Solitary Writing Retreat   November 2018

 

Marshall and I began planning this writing retreat last summer.  We sat looking over my calendar to see where and when my travel work might fit in some solitary time in the desert.  We’ve been doing this a bit for the last few years and now we’ve extended the time.  This is something I am most grateful for.

I would come here the middle of November and leave the end of January.  That’s a truly luxurious amount of time in my experience.  And that was a problem for me.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, in the cheap seats as a friend would say, there were voices of derision.  Who are you to sit alone and write?  You can’t even spell?  People are suffering and you are taking time off to write?  What do you have to say that’s so important?  It was the voices of my working class background where people are not allowed to change and to grow, to become different.  Oddly, while being beloved among my large extended family, I have always been a giraffe among sparrows, not more or better, just different.

I am happy to report that such doubts and insults vanished as the time approached and my excitement grew over the likelihood of getting a second book to print and a third book ready for editors.  Will I have enough discipline?  Will I get enough done?  Will it be what I’ve been intending?  Yes, for goodness sake!  Not that I can afford to be here, but I must.

Surprisingly, I haven’t had any doubt that both books will be of use to others.  All the feedback on my first book, The Dance Between Hope & Fear, has been solidly good, from healthcare professionals, to clergy and therapists, to survivors and family caregivers.  My second book, focusing on knowing your own goodness, has been a popular and deeply meaningful workshop for over a decade now, with many people returning to hear meaning more clearly within themselves.  This book will be well used.  

The third book is my own stories of healing and spiritual adventures in becoming a Quaker healer.  This is all new writing in the last couple of years and will have difficult stories I’ve not shared before.  It is the more arduous undertaking and will take longer to finish.  Writing about discovering Quaker meeting as a sixteen year old and what I thought when my hands grew warm is easy and fun writing.  Writing about rape and suicide, not so much.  There is also writing about the many many people along the way who provided dry ground to stand on when all seemed lost at sea.  These memories are delicious and a delight to recall.

So, here I am.  A chair and tablecloth from the local thrift shop to make a writing desk out of a small glass-topped table and a view out the window of an overladen lemon tree and overcast sky.  I work from early morning to mid afternoon, before taking a break.  I’ve finished the review of edits from my editors for two chapters.

I am well aware that I could have a brain better suited to these tasks.  I am not literate or well read.  I am learning disabled and haven’t a clue as to grammar, sentence construction, etc.  But people like my stories and my teaching.  So, I squeeze my mind to concentrate on what both editors have said about a particular passage and push myself to choose the clearest words for meaning.  By late afternoon my brain is squinting and I have to get outside to revive in the fresh air.

Today there is a bit of rain.  In Vermont we might refer to this as light showers of no consequence.  Here in the Coachella Valley of Southern California the desert floor sees so little rain that this is a remarkable event bringing relief.  There’s also some wonder if it will be enough to disrupt the dry riverbed washes with a flow of water gathering and shooting down steep rocky sides of the mountains. A flash flood here does not take much rain and it is a dazzling sight to behold, large or small.

OK, back to work.  Chapter 3 awaits impatiently and I am hoping a late lunch will allow me time to view what changes the rain brings amidst rocks, sand, and palm trees.