Beating A Hasty Retreat

On creating containers for creativity.

Oh, AI Image Generator, you slay me. What is happening with this writer’s many hands? What exactly is that machine? Why is there a portal in the window blinds? And did she just take a bite out of that book?

When I started out as a writer, I had a discipline problem. I wanted to write a novel but I also wanted to lie in my backyard reading novels. I remember being furious at myself for frittering away the few hours I had before needing to go to work. Day after day, I resolved to get straight to work. Instead I read. I remember writing short stories about visitations from the Muse, because back then I still believed that writing had something to do with inspiration and I was sure I wasn’t writing because the Muse hadn’t put me in a headlock and dragged me to my desk.

Journalism changed all that for me. When I began writing on deadline, all my ideas about the Muse vanished. I learned that the Muse arrives sometime after you sit down and start working and that my editor frankly didn’t care whether she showed up or not, as long as I turned in my copy on time.

Deadlines teach you discipline, and once I became a journalist I became an extremely disciplined writer. My writing rules have been different at different times in my life: sometimes it’s a set amount of time per day (anywhere from 1 to 8 hours, depending on the project), sometimes it’s a set amount of words, sometimes it’s a set number of pages in the outline I’m working from. I like to succeed, and so I set goals that keep me feeling successful.

I’m not fussy about where I work, but I don’t like noise. I’ve been known to shake my fist at leaf blowers and jack hammers and to yell out the window at barking dogs. Noise canceling headphones are good. Total silence is better.

During the pandemic years, I churned out books, one after another. There was a stillness available to me — to all of us — that I complained about but also relied upon. For a while, even the construction noise was quiet. The dogs had their owners at home with them and didn’t bark. It was lovely!

But these days, it’s not the neighborhood noise I complain about as much as the noisiness of the world. The emails that slowed to a trickle during the pandemic are once again a torrent. With a new book out, there are more career-associated demands on my time: travel, publicity, speeches, social media, and all those endless emails.

As someone who seasoned in a news room, I always found the idea of writing residencies a bit silly. I needed time to write, and money to buy the time, but I didn’t need a special place. Any old where would do.

But now, I do. It embarrasses me to admit it, but I need to get away from the very desk where I’ve written so many books. I need the container that a dedicated writing retreat provides — the bright line around the days or weeks that says: Do Not Disturb.

This is where writing retreats come in. Retreats give me permission to leave the emails unanswered, and the social media accounts unattended. They allow me to sink into the struggle that is the start of a new project, the floundering around in a manuscript that doesn’t yet have its voice or its rhythm or its flow.

I’m heading out on one such retreat this week. I’ll be gone for two weeks, and I hope that I’ll have found my way into a new project by the time I return, or at least struggled haltingly in vaguely the right direction. I’ve learned that sometimes a retreat can allow me to pound out a good chunk of a manuscript, and sometimes it just gives me the space to fail repeatedly, to write chapters I don’t like and won’t use, day after day. Writing won’t be rushed, unfortunately, and having the space to fail is an amazing gift, as horrible as it generally feels in the moment.

Creativity needs containers. When you can do anything, it becomes easy to do nothing. Each choice closes some doors and opens others, and in the early stage of a project, it can be hard to know whether those were the right doors or the wrong ones. A retreat is a container: a particular place set aside for doing the hard work of opening doors, walking through them, seeing where they lead, and then opening others.

But there are lots of containers out there. My critique group is fond of the Pomodoro method — 25 minutes on a timer for writing, then a five minute break, repeated 3 to 5 times before taking a longer break. In this case, time is the container.

When I was drafting the second Feylawn novel, I frequently went to one of the UC Berkeley libraries to write. There, space was the container. Once I walked into that hushed building, I knew what my assignment was. I came there to write, and write I did.

Writing longhand is a container. So is using something like Freewrite, which makes it almost impossible to backtrack while you’re drafting.

Assignments are containers too. Restrictions on form, subject, or style. Sonnets, sestinas, and ghazals are containers. So are writing prompts. Write in meter. Write in the second person. Tell the story of the unhinged AI-generated illustration that adorns this post. The limitations push you forward. Matt Kendrick, in his craft substack, recently offered some restriction-based prompts, observing that:

There are an infinite number of possible restrictions, and every restriction or combination of restrictions (because in all stories, we aren’t just restricting ourselves in one dimension, but in several dimensions all at once) will lead to a unique new scenario or a unique new angle onto a scenario that has been considered many times before.

Containers are little space-stations in the vast universe of possibility that is the creative process. They are a place to tether yourself so that you can begin.

All of which means that I am absolutely thrilled to be heading off into a container of my own. Who knows what will come of it. I already have too many plans for the time allotted. But I have promised myself that I will make time to read novels as well as to write one. Spending hours reading instead of writing is a talent I seem to have lost. I’m hoping to get it back.

In Other News…

• I'm thrilled, touched, and amazed that my first published short story, The Jeanines of Summer, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

• Accountable has been named a Best Book of the Year by School Library Journal, The Chicago Public Library, and Shelf Awareness.

• Accountable is a Finalist for a 2023 Golden Poppy Award from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance.

• Wild Blue was named to Chicago Public Library’s 2023 Best of the Best List.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end.

I bow to you,

Dashka