The Writers’ Retreat Trilogy: Pt. 1 – The Essential Glossary

I just spent two weeks at the wonderful Artisa Writers’ Retreat in rural Italy, being in a space that is all about writing: thinking about writing, doing some writing, and eating meals with other writers at which we discuss our writing.

This is where I did a great deal of my writing:

I stayed in this very old, decommissioned tiny church, where I also slept, up in the loft.

This is the first post in a Trilogy of Writerly Posts which will share what it is like to be at a writers’ retreat. I may also cover things you could write about at a writers’ retreat, and how to construct your own writers’ retreat. But let’s start first with How To Speak Writers’ Retreat.

This is the Vocabulary you need to know, to understand all the complexity, or do I mean depth, or maybe the word is nuance, of The Writers’ Retreat Experience.

Because where does writing begin? All writing begins with Words.

Writer = One who writes.

Also often: One who does not write. Because writing is very hard work. The Writer might be found at any given time standing in front of an open refrigerator to check for new deliveries, tidying things that do not need to be tidied, or just staring off into space.

If you ask why the Writer is staring off into space, the Writer will inevitably respond, “Don’t bother me! I’m working!”

A Writer attempts to work with words, putting them into an appealing or necessary order, depending on whether this is a fiction or nonfiction Writer.

Writers labor by sitting or reclining for long stretches of time, only moving their fingers. This is how they work. Writers will not appreciate it if you insist on referring to what they do all day instead as “work,” making little quotation mark signs with your fingers at them when you say “work” in that slightly-higher-than-normal-pitched voice.

This could result in a Writer with an unhappy demeanor. It is best to avoid making the Writer’s demeanor even slightly unhappy.

When a Writer shows up at dinner with a happy demeanor, this could indicate that the day’s work was the successful completion of an entire project, or the successful completion of an entire paragraph. It is best not to ask why the Writer has arrived at dinner so happy. Just hand them some wine, and be happy that they are happy.

Retreat

Retreat means to go away, fall back, go hide, or even try to disappear.

Retreating Writers have decided that the best way to get some work done is to go away, fall back, go hide, or even disappear FROM YOU.

This is because it is YOU who is keeping the Writer from getting any meaningful work done. Writers don’t just biff off to a Writers’ Retreat to luxuriate in peaceful surroundings, lounge in nature, and have their meals prepared for them for weeks at a time, just to get some work done.

Writers have no choice but to flee to a Writers’ Retreat FROM YOU, because YOU are the reason the Writer has only managed to write, like, three sentences in three weeks.

Why can’t YOU let us get any decent work done already?

This is why YOU do not get to come to the Writers’ Retreat, and have to stay home and cook for yourself / order in / eat frozen pizza, and then clean up. But the Writer will tell you all about it afterwards, with a special emphasis on the part where all of their meals were prepared for them for weeks at a time. And they didn’t even have to clean up.

Re: Treat

Re: Treat = Regarding a Treat.

A Writer who has managed to pull even a handful of words out of thin air and paste them onto a page will inevitably expect some sort of reward for this incredible effort.

Because those words were a lot of work, and I don’t mean “work.”

The Writer is now justifiably exhausted, and requires at the very least some gestures and materials which convey appreciation for all that effort, like some kind words and a nice cup of coffee and some cookies. And a massage. And taking their car in for its annual inspection. Making sure to leave out more cookies before you go.

You can be sure that a Writers’ thoughts often return to and hover around Re: Treats.

A Writers’ Retreat

A Writers’ Retreat is a location, a place Writers apply to, hoping to be given a time slot to show up and move in, toting their laptop and loungewear.

Once at the Writers’ Retreat, the Writer gets to meet other writers, and size them all up in terms of competition and status share all about their writing project with their new writer friends. There may be novelists or poets, academic book writers or PhD students. There may even be an artist or two, someone whose stay at the Retreat requires paints and brushes, or pastels, or crayons. And loungewear.

A Muse

A Muse is a source of inspiration which, once located, helps the Writer to mystically channel the magical flow of words onto the pages.

The Muse needs to be sufficiently exotic or novel, and this is why The Writer can’t just stay home working at the desk in the corner of the dining room. The dining room lacks a Muse! Plus, it is always full of clean laundry that cries out loudly to be put away! The Writer has no idea how this laundry even gets to the dining room.

The Writer needs the Muse that is found only in the beautiful countryside, in the soothing colors of Nature, in the peaceful sounds of birds, and in the wide open sky of nowhere near home or YOU.

A Muse can also be squished together to form the word Amuse, Or: How the Writer Will Spend Their Time at the Writers’ Retreat.

Depending on the amenities provided, this could include getting bendy at optional morning yoga, swimming in the outdoor pool, going for an afternoon stroll in the peaceful olive groves, taking a nap to recover from all the yoga and swimming and walking, drinking aperitivi with all the other Writers each evening on the scenic outdoor terrace, and then laughing at a wine-filled dinner over funny stories about the quirks and novelty of the Life of The Writer, far into the night.

But if the Writer does not get enough “work” done during their two weeks at the Writers’ Retreat, it may still be entirely YOUR fault. Prepare accordingly by laying in a very large stock of cookies.

Vocabulary Quiz:

Now let’s see if you have successfully learned all of your new Writers’ Retreat Vocabulary Words and can even use them in a sentence.

1. It is best not to ask the Writer how many words they managed to write today, because:
   • A) “Managed” makes it sound like they were operating a business, which is contrary to the Writer’s emphasis on their work as a true artistic endeavor, regardless of the subject.
   • B) “Manage” makes it sound like they were trying to assemble a recently purchased furniture item, as in, “Did you manage to assemble that IKEA Noomsquatten yet?”

2. True or False: An amusing mooing moose musing in a mews would make an amusing muse.

3. If you give a Writer a cookie, it counts as:
A) Re: Treat.
B) A Treat, because a cookie is always a treat.
C) A Retreat, because you already gave them a cookie, so you are re-treating them to a cookie.
D) Stop counting already, and just hand over the cookie.

Your Score:

The answer to each question, of course, is: All Of The Above.

Which means you have failed.

And I am so exhausted from writing all of this and then tallying up your dismal score that I now have to go drink some aperitivi and do some yoga and lie down, simultaneously.

But later, if I feel up to it, you can give me a massage.