This week I went on my annual writers’ retreat with my writing group. Every year (except 2020 obviously) for the past six years, we have taken a week during the summer to leave all responsibilities behind and retire to some place “secluded” in order to focus on our various writing projects. We have spent time in the mountains of North Carolina, at the beach, and at the lake. We always bring our own food so that we aren’t tempted to go out to eat, and everyone stakes out his or her preferred writing spot. Our choices of location do not offer too many, if any, touristy distractions as our main purpose on these writing retreats is to, well, write.
Recently we stayed at a lake house. It was smaller than we are used to and did not offer too many writing spots, per se, but it did offer a lovely view of the lake and the resident gaggle of geese. Because of the lack of space within the house, I made the back deck my writing space. This satisfied me on a couple of levels: one, the Sagittarius in me craves healthy doses of nature, and here I could partake of the shaded sun, the gently rippling lake, and the lovely shushing of the leaves overhead; and two, it separated me from my writing companions, who all chose to write inside. Understandable since it is summer in the South, but the temptation to socialize would have been too great and my whole purpose for going was to work on my latest manuscript. Therefore, isolate I must and did.
On the morning I was preparing to leave, I stepped out onto the deck for one last look at the lake under a newly blossoming sun. The geese, who had kept me steady company throughout the week, were out for their morning swim. A speedboat happened by and stirred up the ripples into tiny waves. At the moment the geese passed in front of the lake house, I noticed they were not so much swimming as gently bobbing along on the waves. For several minutes, it looked as though they were frozen in place, stuck on the water that ringed itself for shore in a never-ending band. However, as I watched them, fascinated at the lovely simplicity of the natural world, I realized they were actually continuing to swim. What is that quote from The Replacements? “On the surface everything looks calm, but beneath the water those little feet are churning a mile a minute.” It’s true, and as I watched, the gaggle swam/floated their way out of my line of sight.
It occurred to me that I and my writer pals are very much like the geese. Every time we sit down at the computer, our brains and fingers churn frantically to keep our characters and plots and conflicts and resolutions and themes and symbols moving towards our desired destination (publication) while at the same time trying to juggle jobs, families, and social calendars. I think of the retreats, however, as those waves. Here I get to float because the only responsibility I have is to my craft, but while I am floating, I am working as diligently as those webbed feet under the water. I have some time to just enjoy riding the waves of creativity without the imposition of daily distractions, yet it is at these times that my fingers work even harder to type out the next piece of dialogue or build the tension in whatever scene I am working on. The waves will not last forever, and if I should simply stop to do nothing but float, then like the geese, I will never reach the shore.
Writing isn’t easy, as any true writer will tell you. Sometimes the water of creativity is calm and easy flowing, and sometimes it’s rough with battering waves. Sometimes the lake of inspiration has dried up, and sometimes it overflows and you honestly feel like you’re drowning in ideas. But writers can take a lesson from the geese: Know when to swim, know when to sit on the shore, and when the waves come, know how to settle in for the ride. And no matter what happens along the way, keep on typing. Your destination is straight ahead.
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