There’s nothing quite like telling all your friends — or in this case, your readers — that you’re going on a writing retreat. It puts you on the spot. You have announced your goal, and people will want to know at retreat’s end whether you buckled down and went for it.
Yes, I did get some work done. Not a lot. Distractions came my way, and I let myself get distracted.
But I wound up with something valuable three weeks later — the feeling that those old columns I wrote for the Oakland Tribune way back in the 1980s and ’90s were not nearly as dated as I thought. Yes, they were written in the 20th century, but they have a lot to say to the 21st century. Enough for a book.
Some examples:
Writing Retreat Report
- In a 1991 column about polarized politics, I wrote, “When you are angry, you are in the right, after all. You must be right, otherwise why would you be so angry?”
- In a 1988 column about teenage gun deaths in America, I reported, “On the morning of Ricky Hamilton’s funeral, 21 boys and girls showed up on Miriam Brown’s doorstep in East Oakland. They wanted a ride to the funeral in her station wagon . . . They [also] wanted an explanation. They wanted to know why their school mate had died.”
- In a 1990 essay about my out-of-control plastics habit, I confessed, “By the time Peter and Christina were toilet trained, they had consumed maybe five diapers a day for 2½ years each. That would be 4,562 diapers, newborn to toddler, soiled, bundled and sent to the dump by the Newhalls. Now, I hear that those 4,652 diapers of ours have not decomposed. They were so carefully designed, so thoroughly high-tech that they are still there years later, defacing the planet and fouling the air over San Leandro.”
- In 1988 I summed up the motherhood experience with, “A week earlier, Christina had thrown up in my lap. I considered myself lucky. I had on a wide denim skirt that caught most of the mess.”
That’s my writing retreat report, folks. Thanks for holding me accountable. It worked.
More about the Trib at, “The Oakland Tribune Tower — A 1923 Structure With a Twenty-First-Century View.” Read about two writer friends who managed to finish their books and get them published at, “A Funny Buddhist and a Happy One.”
I love whatever you write, whenever you wrote it. You are always reflecting on whatever is going on.
I like the “whenever you wrote it.” Good to know.
Loved those pieces when I worked with you at the Trib. We worked with some fine people in the Features section. We put out a solid newspaper.
I miss the Trib. I miss the daily contact with all those interesting people. I miss the background noise of newsroom chatter and the composing room equipment. Now I’ve got turkeys and mourning doves to keep me company. But, honestly, I’ll take a Tribber over a turkey any day.