Retreat

Field report #15 - the monthly longer essay for supporters, plus recommendations for reading and listening

Star Studio at MacDowell, Peterborough, New Hampshire

I spent the last two weeks on a writing retreat about an hour north of Los Angeles. There was a glut of deadlines and projects. I needed space and quiet to put my head down and write, revise, think, daydream. Very luckily, a pair of generous friends offered me their weekend house and I packed my bags.

The retreat did not begin well. I struggled for days with loneliness. I found endless new ways to procrastinate. I set myself mini-deadlines (do x by lunch) and blew them. The house came with a pair of dogs that trailed me from room to room, giving sideways glances. Long nights, at first, spent watching television, then sleeping badly afterward. Has everyone told you to watch Succession because it’s so well written? Has nobody told you what’s so well written is the characters’ despair, and that, perhaps, a person who’s even marginally undead emotionally might experience nightmares, night after night, before realizing he’s never watching Succession again?