Last week slipped away from me in a frustrating fashion. There were so many great presentations from the Women in Publishing Summit that I wanted to blog about, but then I found myself approaching the weekend and needing to prepare for my ladies’ retreat to The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Wisconsin. I say that in the most loving way possible because it was beautiful and quiet and open and just what I needed.
I mean, LOOK at this little farmhouse.
And the view:
And this DESK:
Everything about it screamed sit down and write. (It helps my productivity if a setting bosses me around a bit.) And that little ladder on the right? It leads to a tiny nook that satisfies my inner 8-year-old.
I didn’t grow up with a treehouse, so this seems as close as I’m likely to get to the magic of private, aerial spaces. Also, it was pretty hard to haul my thirty-year-old carcass up there, so I see now why you sort of age out of this particular magic.
This lovely rental home is just outside of New Glarus, Wisconsin, which is a surprisingly adorable town with Swiss charm, a top-notch brewery, and all the requisite cheese curds for a proper visit to America’s Dairyland.
Living in Chicago, I’m accustomed to the ordered houses and apartment buildings pressed close together like boxes on a pantry shelf. My eyes expect to see bodies moving up and down the street regardless of what time I look out the window. So there was something refreshing, then alarming, then almost thrilling about turning around in a complete circle and seeing no one — just flat, white fields broken up by plumes of dried grasses and wispy winter trees. Rather than looking or feeling dead, it seemed calm, waiting, knowing even better than us that spring always cycles back again.
It was the perfect place to pause, take a breath, and write a bit. My job and my daughter demand so many pieces of me, and the writer piece falls behind the shelf too often. But for one weekend, it took priority.
I didn’t feel like taking my laptop, which is my standard writing implement, so I dug an old notebook out of my closet and toted that instead. I often forget how tricky hand writing can be; it takes longer (for me), and you’re left with a bit of a mess on the page.
Lines are scratched out, carets stick my afterthoughts in, and question marks litter my areas of doubt.
But at the end of an hour, when I had perhaps written one decent sentence, quilted together from the salvaged remnants of the cuts, I thought about what that would look like on my computer.
It would have been a line and a half, and I would have released the long-suffering sigh of someone doomed to always see time move faster than progress.
Yet there’s something about getting to view every curvy line signifying a nope, and each convoluted arrow leading to a wait, this! It shows me the very real work I’ve done. The silent task of sliding the puzzle pieces to the front of my mind and snapping them into their ideal fit. The unseen effort of self-editing, finding the balance between word vomit and refinement.
It’s a mess, but so is the inside of my head.
Sometimes a physical representation of a mental struggle is all you need to feel validated.
So thank you, New Glarus, for the mac ‘n’ cheese pizza, the cracked pepper cheese curds, and the space to think on the page.
Amanda Gibson 