Last day of the writing retreat

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Essential bathroom reading in our #Wisconsin rental house.

A photo posted by Claire Zulkey (@klarzulk) on

Previous entries from this trip live here.

My only complaint about this trip is that I never slept well this trip, and this night was the worst. I must have come down with a tiny something because I felt chilly and hot and, like I said, had Taylor Swift going through my head all night. Fortunately it was otherwise a restful weekend.

After breakfast I set up at the dining room table to work for an hour and then took a break to pack and shower. I don't typically shower every day but paradoxically I feel dirtier if I'm just sitting around instead of doing stuff, and nothing makes me feel more like that than driving, which I'd be doing that day.

Once I was clean I joined Kate in the living room to read for a half hour and then jammed through one last half-hour of writing. I'm glad I did, because I stumbled over a question that only experienced authors could answer, so if I had passed up that chance to work I wouldn't have been able to informally poll three published authors.

Finally it was time to get going. We took out the trash, separated our groceries to take home, consolidated the laundry and ran the dishwasher. Wendy relieved the owners of the house of a copy of the book version of the movie "Sergeant Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band" but left three cool vintage books about famous women in its stead.

IMG_8632 copy.jpgKate drove off to Madison to pick Molly up and Wendy, Kelly and I had some business to take care of before we got home to Chicago: eat at Culver's. I was so full from all the pasta and cookies from the weekend that I had to force myself to finish my ButterBurger and I needed to enlist the help of my friends to polish off the fried cheese curds but I'm a completest. It all happened. By the way, have you ever been to a Culver's that wasn't staffed by the nicest young people? We got cheap gas on the way out, buying some New Glarus Spotted Cow for our husbands to thank them for taking care of our houses and children while we were gone. I also contemplated buying Paul a little stuffed cow or something but he has more than enough stuffed animals right now. So I got him a Culver's bib instead. It was free.

I'm glad Kelly was in the car, because once we got near Madison, the driving was pretty tedious. We made one pit stop to a great gas/station store that, based on its assortment of both Bears and Packers stuffed animals, seems to be the general midpoint between Illinois and Wisconsin. I wish I had thought to write down its name because it was actually a great stop with their own cheese department and lots of little foodie treats but by that point we were deep into "Serial" and I just wanted to get back on the road and listen to the show.

serial-social-logo.pngI had heard the first episodes of "Serial" on This American Life and was rather "meh" about it but Kate told us she was obsessed with it, to the point that she stayed up late Friday night listening to the latest episode and spent part of her retreat time delving into Reddit boards and such on it, so I was intrigued and Kelly let me listen to more on the way home even though she heard them already on the way up with Kate. I'm definitely hooked now too--I love how it keeps you changing your ideas of what might have happened, sort of like "The Staircase," which is another great true crime story.

Anyway, that's kind of about it. I dropped Kelly off at home and got home myself and ended up going to bed around 7 PM because I was exhausted (Steve was nice and let me do that.) I finished Still Life With Breadcrumbs and was able to sleep without hearing Taylor Swift in my dreams.

I would definitely do this again and hope we can make it an annual event. Not only did I get work done on my book (I increased the books' wordcount by 1600 even after my major editing) and just got invigorated and excited by the project and being around great friends who are also talented and generous in their expertise - plus, getting away from the city for a weekend is always a good thing.