If It's a Retreat, Why Is There Homework?

A retreat says 'comfort'. I don't want to go to class!

Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash

I miss face-to-face conversations with writers. It’s been a while since I’ve had a real sit-down and I miss it. Over the years, when I was most active as a working writer, before my years of exile up in the north woods and long before the internet, I cherished those moments when I could be with my writer buddies in what we called our ‘group’. We didn’t give it a real name. We were writers and we had this group. We got each other. We belonged. That was enough.

But then we started thinking we should share our work. And then we learned the word ‘critique’. And off it went.

It wasn’t the first group I joined, nor was it the last, but from that first group to the last I came to understand, though didn’t necessarily thrill to it, that we couldn’t just get together anymore without also sitting down to workshop something we thought either worked for us or troubled us. It became a mission. The chit-chat times then became brief breaks between sessions, and sometimes the air had already chilled, so…

The idea was that we would work on something during the time we were away, and we expected, for no other reason than that we were ‘friends’, that when we all got together again we would all be smart and wise and give each other some insight into what worked and what didn’t. It would be enlightening and welcome and we would all be the better for it, there among friends and colleagues, we writers who understood…

Unless we didn’t.

In every writer’s group I’ve ever joined, the main event, after some few minutes of friendly chit-chat, was the reading aloud from current manuscripts, beginning with the obligatory finding the good before finding the fault. There was no such thing as perfection. Perish the thought that you might say, ‘It’s perfect!’ It can’t be. If it could be, there would be no need to workshop.

Now, after all these years, while I truly want to join up with a group of writers, I never, ever want to do that workshop thing again.

I wrote last summer about my days at a writer’s retreat, where I found camaraderie among newfound friends and loved parts of it so much I thought I might do it again. The retreat calendar came the other day and I saw the dates and thought about it—only to know in my heart I probably won’t go back. Because of those workshops I talked about. Yes. It’s those workshops. At something called a ‘retreat’.

Did I get something from them? Apparently. I say I did. But did any of it stick? No. Not really. That poem looks really dumb now. My notes, if I should read them again, would probably make no sense.

I don’t want to study writing with my peers. I don’t want to analyze anyone else’s writing. I don’t want them to analyze mine. I want to talk with other writers about the things that make us happy about our writing or even the things we hate. I want to talk about our art, our craft, our crazy reasons for doing what we do. I want us to be with each other and get it. That’s all.

But maybe that’s just me. Some of the people I met at the retreat bragged about how many years they’ve been coming back. They love it all, and some of them especially love the workshops. And the homework. I saw that and maybe I even envied them, but I know there were at least three of us who hated the workshops and the homework and that feeling there was a pass-fail in there somewhere. I know that because we talked about it. One of us refused to do the workshop assignments. I wish it had been me.

None of us needed lessons. We all have writing credits under our belts. We’re not beginners. I would rather have talked about what works and why it works, with successful examples we could marvel and laugh at, rather than spend another minute trying to eke out something that might make my classmates marvel and laugh.

What if they don’t??

I want to schmooze with other writers, I want them to inspire me, and I want to inspire them. I want them to open up new doors, ones I hadn’t thought of. I want us to be able to feel sorry for ourselves if we need that. I want us to be US. Together. In a room. Hair down. No competition, no jitters, nothing but the kind of pure friendship that comes from being in the same boat.

Are there retreats out there that are actual retreats? Those places that offer space and nature and nurture and beauty without those awful expectations that we must pay all that money for the privilege of being among our peers but then be prepared to perform?

I’ve spent some time as a resident at Ragdale, a writer’s colony in Illinois, and that felt as much like a retreat as I could imagine, but I was there to write, not to schmooze. Any schmoozing came in our few off-hours and at dinner, and while some residents read from their work in the evenings, if they asked for advice I mainly slunk away.

Am I alone in this? When is a retreat really a retreat? Is there such a place? Even here? Must we always be working? Could we just call Writer Everlasting a ‘retreat’ and just come here and, I don’t know…talk about stuff?

Like I did here?

(We’re having a blizzard outside right now. You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve got this time on my hands and there’s only so much looking out the window.)

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