Iscritto Toscana (Writing Tuscany)

Chasing Sheep: 8 Tips To Maximize Your Writing Retreat Experience (As Imagined By Tinesha Davis)

There I was, standing in the gravel driveway of the Tuscan villa where I’d be living for the next three weeks. I was armed with a 105-pound suitcase, a Kindle, my laptop and three spanking new notebooks ready for me to pour literary genius into them. I mean why wouldn’t I? I had waited thirteen whole months for this day to get here. Now here I was, over-packed, very eager and ready…so I thought.

At dinner, I balled and un-balled my hands. I was anxious. I wanted to skip the small talk. I wanted to spend all of my time doing what I and eight others were selected to do as the 2010 Book-in-a-Day Fellows in Italy. I wanted to finally put a year’s worth of novel ideas down on paper. I wanted to pull together two decades worth of poems. I wanted to revamp other material into a Young Adult novel. I wanted to write.

Finally I was able to steal away, gather my gear, sit down and pen out….NOTHING. It was okay, I told myself. It had to be a case of jetlag. I’ll go to bed, wake up early and sit for at least five hours hammering out my novel. Morning came and in came the problem I didn’t know I had—it was disguised as a herd of sheep. And I wanted to chase them.



For the next few days I changed up “writer” locations, talked through my process, searched hard and fast (and sometimes slow and light) for a routine that would work for me, would inspire me. And eventually, way late into the fellowship, I did find these things and got down to business. But now that I’m home, with Tuscany 4,364 miles away, I’ve been able to reflect on my time there, on my craft, on my process. The following 8 tips are what I learned:

Tip #1

Work out your excuses before getting to the writing retreat. You’ll find that excuses have a way of not only following you but also reinventing themselves in cute, colorful ways.

When I arrived at our villa in Tuscany area of Ortimino, Italy, I thought I would leave the excuse of not having enough time to write behind. And boom! Just like that I could not write for five days. Okay, “could not” are strong words… I DID not write for five days. Turned out my attention span needed to be kept on a leash. I kept getting distracted by uh, me. Now, after I’d been given all the time in a day to write, my excuse magically morphed into Oh, snap can you believe this view, to Wait a minute, I think I hear a conversation on the second floor, to Dag, is that a hummingbird—hold up you mean a hummingbird isn’t really a bird, to Did a herd of sheep just run by?!? And then, the next thing I knew, after exploring each and every one of these phenomena, it was time for a three-hour afternoon siesta, then time to eat, then time to bond over a bottle of vino with my fellow Fellow Marjory Wentworth, poet laureate of South Carolina (aka My roommate). See how my time found a way to piddle itself away? See how I refuse to accept responsibility?



Tip #2

Get a jumpstart on the habit you hope to start while away on the retreat. If your goal is to write at least two hours in the morning, every morning—start this habit at home by writing at least fifteen minutes every morning (see, this goes hand in hand with the excuse tip…this is working it out). You’ll find that when you actually get to the retreat that your habit will not only become better but grow stronger simply because your mind already sees the habit as your norm and unlike me, you won’t get as easily distracted by stupid stuff like sheep in your backyard minding their own business.

Tip #3

Get the location and the other Fellows out of your system. This means give yourself permission to take the first two to three days to do nothing but explore your new environment and the people you will be sharing it with (yeah yeah yeah, I know I just told you to form a habit but hey, I did already warn you about my tricky attention span). See, if I would have done this I wouldn’t have gone through the motions of sitting down to write and drawing blanks for the first five days when what I wanted to do was get the inexplicable urge to run after sheep out of my system. So instead of resisting your desires, what you should do the first few days is see see see and talk talk talk (preferably until you’re blue in the face and sick of hearing not only your voice but everyone else’s too). With that out of the way, you are now free to create.



Tip #4

Immediately pick two (in case one drops you) Fellows as your best friends. I mean you did just thoroughly talk to everyone so you should have an idea of who you click with. You’ll find that being away on a writing retreat (especially abroad) can be like an episode of Survivor and you do not want to be the one voted off the island. They’ll be days when you feel bitchy and snarky, which is no fun if you don’t have an ally to snark to. And having allies to snark to will prevent you from blowing up the entire love fest complete with flipped over tables and thrown olive pits.  But honestly, these best friends are not only great hang out partners or personality driven sounding boards, they will also be great reviewers, critics, and listeners of all of your fabulous literary ideas. So if you can swing it, make sure you think your friends are talented too.



Tip #5

If you can’t bring you on the fellowship, bring your representative. Okay, let me be a little more clear. Bring the more pleasant, fun version of you. The you that plays well with others, the you that shows up on interviews and first dates. Not the you who is uptight, overly judgmental, and ready to start bar brawls at the drop of a green olive. A writing retreat is not the place for you to be “keeping it real.” Maintain a certain level of respect, decorum and tact (which you can immediately drop when either in the presence of your new found best friends or the sheep).



Tip #6

Don’t buy people back home anything! Hey, they won’t like what you pick out anyway plus the shopping could take away from precious writing time. Okay okay, I did pick out some bright green purses and a shrink-wrapped piece of wild boar complete with Italian labels so that we have no idea which part of the pig it is. And yes, I slipped tip #6 in due to me holding a grudge because no one was excited about these things.



Tip #7

Try to work your surroundings into your work When in Ortimino I found that the dogs (could have been wolves) could not help but to howl ALL NIGHT LONG. So since I couldn’t sleep and a piece of my novel takes place on a Native American reservation, I decided to work the night noise into the story with passages such as:

The dogs sing at night—a dirge. One by one, mile by mile, they all join in until the reservation is awake with their noise. We must learn to sleep through this. Thrown shoes won’t quiet these dogs. They don’t do this during the day. Shane says it’s because they are too busy working, hunting for food. So at night their tummies must rumble. Hunger is why they howl, I think.

Tip #8

Lastly and most importantly, relax, have fun, and do some things you’ve never done before (the more scandalous, the better). This will help if you didn’t listen to Tip #1. You’re going to need something to draw from. New points of inspiration.  As for me: I rode a boar, was in on a hedgehog rescue mission, hugged a motherless milky three day old goat, ate the heads off of 6-inch anchovies, swam at midnight with a bottle of plumber’s wine, puffed a hand rolled cigarette, hitchhiked from one Tuscan city to another, and…chased a herd of sheep.

updated 3 days ago