Peeing outside: The secret to productivity?
Probably not. Really, I'm just trying to embarrass my kids.
Hoo boy! It’s been a minute. The last few weeks have been jam-packed—a jaunt to the Writer’s Digest Conference in Cincinnati to teach sessions on memoir and humorous fiction, a ton of day job work, and lots of family stuff (our twin kiddos are in the thick of college applications; also, there have been funerals)—and as a result, I haven’t been able to find time to write here, let alone work on my novel in progress.
But now that I can finally catch my breath, I’m back here on the ‘Stack, and back to plucking away at my novel. I got a HUGE burst of momentum on that second item at the beginning of the month, when I had the great pleasure of spending five nights at an Airbnb in Western Massachusett for a solo retreat. This is the first time since my last retreat in June—the one among the woodland creatures and men on boats with their dicks out—that I’ve gotten away to write. As usual, it was incredibly productive.
When I got home, one of my kiddos wanted to know what, exactly, I *did* while I was out there. Like, did I literally just write all day?
So, this post is for that beloved child. And, because I only have so much longer to embarrass my children at close proximity, I’m going to make it as cringe as possible by including details about the bathroom situation. Then I’m going to share the post on Instagram, where several of her friends follow me. And maybe I’ll text a link to her boyfriend. And email it to some of her teachers. BWAH HA HA!! Slay.
Note that the below is sort of an amalgam of the four full days I spent on retreat, all of which were quite similar. To set the scene, here is the picture of the amazing Airbnb I stayed in—a little cottage tucked away on the property of a farm. No cell phone signal, no wifi, just beauty and quiet.
7:00 am — Wake up! Did you think I would laze around in bed, given that I have all day to write? Certainly not. Time is of the essence! However, I do take a little time to gaze out the window of the sleeping loft at the beautiful, misty meadow outside in hopes of seeing a deer or fox or something bounding bucolically across it. No luck.
7:10 — Decision point: There is no bathroom in the cottage (but there is a little kitchen area with a sink, so my tooth brushing and face washing needs are covered). Do I A.) I throw on a jacket and flip flops and make the walk down to the barn where the bathroom is, or B.) take advantage of the great outdoors? There is a lovely mist rising from the meadow, and also I am lazy. The answer is B.
7: 30 — I’ve got my coffee and toast with peanut butter and I’m sitting at the table in front of the giant window overlooking the meadow, still hoping to see some charismatic megafauna. Or even non-mega. Seeing none, I return to the acrostic I’ve been working on. A better person than me would probably be freewriting in a notebook to get their creative juices flowing. But me, I’m trying to remember the name of Demi Moore’s co-star in The Scarlet Letter.
8:00 — OK, enough of that. I open up my laptop, open Scrivener, and re-read a scene I wrote the the day before to get things rolling.
8:01 — Fuck. This scene is terrible. Cut and paste the entire thing into my “Deleted but not forgotten” folder.
9:00 — Having rewritten the scene I just deleted, I realize that the original version was actually better. Copy and paste it back into the document and keep writing. Now we’re cookin’ with gas!
10:30 — I’ve had a lot of coffee by now. Time to visit the meadow again. Actually, wait. Let’s take the walk to the bathroom.
10:35 — I can get wifi in the bathroom, and the texts come pinging in:
Mom, can I take the car tonight to go to Santa Fe Burrito with my friends? (Child, I am in Western Mass. Ask your father.)
<funny meme on my text thread of writer pals> <Ha ha reaction><Ha ha reaction><Ha ha reaction><funny quip about meme><Ha ha reaction><Ha ha reaction><Ha ha reaction> etc.
Sorry to text, I know you’re on PTO - are you free to go over the website copy w. the client at 10:00 am Monday?
I resist the urge to look up Demi Moore’s co-star.
10:45 — Back at the table, internet-free, thank God.
10:50 — Go back to an earlier chapter of the book and fill in some new details about my main character that I just figured out.
10:51 — This book is so bad. WTF am I even doing? Stand up and stretch and make an cranky sort of groan of despair/creakiness.
10:52 — Ooh, is that a deer? Right there at the edge of the—oh. No. It’s just a fallen tree.
12:04 — Word count: 1,823. About three times what I normally write on your average weekday, and it’s not even noon. Hot damn!! Maybe I actually will finish this first draft within a few months!
12:15 - Back in the bathroom with the wifi, I start looking at my calendar and figure out when I can do another retreat. Start searching for Airbnbs.
12:45 - Avocado toast with lox, a Green Cola, baby carrots, a clementine, and some more acrostic-ing. I’ve got G_______A_ now. Gina…? George…? Dammit.
1:00 - Reading counts as work when you’re a writer! Grab my book from the sleeping loft, lie down on the couch with the sun coming through the window, planning to read for a nice long…..zzzzzzzzz.
2:30 — I’m woken up by the sound of something scrambling around underneath the cottage. Squirrels? Baby foxes? I hope it’s baby foxes! I go outside and peek underneath the cottage, but there are no baby foxes.
I change into running gear, then hit the country roads for a long run/walk. It is gorgeous out here. Fields and woods and brooks and farms and old houses and even older cemetaries. Tons of apple orchards. Occasional artsiness/hippiness (sculptures and prayer flags and whatnot) interspersed with occasional Trumpiness (Trump flags and signs denigrating liberals and whatnot). Still no good wildlife. But cows. And lots of birds. While I’m walking, I figure out how to solve a chronology issue in the book that I’ve been wrestling with. I almost always make writing breakthroughs, whether tiny or enormous, while I’m walking or hiking. Note that both of these activities also may involve peeing outside. COINCIDENCE?
4:30 — Back at the cottage. Sit back down, ready to bang out another few hundred words, maybe even a thousand, if I can. Late afternoon is when I get my second burst of writing momentum. I read the note I left to myself in the open document before I broke for lunch: Next, write the scene where she tells her brother what’s going on.
4:33 — Ugh. I don’t want to write that scene. Does this mean that it’s not what the next scene should be? If you’re bored, doesn’t that mean your reader will be bored, too? Yes, maybe instead I should—ooh! Is that a deer?? No. It is not a deer. It is the same fallen tree I thought was a deer before.
5:00 - Hello, meadow, my old friend. I’ve come to crouch in you again.
5:45 — I’ve figured out how to make the brother conversation scene not boring—basically by adding funny dialogue to entertain myself—and it’s going swimmingly. You know what would be nice right about now? A nice big glass of sauv. blanc and some Skinny-pop cheddar popcorn, that’s what.
7:15 — Quittin’ time! Eat some of the rotisserie chicken in the fridge, along with a salad from one of those handy kits where the dressing has more sugar than your average cupcake. Final word count for the day: 2,301—but that doesn’t include all the stuff I wrote and then relegated to the Deleted But Not Forgotten folder, or the backfilling and revising I did in older chapters.
Feel briefly wistful and frustrated. Why can’t I manage to be even half as productive at home? Should I get up at 4 am instead of 6:30 am? Should I erect a little writing shed in my yard? Pee exclusively in the woods behind our house? Or should I leave my family and take up permanent residence in this cottage, if the owners are amenable? (I might want to add a bathroom if I did that.)
7:30 ish - Lie on the couch and watch one of the movies I wisely downloaded before I left home. Maybe eat a little bit o’ chocolate.
9:45 - Get in jammies and ascend to the sleeping loft, planning to read for a good solid hour, but konk out after twenty minutes.
12:42 am — Be woken up by whatever animal(s) are squeaking and scrabbling around under the cottage (I’m still hoping it’s baby foxes, but I will never know for sure) and then lie there for a while trying to talk my bladder out of being full, as if somehow I can avoid doing the thing I must do next: down the ladder, and out into the meadow once more. Since we’re out in the country, the sky is very dark and brimming with stars. If there was a bathroom in the cottage, I might never have seen them. Or heard the owls hooting in the woods.
7:00 am — Wakey wakey! As I lounge in bed for a few minutes, contemplating my good fortune, considering once again whether to use the bathroom or the meadow, and hoping for wildlife, it finally comes to me: Demi Moore’s co-star in The Scarlet Letter was Gary Oldman.
Let the day begin.
All posts on Jane’s Calamity are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you enjoy my strange brand of Substacking, and/or if you’d like to help me pay for my Airbnb writing/peeing retreats, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Or, hey, buy my book!
P.S. I recently got the very exciting news that The Society of Shame is a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize in American Humor in Writing. What an honor to be in such talented company! Speaking of which: I loved meeting a previous Thurber Prize winner, the wonderful Steven Rowley, (The Guncle, The Celebrants, Lily and the Octopus) at the Writer’s Digest conference last week. Naturally, we reveled in our hilariousness together at sunset, as one does.
P.P.S. To my kids and, really, all of you: Sorry about all the peeing stuff. It won’t happen again.
Beautifully rhythmic, like good music. :)
I do my share of peeing in the woods. It makes me feel like... a baby fox! Not really. Just like a human that drinks a lot of water and loves to be in the woods. Congrats on being a Thurber Prize semi-finalist! Thrilling!