Wildacres Day 8

Sunday, July 7, 2013, got off to a great start. I set my alarm for 6:30, got up quietly and walked up to the canteen, where Marci, Carol, and I meditated for 10 minutes. Marci left to go shower, and Carol and I walked around the retreat center for a while until breakfast at 8. The morning meditation just seems to make the whole day go better. I have been meditating on my own almost every day, but it felt very good to sit with a group. My home Sangha will be meeting back on Cape Cod today, and I send them good wishes through that mysterious network of meditation and mindfulness.

After breakfast I did laundry. I feel guilty that most of the folks here would have to go to a Laundromat in Spruce Pine, but the five of us in the guesthouse have our own washer and dryer.

While the laundry was drying I went to the lobby where I got an Internet signal to post this. I also re-read Jessica Handler's guidelines for the critique sessions. I didn't realize I was supposed to write a note to each participant. I'll do that between now (10 a.m.) and the class (2:30 p.m.)

Sunday afternoon was our first workshop class with our teacher, Jessica Handler, who is a successful author. I like her a lot. We talked about the nature of nonfiction. Jessica mentioned the phrase, “true stories well told,” which I like a lot. We discussed the nature of authorial integrity—do you trust the author? Do you trust the narrator’s voice? Other questions to ask are: “Is the setting clear?” and, “What’s at stake?”

We critiques two students’ work, and I volunteered to be one of the students to be critiques on Monday.

After dinner there were readings from four faculty members, and they were very good. I noticed that many of them made reference to Southern culture, reminding me that I am in the South. There was a party in the evening, but I went to bed early.

 

Wildacres Day 7

Wildacres Day 7

Saturday, July 6, 2013, was the end of the writers’ retreat at Wildacres, and the beginning of the writers’ workshop.

 

At 5:30 there was a “mixer” on the patio outside the canteen, although we all had to move inside when it began to rain again. It was an opportunity to meet the new writers who arrived that day. Last week there were about 50 writers and 50 others who were attending workshops for potters and storytellers. On Saturday the potters and storytellers left the mountain and 50 more writers arrived. I am glad I was here for both weeks. I had the first week to get comfortable with 50 other writers, and now more people have arrived.

 

After dinner, we had an orientation. Besides the rules and regulations (don’t hike alone, don’t pester the instructors, no smoking), the workshop director, Judi Hill, told a lot of jokes. There are little green dots on the nametags of some of the attendees, including mine. We were told the green dots identified first-time participants, but Judi said it identified people with STD’s. That got a good laugh.

Then we had a little while to gather in our workshop classes. I have signed up for a creative nonfiction workshop with a teacher names Jessica Handler. So in the evening Jessica and 10 students all met in the canteen and got organized. We have all submitted 10-page samples. And we all have copies of them, in a packet that is 100-pages long. Two students volunteered to be the subjects of our first critique session, Sunday. Then we will go over two samples each session.

 

There was also a late-night party at 10 p.m., but I went to bed early because another student, Marci, from Boone, N.C., suggested meditating in the canteen at 7 a.m. I also re-read the samples we will be discussing in the first workshop.

Wildacres Day 6

 

July 5, 2013:

Last night I went to bed and read the last section of Janna Zonder’s book Magenta Rose. This morning I sat next to her at breakfast and told her how much I enjoyed the book. (It is available from Amazon. She walked back to the Guest House with me and autographed my copy of her book. We had a lovely conversation. This is all so interesting.

I am writing this at 9:30 a.m., and now plan to work until noon on Chapters 15 and 16.

* * *

It’s about 10 p.m. now, and we had an exciting day. Yes I did make progress on my book. I am up to Chapter 17 now.  As usual in the mornings, I was working at a side-table near the picture window in the living room of the guest house. Claude was at his usual place at the dining-room table. His wife, Susan, was working in their room, but she came out and conferred with Claude from time to time. Will was in his room.

Daryl usually works at the table with Claude, but he spent most of the morning taking a nap on a sofa in the living room. After lunch, I came back and saw Daryl taking another nap. I thought that was strange. After lunch the sun came out for the first time all week. I went out to my Mazda Miata, which was parked next to Daryl’s nearly identical Miata. He and I had talked a lot about how much we loved our Miatas, despite the fact that the week of rain had gotten the carpets of both our cars wet. The roofs leak in prolonged rain. IN an attempt to dry out the soggy interior, I put the top down in my Miata, cranked up the heater, and drove up the Parkway a couple of miles to Little Switzerland, where I got a chai tea and checked the Internet. I uploaded the previous day’s blog entry. When I got back to Wildacres, I went for a short hike. I just looped around the Mountaintop Trail, which curves around the western side of the Wildacres property. It only takes about 20 minutes to walk that trail from the Guest House to the dining hall. Then I completed the loop back to the Guest House by the paved path through the middle of the complex.

When I got back—about 5 p.m.—two Wildacres staff members asked if I was staying there and did I know where Daryl’s room was. They said Daryl was lost in the woods and had called his wife, who called Wildacres. The office called 911, and a team of EMT’s and other rescue folks went looking for him. Apparently several people from the retreat were also searching the woods. The staff members wanted to look through his room to see if there were any medications. They said his wife had given permission for them to do that.

All through dinner people worried about Daryl and wondered what to do. After dinner I saw Mike, the director of the retreat center. He said they had not found Daryl yet. Several of us asked if we should go look, but Mike said they didn’t want to send any more people off into the woods at this point, and that the professional search and rescue folks knew best how to do it.

 

About an hour later—about 7 p.m.—Mike asked me to go into Daryl’s room again and get a complete change of dry clothes. He said the rescue team had located Daryl and were bringing him back. They said he needed dry clothes. Marci was there and came with me. We got the clothes to Mike very quickly, and Mike rushed off to meet Daryl.

We had assumed the evening reading would be canceled, but since Daryl was located, we went ahead. The readings were wonderful as usual. About 8:30, the conference director, Judi, came in and said she had just been talking to Daryl, and he was fine. In fact, she said, he wanted to read some poems. She also reminded us all of the rule that nobody should ever hike these trails alone. A few minutes later Daryl walked into the room to thunderous applause. We were all so glad to see him.
 

Daryl and out two (almost) identical cars

 

 

Wildacres Day 5

July 4, 2013, was another rainy day at Wildacres.

After breakfast I finished Chapter 13 of my textbook and began Chapter 14.

In late morning I decided to work on drying out the interior of my car. I brought two towels out and spread them on the seat. Then I sat on them and drove the 3.5 miles into Little Switzerland. I found a bookstore and coffee shop I have loved for years and ordered a chai tea latte. Then I saw a woman I recognized from my writing conference and greeted her. She ordered a chai tea too. I am glad I ran into her because I had forgotten my wallet. Marci was kind enough to buy my chai. We also found out there was going to be a Fourth of July parade there at 4. I may go back.

After lunch I walked back to the guest house with Will. We had a nice talk. Then Mike came up. He is the director of the Wildacres Conference Center. He said something like, “So you’re going to be in one of our cabins in a few weeks?”

I said “Oh, yes, the writer-in-residence thing.”

I am really looking forward to that.

Then I wrote a new poem:

 

 The Network

Gigabytes, terabytes
stored in the cloud
Access it anywhere
It’s all in the cloud

I’ve been to the cloud
I’ve been to the mountain
The Blue Ridge is shrouded
By clouds on the mountain

From high on the mountain
I connect with the spirit
That ties us together
Because we are spirit

Stardust and spirit
Together in joy
One person’s love
Is everyone’s joy

We are all in that joy
We are all in the cloud
With unlimited storage
It’s all in the cloud.

--James W. Kershner July 2013

 

 

Wildacres Day 4

Wildacres Day 4

Wednesday, July 3, 2013, was a rainy day in Little Switzerland. There have been rain showers every afternoon for the last four days, but last night, while we were having our evening readings, the rain settled in with a steady downpour. It rained hard all night, and it still raining this morning at 9:30, while I am trying to do my morning writing.

At the readings last night, about 20 people read, I think. I recited my “New Poem,” and several people complimented me on it. The highlight was when one of the last readers got up. He had been taking notes, and he created a poem made up entirely of quotations form the previous readings. He pieced the quoted together so that they made sense, but not in the way the phrases had in their original context. Each of us reacted when we heard our own quotes or a familiar phrase form a previous reading. Sometimes a single work—like “naked”—would be enough to remind everyone of the original piece. We were all laughing, cheering or applauding by the end of his presentation.

During the breakfast announcements, one of the organizers announced that this is towel-exchange day and also “casual sex Wednesday.” I think he was kidding.

Today I plan to finish Chapter 11 and also Chapter 12. Let’s see if I can do that.

Afternoon update: Yes, and I started Chapter 13 as well. Of course these are extremely short chapters by design, roughly 1,000 words each. All I am doing is editing, rearranging and expanding on material I previously prepared as handouts for class.

In this lovely old guesthouse, there is a large living room with picture windows featuring mountain vistas. The whole house is in the style of Western ranch houses with pine paneling. Above the living room there is a balcony with two bedrooms, occupied these two weeks by Will and I. Will is 67 but looks a little younger than that. He still lives near where he was born in Western North Carolina. He said he has been to many retreats here at Wildacres—mostly in retreats for singer-songwriters. It turns out, one of his instructors right here at Wildacres was Carrie Newcomer, my all-time favorite singer-songwriter.

Will and I have a lot in common, including military service during the Vietnam War that did not include combat, and names. He is James William Wilson, and I am James Williamson Kershner, so the first 12 letters of our names are the same. And, of course, we are both writers. First and foremost, we are writers.

Wildacres Day 3

I had a major breakthrough this morning. I talked to an author who used Amazon Create Space to publish her book. She had an excellent experience and convinced me it is the way to go.

Last night at the readings, the one reading that made the greatest impression was one by a woman from Georgia named Janna Zonder. She read the first chapter of her new novel, Magenta Rave. This morning after breakfast I asked Janna if I could buy a copy of her book. She invited me to her room and we talked about publishing. I learned more in the 20-minute conversation with Janna than I have in the last six months of attending workshops and reading articles. She said the customer service at Create Space was excellent, and the cost of the process is very low. Her basic cost for each book is about $5, and she is selling the book for $12.99. She said the hardest part for her was the formatting, but I believe my experience designing newspaper pages should make that easier for me. I can’t wait to do it myself. Talking to an author about Create Space—while holding her beautiful book in my hands—was a transformative experience.

Until this morning I was harboring a prejudice against “self-published” books. Having talked to Janna, I feel different. Now I feel confident that it is the way to go for me. After workshopping my book here at Wildacres and at the Cape Cod Writers Conference, I think I will move to setting up my book through Create Space. Glenda will also be editing it, so I feel confident I will have a high-quality book.

After the talk with Janna, I returned to the Guest House for a morning of writing. The hard part is going back to The Elements of Academic Writing after getting so excited about publication options for I Just Want to Be Happy. Life is good.

In that morning of writing, I finished chapter 10 and started on Chapter 11. I also went back and re-read the first 10 chapters for consistency in tone, voice and point of view. I found out there is no escaping using second-person in this book. After lunch I walked the Mountaintop Trail, which circles the property. It was a short trail with some steep hills. It only took me about 20 minutes to walk it.

After the walk, I rested in bed and read the first four chapters of Janna’s book. It is very good. Then back to writing. I got a little writing done, but ended up mostly chatting with my housemates about foreign travel. After last year's trip to France, I felt comfortable in the conversation. I walked up to the lodge to upload this blog where these is an Internet connection. After dinner, there will be more readings. Perhaps I'll offer my new poem.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 

 

 

Wildacres Day 2

 This was the first full day at the writers’ retreat, so we began writing. I slept until the breakfast bell awoke me. Then I joined my fellow writers for breakfast in the dining hall. I am glad they had oatmeal.Then I walked back to my room in the Guest House and got scared about the necessity of having to write. My room is in a loft area overlooking the living room of the house. The living room has large picture windows facing a spectacular mountain view, although it was completely enveloped in fog this morning.

At a dining table at one end of the living room, a man was sitting with his laptop, writing. I asked him about outlets for charging his computer, and he agreed that the two-prong non-grounded outlets in the house would not accept his charger’s three-prong plug. I said there is a grounded plug in the bathroom, but I didn’t want to write there. A woman I had not seen called out from the kitchen that there was a grounded plug in there. She was writing at a counter there while charging her laptop.
Since I had charged up my laptop in the bathroom overnight, I set up shop on a side table near the picture window. It is an intricately carved wooden table that looks like an antique. I worked on Chapter 8 of the academic book, on how to write a paragraph or “chunk.”

The man at the table was working away on his project, as was the woman in the kitchen. It felt good to be a writer working among other writers. I fell into a very productive morning. By 11 a.m. I had finished Chapter 8.

Before noon I wandered up to the main lodge and sat on the patio. I tried to write there, but there was too much glare on my laptop. Later I found a good shady spot on the porch of the lodge. I could see that other writers had found their own places to write.

After lunch I made the 15-minute drive down the mountain to the Wal-Mart in Spruce Pine mostly for a rain jacket. I did bring a poncho, but it didn’t quite suit my needs here. While there I picked up some soft drinks and an adapter so that I can charge my computer in my room.
In the afternoon I finished up Chapter 10 on the Five-Paragraph essay. For part of that task, I was lying on the tan leather couch in the big living room of the Guest House. I skipped Chapter 9 for now, but I can easily go back to that. Around 4:30, people seemed to be breaking out wine. I guess the serious writing is over for the day!

We all met for dinner at 6. In addition to the writers’ workshop, there are also retreats for storytellers and musicians, and we all eat together at 6 and then the writers reassembled in the lodge for an evening of readings. About 15 people or so read from their new works between 7:30 and 9, while the rain poured outside. I hope we get sunny weather tomorrow.