain that my writing days were over.

All morning long, typing away with ease, in three complete and separate chapters, I had recreated the special joys of growing up as a young kid.  Tired and wrung out, I got up from the computer and walked over to the bed where four notebooks and one picture album were all opened.  I felt pretty good with my 4,000 words for the morning.  At this rate, I figured I might have the book finished by the end of the month, ten days away.

At the edge of the bed, I reached down to the white binder holding a rough outline of my book.  I knew I had written the outline, but I couldn’t remember ever having all of those ideas so organized in my thoughts.  My eyes ran down the list of chapter topics, each followed by a one-word description of events I had almost forgotten.

Each event would have to be written into a story, even if it was only a paragraph story, and when I turned over the top page and realized that the single-spaced outline continued for three more pages, I suddenly knew I just didn’t have it in me.

All morning…4,000 words…and I had just covered the first two topics at the top of my outline, page one.  My life just wasn’t going to be that interesting to hold my attention for months on end.  There weren’t enough words inside of me to write it all out.

I turned and slowly descended the stairs.  At the bottom, I paused.  Eating was just too much work.  I headed to the recliner, flung myself into it and pushed back, staring into space…empty space…without words or thoughts.  It was over.  And I started thinking about how I had waited tables years ago and that I could probably find a waitress job next week that would keep me off the streets and fill my time since I now realized I had no more reason to write.

I wasn’t really sad.  Actually, a bit relieved.  I was free of the bondage a writer feels when you must tell a story or die.  Peace filled my heart.  The last days of my retreat stretched out in front of me.  I ate.  I watched two Matlock programs Daddy had taped ten years ago, my own personal re-run collection.  I took a shower and ate again.  The afternoon gave way to evening, phone calls home to Vic, and several hours to read before bedtime.  This was how life was meant to be.  Open, wide, and filled with do-whatever-you-want time.

That night, I lay in bed for a long time waiting for the darkness to make me drowsy.  This was it, then?  All these years, I had been fired by the desire to write about our family.  Just last year I had sat across from Vic at JB’s restaurant and told him in passionate persuasion why I needed to tell Mother’s story, to be her witness…let the world know it couldn’t keep playing games with people’s feelings and not pay a price.  In the darkness, I wondered how I could ever have thought these feelings would be big enough to fill a book.  Thank goodness it was over.  I was glad.

My next thoughts were sparked by the sight of a beautiful sunrise, soft pink and yellow, just over the mountain pines.  It would be a beautiful day.

After reading my usual morning devotional, I headed upstairs to begin collecting up the notebooks and papers.  It was over…writing.  What a perfect day for hiking through the backwoods!

On my turn up the stairway, on the wall, I caught sight of the photo where this very cabin sat on a truck, riding down the highway to Eagar…ten years ago.  I chuckled.  Now, who would believe that, if Mother hadn’t taken a picture of it?  I just barely believed it myself.  Well, it would be fun to write just a little bit about moving the cabin before I cleaned up.  I could easily whip off that story, and maybe one day the kids would enjoy it, when they were older… trying to figure out how the cabin had started out at the top of a mountain fifty miles away.

Two hours later, I saved one more cabin story and an extra story for good measure about guitar lessons at Ziggy’s…because, without breakfast yet, I couldn’t help thinking back to our weekly music lessons as children, followed by a trip to McDonald’s for hamburgers on our way home…the thought of a good juicy hamburger seeming so much more delicious right then…in a cabin, without a car, five miles away from the nearest fast-food joint.  Suddenly, a lump filled the hungry spot in my stomach.

Worse than being hungry, and worser still than being so far away from a good juicy  hamburger…it looked like I was going to have to write the darn book after all.  

 

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A WRITER’S LIFE
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