Solo Writing Retreat: Travel Prep

I was obsessing about which books to take with me on my solo writing retreat when I realized I could just use my Kindle. Huge relief! I also realized there’s no reason to create stress and pressure for myself with this month-long solo expedition into my work-in-progress. The plan is to immerse myself in the drafts I have and go from there. I have no idea where I’ll end up but I do have a sense that I need to wrap this book project up.

I’m pairing the writing with meditation at the nearby Temple of the Universe, run by Michael Singer, author of The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment. And, to kick it all off, I am doing a three-day retreat on the Sadhana of Prana at the Amrit Yoga Institute in Silver Springs, Florida.

I’ll be staying at a cozycottage on twenty acres of farmland outside of Alachua, Florida which is about a twenty-minute drive from Gainesville and fifteen minutes from Michael Singer’s property. 

How did this all happen?

I had the intuitive thought to create a writing retreat for myself, travel somewhere for an entire month. In considering where I might go I thought of Santa Fe or Taos in nearby New Mexico, Ojai, California, where I’ve enjoyed attending workshops before, or, the next thought occurred to me, why not travel to the area near Singer’s meditation retreat and property, as described in his book, The Surrender Experiment. I shot The Temple of the Universe an email saying I was planning to be in the area to write and could they recommend a nearby place to stay? To my surprise, I received a friendly response the very next day with some suggestions and so I landed at a lovely cottage with an amazing hostess. Within days of having the intuition to create the trip, everything fell into place, including reserving my flights using the surplus of miles I had saved up.

In getting ready for this trip, I at first felt like I had to pack everything but the kitchen sink, but once I solved the book problem, I relaxed and now I’m simplifying it across the board. I’m taking capris and my softest most comfortable t-shirts, a swimsuit, a robe, underwear, a light jacket, my bike shorts and gloves, and that’s about it. Oh, and my laptop which I took into the Geek Squad to get the WiFi connection problem I’d been having fixed. Check. My hostess graciously agreed to provide a printer and I bought some ink. I have a few thumb drives with my work-in-progress on them, as well as a hard copy of the MS and notes from my mentors Lidia Yuknavitch and Emily Rapp Black. I’m taking a few meditation books, a journal, and two writing books:

Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative Paperback – April 2, 2019 by Jane Allison

The Writer's Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life, Second Edition Paperback – September 15, 2018, by Priscilla Long

I will spend some reading time with Marguerite Duras, Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer, Rainier Maria Rilke, and whomever else strikes my fancy that I can download on my Kindle, but mostly, I plan to write.