writer’s retreat

Photo by Olivier Guillard on Unsplash

Picture me in this writer’s hideaway. Of course, I am not REALLY there. This picture was taken in Finland, I think. But you get the idea. I AM A SERIOUS WRITER.

Welcome to my plaintive missive from the front lines.

Yes, that is a somewhat lame attempt at representing what being a teacher is like right before (and then tumbling into) spring break. I haven’t posted in nearly two months and the SHAME of that is bowling me over. Good thing I know how to weaponize self-compassion when necessary. I could go into all the reasons I have been a writer abroad (code for not posting for a while) but they would be boring repeats of exhausted teachers everywhere. We all know the cellular exhaustion that hits the end of March, the beginning of April. It is a real and true thing, and anyone who lives with it knows. So I won’t go into all of that. 

Believe me or think I am lying, but I have been writing all this time, simply not posting. I have been reading “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron (definitely late to that party) and working on revisions of my memoir. It is so much less fun than writing humorous snapshots of teaching life and getting immediate feedback from my adoring public. (That’s you, reader.) It is the diving back into childhood memories (some good and golden, others dark and heartbroken.) and attempting to render them not just readable, but suffused with humor and designed to hit the heart with the arrow of truth and relatability.  For every fat girl that ever stretched an elastic waistband. That is quite a goal, but it is mine.

I have created weird, arbitrary deadlines. I have joined a writing critique group. That one has lit a fire under my butt in ways I did not expect. Not just having people read and give feedback on my stuff, but reading other people’s stuff and having to speak thoughtfully about it. Sitting around a couple of tables in a back room in a coffee shop (how very Lewis and Tolkien of us) and creating space with writers so varied: there is science fiction, fantasy, poetry, new fiction. So many voices, all of them saying stuff in cool ways. It makes me feel, dare I say, like a REAL writer. 

And then there is this: I am meeting my eldest daughter (also a writer) in a cabin by the river (the same river where my parents’ ashes were scattered) to read one another’s stuff and work in companionable silence together, removed from regular life for 48 hours or so. She is like me, with a job so demanding, so all-encompassing that writing lives on the fringes most of the time. This is our opportunity to come away and give our writing center stage for a couple of days. It is connected to a dream I have for my house and most specifically my unfinished basement: to create a haven for writers (or poets or exhausted teachers) to step away from their lives for a short time and recalibrate. Rest, sleep, read, cook, paint, and yes, write. I have been wandering the wide world (metaphorically, of course; my kids are the world travelers.) seeking where to use my gifts of hospitality and encouragement (hello early ‘90s spiritual gift surveys in every evangelical church in the world.) for good and not for evil. To take my love of happy hour and transplant it into the service of others with no need to drive home afterward.

Wait, what? Did I just make some kind of announcement? Perhaps, in a weird, suburban full-time teacher sort of way. We are allowed to have dreams that do not include becoming Teacher of The Year or creating curriculum in our spare time. We are allowed, as teachers and human beings, to be multi-faceted and, dare I say it, multi-vocational in the world. The Hollywood version of a teacher needs to die a quiet, unremarkable death. There is no Cameron Diaz or HIlary Swank transforming youth in a classroom near you. There is simply the daily work of teaching.

How better to teach our students that they can truly BE anything than to model being more than one thing right in front of them? 

So that is what is known (also in Hollywood, I guess) as a teaser. I have barely the wisp of an idea and it is far too grandiose to be practical, but it is a good place to start.  Stay tuned for new developments, in writing and home improvement.