Summer 2012 Cape Cod Writing Retreat

It didn’t take long for most of us to realize how smart we had been in having responded to Deirdre Callanan, Don Chiapinelli, and Lauren Wolk’s offer that we might come to Cape Cod for the summer writing retreat. And by “smart”, I mean “incredibly lucky.” Those of us who had the chance to hear Lauren, Don or Deirdre speak at the April weekend, Inspiration in our writing: Who are our heroes? already knew that we would be working with extraordinary teachers of writing. What we didn’t know beforehand was how beautiful our setting would be, how hard Don had worked all summer to prepare all of the details of our time on the Cape, or how generous and gracious Deirdre and Jack Harrison would be in welcoming us to their home.

The retreat started on Saturday evening with a reception on Deirdre and Jack’s back deck, a nice opportunity to reconnect with friends from pervious New Directions events and to meet those new to us, including partners who had also made the trip.

The writing began Sunday morning, as we gathered in Deirdre’s dining room around her expansive table – actually a reclaimed worktable from a local high school library.  Each morning, Deirdre or Lauren began by reading a poem or an excerpt from a novel or short story, a work of non-fiction or even, to my delight, a picture book.  They led us in discussions of particular features of the writing, followed by exercises that alternated between devious and delightful, that produced groans and laughs and surprising writing. 

Take Lauren’s requirement that we write using only four letter words. I suspect that I am not the only one who came to the secret conclusion that surely she did not count “the” or “and”: 

Day’s work done

Wild boys trod the hard path, tall corn left and right.

July heat.

Cows look over, chew sour oats, sigh, move away.

Pants, socks, tees rank, cast off.

Boys dash then, hurl from dank pond bank,

soar, arms and legs skew.

Fast, cold pain,

Yelp, gasp.

Swim into life.

 

Lauren pushed us to think: Is this the right word or the easy word? 

Sleek and elegant in its Upper East Side certainty, the computer refused to notice the pencil.

How does everything in the scene tell the story?

Hunkered down in the most comfortable chair, which wasn’t saying much, her concentration all on that new phone, sending and reading texts, stifling chuckles. Glancing up only occasionally, sliding her eyes across the scene then back down.  Her brother leaning into the door frame, decidedly not in the room.  Her sister at the side of the bed, quiet then loud.  The scorned second wife, assigned to a corner, ignored.  It was late, and the coroner was slow to come.

But it was Deirdre’s questions that took me by surprise:

What were your childhood’s buried treasures?

What were your childhood gems?

What was precious to you?

What were your rules and what rules did you break?

What fights, play or real, do you remember?

What from your childhood would you never forget?

What did you keep in your first important place?

 

I had come certain I knew what I wanted to write about, until Deirdre asked, “What did you build, create or imagine as a child?” and something completely unexpected took flight in me. 

Wheeling and swooping, three flocks of cousins glide in from different parts of the old farmhouse and somehow, inexplicably, converge in the kitchen, heading for the front door. 

 

Earthbound, their grandmother bellows out to them as they pass, voice thick with irritation:

 

“You kids stay out of that barn!  You wreck those hay bales.  That hay is for cows, not for kids!”

 

To the flock, her words are no more than distant cries.  They pause, hover for a moment, puzzled by the sound, then answering a different call, they pivot in midair and plunge through the porch and out into the freedom of the yard.  Soaring across the wide gravel driveway and around the tractor not yet cleaned and stored for the night, bounding over the metal fence that separates people territory from cow yard, they flit across the mud and manure, still deep and thick from the morning’s rain, and land in the hardpack dirt of the barn floor.

 

Later each morning, we broke into four smaller writing groups.  Besides working with Deirdre and Lauren, we now had the chance to work with Don and with Catherine.  In these groups, we began the work on the pieces we had each brought to the retreat as our primary focus for the week, although some participants worked on new pieces created at the retreat in these groups.

I was assigned to Catherine’s group, which was put together for those of us who wanted support for professional writing. This gave me the chance to work closely with Anne Adelman, Billie Pivnick, Sheila Felberbaum, and Mary Davis, who provided an outstanding audience for a book chapter I was revising.  These groups met for four of the six days, and on the other two days we were split up and had the opportunity to work with other teachers and participants.

In the afternoons and evenings, we had the option of writing or of enjoying the many tourism opportunities the Cape has to offer. For me, this meant trips to the beach, to Provincetown and to art galleries, and a nearly constant consumption of seafood.  If lobster could somehow be incorporated into a dish, I’m sure I ate it.  Early mornings likewise offered opportunities to enjoy the Cape. Several participants gathered regularly for morning walks through the Harwich Conservation Trust. For Billie, Don and I, early mornings meant unforgettably beautiful swims across Sand Pond.    

Our final night was spent as it should have been – celebrating with photos and toasts and with a wonderful potluck, followed by a reading in which each of us had the opportunity to present a portion of what we had been working on during the week. I think Deirdre and Lauren must have been asked more than a few times whether we could come back to the Cape for the Summer 2013 New Directions Retreat. 

 

Photos by Don Chiapinelli and Gail Boldt