#15 unknown feels & other intimacies
in which I reflect, at last, on writing retreat
Why do you write?
This was the first question we were asked by Declan, the facilitator of the queer writing retreat I arrived at for the third year running (a house now filled with good friends and interesting strangers alike, to say nothing of the dog… or the cat).
It was late on a Monday evening, 9.30pm, though it felt much later than this after a long day of travel up from Brighton to Anstey’s house in the Bridge of Dee… I was finally here. Was I finally here? Had it really been a year since last September?
Deliriously tired and running nearly entirely on adrenaline and sugar, Declan’s question hung in the air like the narrative voice in the Stanley Parable, paused: waiting for me to make a move.
Met with the blank page and too sleepy to filter my thoughts through my usual standards of what good writing should be, these were the first words I wrote:
I write because when it works, it feels like magic - and when it doesn’t, it feels like the truth.
So, what will it be today? Magic or the truth?
I suppose I can’t know until the pen touches the page.
And though the five day retreat - far too short and sweet to feel real only a few weeks later - liberated me from my self-consciousness around what writing could or couldn’t be, somehow I’ve found myself back in old muddied habits again.
During my week away, I responded with playfulness and earnestness alike to various levels of confrontation in the prompts, which should’ve been expected from a retreat called “unknown feels”, and yet consistently took me by surprise.
Questions like: how will you start the book you wish to write? What makes it impossible to go on? And: if you did know, what would the answer be?
In response to the first, I wrote: the tangled web of hope, lost. And to the second, waterbuffalo. Or, a music box.
And not just this, there was writing that didn’t look like writing at all…
Cut-up poems made of Declan’s zine-handouts (a trademark of his workshops), pasted into a hand-bound notebook I made the day before travelling to Scotland, and journal entries scribbled onto pink carbon copy receipt paper from Cairo (inexplicably named كبتن أوردر).
In essence, I just let myself play without the usual interventions of reason. All the while, feeling inspired and held by the other writers in the house, in our shared and sacred absurdity.
What a privilege it was to have those days, to feel like I could breathe again, creatively. To stretch into myself. No emails, or schedules, no measures of pass or fail. Only that secret third thing which nourished my inner spirit most.
Looking back, I didn’t write what I expected to write. But who ever does what they’re expected to do? How boring a life would that be, amiright?
Though I’m not sure we should still be measuring our lives according to breakthroughs and sublimity, I will say this…
If there was any moment of that week that felt close to a breakthrough, it was: realising that my job isn’t to write everything or to write perfect, but to write enough to go on, and no more than that.
And, if there was any moment of that week that felt close to sublime, it was this: sitting at the edge of the River Dee with three of my friends in the whispered excitement of early morning, waiting patiently for an otter to appear.
Thank you for reading & other intimacies, a letter where I write about intimacy, human and non-human.
I’ll be sharing more snippets of my writing (zines, mini-essays, and poetry) from my time at Anstey’s and beyond over the next few weeks, and returning to publishing newsletters weekly from October! Hooray.
Till then, tell me: why do you write? What secret third thing does your spirit need above all else? And is there a way to make room for it in your everyday life?
Let me know…
Links
To Anstey’s house: AKA Writing South West Scotland AKA home of Pen and Barb and (almost) as many cakes as violins
To Declan’s work: AKA the zine-making poet-professor-facilitator-extraordinaire
To the Stanley Parable: AKA an otherwise inexplicable game you should play at least more-than-once in your life
Thanks again for reading.
With love,
- Mai