Where I’d Like to Be Right Now

I’m sitting at home again today, cowering in the air conditioning because “it’s going to be another hot one,” in Midwest parlance. I’m listening to playlists that help me concentrate, hoping they’ll inspire me to finish the last three chapters of Carrying Light.

There’s a list of where I’d like to be right now:

At The Elms, enjoying time in the Grotto;
At Broadway Cafe in Kansas City with noise in the background;
At Wild Horse Pass resort in Arizona having a drink in the swimming pool;
In a cabin at Mozingo Lake, on a writing retreat;
Sitting on a couch anywhere that doesn’t encourage slouching;
At a cat cafe, self-explanatory;
In a camper at Mozingo Lake, just because it would be different;
At Starved Rock State Park, except for all the crowds.

Where I do not want to be:

OUTSIDE.

I’d like to own a writers’ retreat

I’d like to own a writers’ retreat. I mean, it’s nice to go on a short trip to a hotel that has places to sit in the lobby, or a cafe with a cozy table, but I dream of having my own writing retreat for whenever I need it.

One example would be a camper I could park at the local RV park (at our neighboring Mozingo Park) and get away from it all sometime. A writing retreat camper wouldn’t be too big, but big enough that I could make coffee, take potty breaks, and nap.

Of course, if I’m dreaming, I might as well dream big. When I dream big, I think of a schoolie, or a school bus converted to a camper. These campers are long, and everything is fit into an aisle. I saw one for sale today, and it was selling for $80,000 down from $115,000. Maybe if we win the lottery.

Sometimes I just want a she-shed for the back yard. I can pretend I’m in a retreat, and I can go home anytime I like. Again, the price is prohibitively high and my yard too small.

So I guess I need to retreat into the office again, which is small and cluttered, but it’s mine.

My Favorite Writing Retreats

As we say in this house, I have 50% cattitude. Girlie-Girl , a senior citizen at 13 is sleeping next to me, and Me-Me, another senior at 13, sleeps on the back of the loveseat where I sit. Cats sleep a lot, it turns out, but they don’t sleep soundly. Either one of these little critters will wake up grudgingly.

The loveseat is not only the favorite of the cats, but it’s my favorite. I do all my writing here, because the stereo is here, there’s a window next to me, a Nespresso pot in case I have a coffee emergency. And my husband sits on the couch and I bounce ideas off him.

Is this the perfect place to write? It’s close. I don’t like writing in the office, because it’s really cluttered and small, and there’s a sort of sensory deprivation.

My perfect place to write? In the lobby of a boutique hotel. There’s just enough movement that I feel comfortable writing, yet not enough to disturb me. These are my writing retreats, and here are a few of my favorites:

Starved Rock Lodge, Starved Rock State Park, Utica, Illinois. The CCC-built, log construction lodge is the gem of the Midwest, sitting in the middle of the best state park in Illinois. The Great Room, rustic and towering, attracts visitors who have just come in from hiking or just come out from the lodge-inspired restaurant. The chairs are just comfortable enough that sitting in front of the fireplace makes a cozy writing place. The old section of the hotel part of the lodge has, tucked in a corner, old-fashioned writing desks. Book one of the fireplace cabins (if you can) for added ambiance, although they’re too small to comfortably write in. Massages are optional. Highly recommended, especially at Christmas, when it’s beautifully decorated and families come to exchange gifts
The Elms Spa and Hotel, Excelsior Springs, Missouri. This has to be my favorite writing retreat. A lobby which evokes the 1930’s, seats by the fireplace, and a spa with a relaxation room and a hot tub/sauna/steam room/hot shower room called the Grotto, this is the place where I not only write, but recuperate. Facials, massages of various types, and hydrotherapy (I might be wrong about the last part) are available. There’s a café on site and an excellent restaurant that plays Sinatra music, as it should. Again, rooms are a little small to write in, but they are light and elegant.
Lied Lodge, Nebraska City, Nebraska. Lied Lodge honors the founder of Arbor Day, and is located on Arbor Day Farm. As one might expect, the theme is trees, and the lobby has high ceilings, wooden beams, and world-affirming quotes on the walls. Although the massive fireplace makes the lobby a little crowded, the section behind the fireplace yields comfortable rocking chairs and just enough neighbors in seats to stimulate thought in those who prefer background noise. The restaurant is excellent and inspired. Lied has the most spacious rooms of the three, with more wood beams to provide ambience, but still too small to write in in my opinion.

I haven’t been on retreat for a year, having kept much to myself during COVID. Now that I’m vaccinated, I feel safe enough to schedule a writing retreat at The Elms for just before Memorial Day. Whew! All I need now is something to write.

Need ideas for retreat and refresh!

I’m not sure how to arrange some sacred writing space. By this I mean the type of space where I can recenter and recharge and dedicate myself to writing just in time for July’s Camp NaNo. I’ve been sitting in my living room at my laptop since March 9 (not non-stop, although it feels like it) drinking coffee and typing. Even with lots of coffee and classical music, my writing just feels like more online classes and work rather than creativity.

I really could use a spa vacation. Or a writers’ retreat. But this is the age of COVID, and I suspect time in the Grotto at The Elms is not safe, and Mozingo Lake has no cabins for retreat.

Looking for suggestions for how I can get a retreat under COVID restrictions!

Saturday Morning at my House (Creative Essay)

Mind the clutter on the coffee table.

Welcome to my Saturday morning.

It’s 8 o’clock AM, and my husband and I won’t go out today because of the ice and sleet from yesterday and the potential snow today. It’s a good excuse, anyhow.

We lounge in the living room under low light. The fake fireplace and a piney Woodwick candle create ambience. Tony Bennett sings “Darn that dream” and we chuckle at the song’s quaint language. Chucky sits on the edge of the cluttered coffee table, managing to knock only one thing down.

The coffee today is from Burundi, home roasted and ground, and I can taste notes of lemon, cooked apples, and spice. Tony Bennett has segued into a mellow jazz tune.

I’m in my writing corner on the loveseat typing this. When I’m done I will go back to my developmental edits, which are going smoother than I thought. Today is an enforced retreat day, for which I’m grateful.

Thoughts on a Cabin Retreat

If I tried to live in a cabin for real, I would probably complicate it unnecessarily. I possess too many clothes for a small dresser and a short clothes bar on the wall, and like many middle-class Americans, I have too many possessions that do not give me joy but I might need someday.

If I lived in a cabin for real, I would have to pick one with a good patch of full sun so I could garden. A patch of woods at the back would be dreamy; I could forage for mushrooms if I trusted myself to pick the right ones.

But I could see myself buying all the accoutrements for an upscale, organic backwoods lifestyle — an electric composter, solar panels, a small tractor and plow for the big garden patch … and my life would not be any simpler. The so-called simple life could get expensive.

And living in a cabin wouldn’t be like having a retreat there, because after a while I’d get used to the four walls and want somewhere else to be inspired.

However, if someone has a camper they can lend me for a summer, I’d strongly consider camping at the RV park here for a season. Just sayin’.

More Rain

I am blessed, sitting in a small, knotty pine cabin in front of a fireplace while the thunder booms outside. What a delicious writing retreat. Oh, and there’s coffee.

If I could do this every day, it wouldn’t be a retreat, would it? No, this is special time. This is a change of scenery that hopefully will let me see my writing develop. The goal for today is to finish the massive rewrite of the first third of the book. That’s no more than 3000 words in my estimation, but it’s a thoughtful three k.

Time for me to quit staring at the fire and start writing.

Retreating to a Writing Place

Sometimes, a writer just needs to retreat.

Many writers take occasional retreats just to get away, to have a change of scenery. The words “writer’s retreat” evoke fond sighs in writers.

Overseas writing retreates involve international travel and cost. If the writer travels to a foreign country for research and writing, they can combine both optimally if they’re careful. Most writers don’t make enough money on their writing to take overseas trips. In addition, most don’t want to hide in a room writing when there’s SO MUCH OUT THERE —

“What did you do on your trip to the Aegean?”
“Oh, I locked myself in a room to write.”
Frankly, I envy those who have the money to travel and write.

Hotels, near and far, can serve as retreats. Hotel visits must be used very sparingly because of their cost. In my favorite hotel, The Elms in Excelsior Springs, I told a waitress I was on a writing retreat — not only did she treat me like a published author, but she smuggled me upstairs to an unused part of the restaurant, turned on the stylish black-tiled gas fireplace, and made sure I remained undisturbed. I lived out my fantasy of being An Author! In addition, I spent a day being pampered at The Grotto, with steam baths, hot tubs, and rose scented body scrubs. Note: By hotels, I mean the accomodations that don’t have convenient parking right outside the room. Hotels have decent desks to work on. Motels, on the other hand, do not.

Some writers find that quiet place locally. This choice combines new scenery with savings. I’ve stayed in every bed and breakfast in a 45-mile radius, and a few others. The challenge with staying in a bed and breakfast becomes obvious to anyone who has stayed in them — not all of them are suitable for writing. In one B&B retreat, I had no time to write because the proprietor kept me to gossip about all her neighbors. Although I didn’t get to write, I got character sketches for months of writing. At another B&B, the desk in my room was a exquisite little Victorian letter desk — which I could not sit comfortably at. Victorians, it turns out, were smaller than me. If the writer finds a comfortable, quiet bed and breakfast, they’ve found their retreat.

One last resort is for the writer to set up a writer’s retreat in their own home. Virginia Woolf asserted this in her essay “A Room of One’s Own”. I have an office that would work as a writer’s retreat — if it weren’t so cluttered. So I continue to write in the living room, on a couch, putting the computer on a computer desk, pestered by cats every twenty minutes, and drinking coffee and Chinese tea.

Maybe that’s not a bad writing spot after all.

Writers and Rituals

From all the reading I’ve done on writers and writing (in the interest of procrastination), one thing I’ve learned: writers use rituals to help them write.

Some writers have to write in a specific notebook (Moleskine seems popular among writers), while others have to use a specific pen (with fountain pens the preferred utensil). Some have to write first thing in the morning, and almost all need their coffee. I suspect many have lucky shirts they wear every day (and unlucky roommates). I myself compose and revise on the computer (as my doctoral mentor taught me,) and do not believe in lucky shirts, but I always drink coffee.

The purpose of ritual in writing is not to court luck, but to court the Muse. The Muse, the whisperer of wildness in one’s blood, the source of inspiration, the bringer of strange harmonies. The writer courts the Muse, but never captures him*.

Tomorrow, I will be starting a new novel, without having any of my previous novels accepted by agents or publishers yet. I will begin this with my favorite ritual, which is spending a couple days out of my usual milieu (this time at a nearby park cabin). Because the middle of nowhere in this case has Internet, I may update occasionally. This is where I will seek the Muse** over the next couple days.

* The Greeks’ Muses were female. I’m not Greek. Therefore …
** I am in search of a Muse. Duties include intriguing, enamoring, and occasionally bewildering the writer. Please send applications to lleachie@gmail.com.