My First Writers Retreat — It Won’t Be My Last. Here’s Why

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

There were great conversations to be had last weekend at the Bridging writers retreat held at St. Mary’s College in Moraga. I got up early on Saturday and headed into the tunnel and through the woods to St. Mary’s bucolic Bay Area campus. There, 100 or so writers from all over the US and the world spent a full day writing, talking and pondering the art of writing.

The day was sponsored by Hedgebrook, a writing program for women up in Washington, along with the MFA program at Saint Mary’s. Historical novelist Mary Volmer got us organized, and speakers like Carolina De Robertis, Christine O’Brien, Vanessa Hua, MK Chavez and La Rhonda Crosby-Johnson showed up to pass on their writerly wisdom.

Vanessa Hua — writers tools:

• Scrivener to keep you organized — I’m going to look into this one to keep track of the multi-generation epic memoir I’m contemplating.
• Bullet Journal, to help you plan, prioritize and  journal all at the same time — and confuse the heck out of you till you get the knack of it.
• For those who need to carve out serious writing time, there’s the Freedom app, which blocks out those annoying internet distractions.
• And, finally, to help you submit, submit, submit, there’s the pricey but popular Writers Relief.

Christine O’Brien — writing tips:

• Keep your laptop where it’s handy — so you can get to it easily when inspiration strikes.
• Write first; open email later.
• To expand your writing repertoire, pick a sentence or a paragraph you admire from a favorite writer and plug your material into its framework; make the flow and logic of that sentence or paragraph your own.

My advice to me — do another writers retreat

At the end of the day, my take-away was: Do another writers retreat. I’ve always thought those fancy retreats to mountain cabins and seashore cottages an indulgent waste of time. Why go someplace to write when you can just slip downstairs to your writing room and get to work?

Well, I found out that that a designated time alone in a foreign space — Room 120 of Dante Hall, in my case — can be amazingly productive. No dishwasher to empty. No rhododendrons to deadhead. Most important, no preconceived ideas about what I was supposed to be writing today.

Over breakfast, a fellow writer had slipped me a writing prompt: “When I was five my mother . . . ” I wrote those words on a yellow legal pad and off I went for two uninterrupted hours. Once again I was five years old. My mother had put me on a school bus with a bunch of noisy big kids and sent me off to my first day of kindergarten.

When the bus stopped, I followed the big kids off the bus — and into the wrong school. Unnoticed, I wandered all over the place, looking for the kindergarten. Was I scared? No. Why not? When I find that out, I’ll know I’ve finished the story.

Meanwhile, many thanks to Hedgebrook, St. Mary’s College, Mary Volmer and my trusty yellow legal pad for a lively, productive writers retreat.

More thoughts on writing at “Writing Tips — Begged, Borrowed and Stolen From My Favorite Writing Coaches.”