Retreat / Advance / Repeat

Whether indoors or out, writers took the space they wanted for the work they needed to do.  

Question: When is a retreat actually an advance? 

Answer: When we join with others to do our creative work with focus and intention.

Deborah Schnitzer and I facilitated our second annual Writing Retreat this past weekend and, once again, we and the eight participants experienced the advances that can be made when we give ourselves the time and space to be fully who we are as Writer.

During the conversations and the shared reading of our work, I took notes; it is the only way I can (a) remember anything and (b) make meaning of what I am hearing. My practice is to then re/view those notes the day after the retreat ends and to pull from them the key points that resonate with me as a new week begins. True, sometimes I cannot read my own writing and sometimes that writing doesn’t cohere into sense. But when it does, the words captured with pen on paper hold the wisdom arising from paying close attention to our truest self as Writer.

I then work with those words, shaping and shifting them into statements of being and action, reflecting this particular group from that weekend. I share them here, because, I believe, they have value for anyone wanting to be more fully who they are and wanting to commit more deeply to doing more of what they love (and less of the endless domestic or professional drudgery that can take so much of our precious energy; that drudgery is definitely worth retreating from).

Take these words and reshape them yourself to suit your own particular niche and needs in this world. Play with what is here; see what arises for you on your own page out of what is on this page…

• Perspective: Stop seeing all the other things. Ignore the side tracks
• Take the time to take up space in this world: Our words matter
• Understand the backstory: I. Am. Storyteller
• Notice where your attention goes / Notice where your resistance hits
• Writing is not self-indulgence: The way through (just about anything) is with words and tools (never too many notebooks! Or pens!)
• Deconstruct the layers / Find the meaning
• Bring all the parts together / Gather all the threads: Shape & Organize & Reorganize
• Cull from your past to craft a new story: What can you create today out of all the yesterdays?

To retreat is to retire, to withdraw, to take refuge: To give yourself time and space to do your creative work, with focus and with intention.

To advance is to progress: Sometimes this is lightning fast, sometimes snail-pace slow. Every speed counts, every step matters. 

Whoever your ‘people’ are, a creative retreat may be just the time out or time away you need to go inward, to re/view yourself as who you truly are and to move confidently forward — clear eyed, committed, inspired. But be warned; the feeling won’t last forever, so find yourself another retreat, another time — once is never enough.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.