Friday morning I left for my second--what I hope is annual-- retreat with my writing group. You can read all about it the first one here. Or if you don't feel like reading it, essentially four of my friends/colleagues and I rent a house in rural Wisconsin to dedicate ourselves to work during the day and drinking wine/eating/talking at night. We also make time for walks and lunch. It's pretty great.

This year my trip was cut short a day partially because I performed in a reading on Thursday night but also since Steve would be home alone with both an infant and a 6-month-old it seemed prudent maybe just to do the express retreat.

Friday morning I woke up, excited for the first time in a long time to be accountable only to myself--it didn't matter to anyone but me what time I left for Wisconsin, and got on the road by 6:45.

I downloaded the audiobook of Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic, which so many people had recommended to me that I overcame my suspicion of a woo-woo sounding self-help book about creativity. To be sure, some of it was woo-woo, or maybe for a person not quite in the same stage of creative life as me, but it was good listening and very inspirational. Since I'd been struggling with my novel so much it was very reassuring to hear that even for successful, prolific authors like Gilbert, it can be easy-come-easy-go sometimes when it comes to inspiration and drive. She talked about the "shit sandwich" that creatives have to eat a lot, just meaning that you can't have a creative career without dealing with the more depressing, difficult or tedious parts--it just comes with the package. I liked the way she wrote about Eat, Pray, Love too, almost like it was more like something that happened to her as opposed to something she made in order to have the authority to tell me what to do.

With the book in my head and a lot of coffee under my belt I got to Spring Green, greeted my friends, and got to work. Pretty soon the shit sandwich was served to me on a plate. I wrote the majority of my novel last year and then, after a little pregnancy scare, moving, hosting Thanksgiving, the holidays, having the baby, going back to work, starting my freelance career--I lost the thread. And it had been lost long before that, too--it was apparant that I had kept a bad map when I was writing it. Stuff was repeated, multiple times, too many characters were involved, and big sections clearly didn't belong yet I hated the idea of sacrificing wordcount--stuff I had written!--for the greater good. I wondered, as I always do, whether a lack of motivation on the creator's part signals a project's worth.

However, as always, it helped just to say this out loud to my friends who reassured me with "Oh, I hate that feeling" instead of saying "What are you talking about? Are you sure you want to work on something you feel ambivalent about?" Plus, this trip was about focusing only on my book: at home, it's too easy to feel that that time is wasted if I'm thinking about a non-sold book instead of a deadline, laundry to fold, a meal to plan. I kept at it.

I got a lot of work done in the end and my happiest breakthroughs were finding a couple of little neat solutions, scene-wise, that cut out a lot of crap, and just giving myself permission to throw away--for now anyway, they are not gone forever--the scenes I knew in my heart added nothing to the book. There was a lot of talk of wordcount on the retreat but I know it's better to have a good 50,000 word draft than 70,000 words that are diluted and meandering. I feel excited to work on the book again today--I have many deadlines and sheets to wash but 25 short minutes to work on it sounds exciting and not overwhelming.

Aside from the writing it was a fantastic trip as always. It's so beautiful out there, with rolling hills and cows and dilapidated red barns and air that smells like smoke and frost on the grass in the mornings.

My friends and I live together quite well (it helps that the house has exactly the right amount of space for five grown women.) Wendy made a delicious chicken chili, Molly curried tuna salad, Kelly carnitas tacos. (I brought cold cuts because Kelly repeatedly suggested that I do and I took the hint.)

A photo posted by Claire Zulkey (@klarzulk) on Nov 7, 2015 at 5:06pm PST

For Kate's night we went to Arthur's Supper Club which was everything. I paid for our pre-dinner cocktails--four old-fashions and a glass of white wine--and the check was $24. The restaurant was King-Arthur-themed which included many digital picture frames on the walls showing slideshows of medieval castles. The special that night was all-you-can-eat prime rib, but I don't love prime rib all that much, so I opted for pork chops, which the friendly waitress vouched for as a pig farmer herself. They were delicious and salty, served with applesauce and hash browns. We ate cheese curds before that and I helped myself to the salad bar, spooning both ranch dressing and cottage cheese onto my plate generously. At the restaurant we played a game wherein we tried to match Midwestern states with their East Coast counterparts (so watch this space for the results of that.)

And then we left Sunday morning. I was excited to see the boys, who were in Steve's capable hands (he learned that while being the solo parent is exhausting, it's oddly easier than you'd think, too) but first had lunch with my beloved cousin Mary whom I don't get to see as often as I'd like. We met at a restaurant outside Madison called the Great Dane and sat in a huge booth that featured our own beer taps at the table.

I love the Midwest. I love my friends and my family.

Back to work.