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| Back Deck, Mailer House |
Time gets away. There's so much to do, conversations to have, quirky Provincetown streets and galleries to stroll, writing to be done. SO much writing to be done! You're here, you're 100% here, you can go to the Mailer House and sit in chairs that Mailer sat in and BE in the space that housed the Uncontainable, the Mailer Life Force. You exchange work with fellow attendees, discuss phrases, words, sentences, you exult about favorite writers, favorite books, you jot down names and titles that others love, you listen to Colum McCann like you're listening to Miles Davis or Thelonius Monk or Frank McCourt, you cannot NOT listen, you're rapt, mesmerized, awed, you absorb every word, every Irish-brogued pronunciation, you suddenly (or maybe gradually, but eventually) realize embrace admit the most important thing, the thing you've been avoiding, the thing that has terrified you and paralyzed you and daunted you and taunted you - you declare yourself a Writer.
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All the attendees live in different types of quarters; small rooms in guest houses, or B&Bs on Commercial St or, in my case, in a three floor condo across rt. 6 (a shared condo). Voila - my workspace.
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| Condo Bedroom Office, #1 Seashore Park |
You just nailed upon what is ultimately the pot of gold at a writer's retreat - more than writing, more than learning from an inspired teacher, more than being among peers.... The time/space/luxury that forces the eruption to the surface of one's identity as a WRITER! Of course, all those things I just mentioned contribute to that eruption occurring, and that is why writers' retreats are SO essential. But because writing is such a solitary endeavor, it is so hard to be solidly certain of what you're doing, to be solidly certain of the fact that your very interest and act of writing does indeed qualify you as a "writer"!
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