Writers Retreat

I spent the last four months working. And not the normal amount of working, where I give it a solid 8.5 hours then go home and eat half an organic frozen pizza with kale on top that I cooked separately. The normal amount of working is intermediate level problem-solving at a brisk pace, occasionally taking a bit more initiative than necessary and trying not to be a dick to my coworkers. It’s the amount of working that generally leads to regular-enough praise from my boss, which is as sustaining as frozen pizza for me, if not more.

Recently though, I was put in a position where I was really Working. My work email, normally toggled off on my phone at night and on weekends remained on for a full quarter of a year. I had Sunday calls and 7PM meetings, and a general feeling of thrilled dread took up residence in my stomach. It was a period of extremes. I was overwhelmed and nervous, working towards a goal that was objectively impossible. But I was also exhilarated. This is what I’m good at. My insides could be a wreck but I will step up and act like I couldn’t be calmer in the name of successfully docking the ship of a project. And this project was an aircraft carrier, or another example of a large boat. A cruise ship. An abnormally large catamaran.

In August, in the middle of the madness, I promised myself that as soon as the project was over I was going to take some serious time off. The last vacation I took that was more than two days off was in 2017, when I went to Ireland with my mom and sister. So at the end of last week, I scrubbed down my apartment, put fresh sheets on my bed, Swiffered (with the wet cloths!) because my anxiety prevents me from leaving any sort of mess for more than four hours and picked up a Hyundai Accent at the Advantage Rent a Car in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Driving, I found, did come back, but merging sure as fuck didn’t, and neither did changing lanes. I reserved the car in a cocky moment when I viewed the blank canvas that was the entire month of November on the calendar and I realized in order to do a writers retreat in Bumblefuck Massachusetts I would need to get there somehow. I had a brand new New York driver’s license and plenty of time between now and then (to what, practice?)

Suddenly, it was Sunday, and I was on I95 North, windows up, with the music turned off for safety reasons. Luckily, the first car I drove regularly (not mine, never mine, which was always fine with me) was a Hyundai of approximately the same size. Ours was an Elantra, which was like the snooty version of the Accent. We pronounced it “E-lahhhn-trahhhh” and rolled the “r” and always wore a beret when we said it which was weird because French people don’t roll their “r”s. But it was basically the same car.

I have four full weeks off. Four weeks. When I got home from work on Friday I actually cried I was so relieved.

This week is being spent in a tiny town in Massachusetts called Ashfield at a place called Wellspring House. The entire town consists of seven buildings, four on one side of main street and three on the other. When I drove into town, my cell phone immediately ceased to work. They had warned me about this. I don’t particularly care about cell service, especially now that the internet has made it almost entirely redundant. It was a symbolic moment. I had reached the end of the world.

I told myself that as I write for the next ten days I would only hold myself to the standard of trying to impress my former seventh-grade teacher. I don’t actually have access to her at this time but I feel fairly confident about her expectations. I have what I’m sure is a classic problem. I unintentionally edit while I’m writing, which can make my progress slow and painful. So I asked myself, what level can I confidently reach without putting any undue pressure on myself? And the answer was: a seventh-grade creative writing exercise.

My essays in middle school were always exactly good. I varied my sentence structure, peppered them with PSAT words (but not too many) and developed my own style of prose. At the time felt like 100% original Rose, but was definitely an amalgamation of the types of writers I had read the most- Lois Lowry, Ann M. Martin and the occasional author whose work was probably beyond my comprehension but made me look smart reading. It was during this time that I read the first quarter of The Brothers Karamasov three times. Incidentally it was also during this period when I learned to hate Hemingway, based on the first ten pages of The Old Man and the Sea. I have never given him another shot and I have no intention of ever doing so.

My homework would be praised by my teacher, often read aloud to my classmates who luckily were only bored and did not grow to openly hate me. In a group of 26 12 year olds, I was the best writer. Now at 31, I still feel as though I am the best writer in the average group of 26 12 year olds. This a manageable yardstick for me. Aiming for this gives me permission to be pretty terrible, at least with my first drafts, which is the only way I can still get words out onto the page.

The house where I’m staying is old and run down. There are four rooms where other writers can stay, three of which are occupied right now. It has a white exterior with royal blue trim. Each of the rooms is named after a writer. I’m staying in the Phyllis Wheatley room. The mattress of the twin bed I’m sleeping on is hard, but the room is warm and cozy, so warm in fact that I have to leave the window wide open. It’s monk-like. I’m into it.

There are people in three of the four rooms right now, but people come and go. The most interesting so far are the couple in the room next door to mine. I met Robert on Monday morning when I went downstairs to make coffee. He’s an extremely friendly older man who’s a professor, around 70, very chatty, clearly smart and a little eccentric. He laughed at something I said very shortly after we started talking so I decided right away that I liked him. He was saying his wife was coming to join him the next day. Fast-forward to Wednesday afternoon, when I run into a woman while I’m making coffee (I’m very predictable when I’m procrastinating.) She was probably mid-thirties, MAYBE 40, and she was cute and nice in a Midwestern sort of way. She tells me that she’s here with her husband and then ROBERT APPEARS AND HE IS HER HUSBAND AND HE IS AT LEAST 30 YEARS OLDER THAN HER. Blew my mind right open. Look, I obviously don’t have to approve of their relationship, but I have to say they seem great together. He made her pasta with squid ink and then they both tried to describe to me how it tasted. It was adorable, but also let me tell you if you ever need to kill an hour or two just ask two academics to describe how something weird tastes.

The place is located in the foothills of the Berkshires. Everything is brown and red and orange around the town, it’s almost boringly pretty. I drove to another small town nearby called Shelbourne Falls earlier this week in search of coffee (note the pattern.) Everything was closed except for the bakery, where I sat in the quiet and ate a pumpkin muffin while reading. The town has a waterfall running through it, just a perfect New England postcard. It’s also where they filmed The Judge. I don’t know what movie that is but there was a plaque.

It’s just so quiet here. The others in the house are around, and everyone is friendly, but ostensibly we are all here to write, so everyone is also very respectful of each other’s space. Lots of asking each other if we’re bothering each other and assuring each other that we definitely aren’t. Lots of whispered apologies for walking by someone. There’s a large living room with well over a thousand books, placed haphazardly in stacks. Fiction to the right of the fireplace, non-fiction to the left. There are house rules, posted strategically throughout the house. When to do laundry, where to put your milk in the fridge, and a reminder to leave 40 cents for any call on the landline to cover the cost (guys the old-time phone still costs money)

In between writing, and coffee, I’ve been going through this list of prompts I make myself answer towards the end of every year. It almost never happens at New Years, it’s more or less yearly and usually aligns with the onset of my seasonal depression, but it’s the same idea. I started doing it three years ago and each year I’ve refined it a bit. I basically wrote down all of the things I knew I needed to face sooner rather than later in my life and then organized them into a proactive format that didn’t make me want to jump off a roof.

I thought I would share it with you, with a bit of explanation, just in case this sounds like a fun afternoon activity to you. So without further ado…

ROSE’S GENIUS MEGA-LIST OF SELF DISCOVERY PROMPTS AS FEATURED IN DOMINO MAGAZINE

Fill out the below.

How do you feel right now? Like, for real. No one else is going to read this. This part is hard, take your time. Here. Take a Xanax and an Emergen-C packet.

What is your biggest challenge and why? E.g. passing science, not being such a cunt to your mother-in-law, major surgery, being unable to accept love

If you could have one wish for the next year, what would it be? FYI your wish can be kind of crazy, but if you’re expecting actual magical wish-fulfillment you are going to be extremely disappointed and honestly I just don’t even want to hear about it.

General goals

• My body: Which part of you are going to exercise regularly this year? Fingers crossed it’s not just like a single bicep

• My love life: How long will you make yourself stay in relationships this year?

• My career: Maybe this is the year you’ll figure how to do a career plus anything else at the same time.

Affirmations There has to be a better word. More like just a list of reminders for and about yourself to keep yourself on track and make yourself feel better when changing is hard and you hate it so much.

Specific goals This is the part where you look up what SMART stands for every year because you’ve forgotten since we did this last even though it’s a really great

Bad habits to stop You definitely have them, probably a lot. If this isn’t your longest list when you start doing this then you are not telling me, and probably not telling yourself, the truth.

Good habits to start It’s really easy to volunteer in New York but also flossing is really just not optional people and it’s even easier. Of course, those are just a couple of ideas of good habits to start. There are lots more you can do. Make it your own.

Current good habits to keep: Like looking so fucking fly all the time

Spend less money on: cortados, your appearance aka the British jewelry maker who sold you every pair of earrings you own on Etsy

It’s ok to spend money on: socks, batteries, the fancy Irish butter, the medication that actually stops you from jumping off the roof, the occasional bath bomb

Action items: what now?

Love to all.

xo

R