Superb Summer Writing Retreat  

At night I go to bed exhausted and full. Mornings I wake up smiling and reach for pen and paper or laptop at an ungodly hour. Between intensive sessions of writing, critique, revision, development; opportunities to decompress with a walk, alone or with like-minded others, on the prairie.

 All day long: thoughts, characters, scenes, complications, red herrings, right words, wrong words, recalcitrant sentences, corpulent paragraphs, dropped threads.

Sage Hill Lodge

Caught up in these atmospheric whirlpools and wind sculpted cloud surges, we co-habit with each others’ swirling ideas and visions; trysts between language and vocabulary; arguments between situation and story. We brush shoulders with nurtured narratives that precede their makers as they enter the common room, walk along a plain gravel road to nowhere in particular, or lay prone on a picnic table.

Those who labour hard through grueling nights of remembering, truth telling, translation and speculation shuffle zombie-like toward coffee fixings at breakfast time. We traverse a latticed web of stories past and duck under low pressure systems of  deepest desires and highest callings, all the while asking – What will become of it all in the end? 

New Ideas, Inspiration, Focus & Time to Write

One of Annette’s mentors was Wayne Grady, who will be the Writer in Residence at Haig-Brown House in Campbell River through the winter of 2015/16, thanks to the Museum at Campbell River.

We landed at Saskatoon airport midday and headed south under a startling azure sky.  Scudding cloud formations, driven by the unimpeded wind and spanning an unbounded horizon hustled us along. Unsullied by mountain ranges, dense forests and clustered high-rises, there was plenty of room to welcome large thoughts, billowing ideas and runaway inspiration.

The rambling Cedar Lodge would be our home for ten days, accommodating about 40 Sage Hillians and lodge staff. Labyrinthine in design, the lodge delivers more than a few unscheduled games of lost and found. “Pay attention” the old building scolds.

Then ten glorious days being fed delicious, regular meals, ten days without chores, errands, interruptions,  or the expectations of others. Ten days of focus, dedication, motivation and productivity under the tutelage of sensitive, generous instructors.

Just being there, plugged-in with everyone else, to the energetic hum of the story-generating universe, makes a writer giddy with possibility.

Any hard working writer knows it’s difficult keeping the motivation and practice alive. Are you spinning your wheels in a slough of lost incentive? Do you feel incomplete when you’re not writing actively? A session at The Sage Hill Writing Experience is one of the best gifts a hardworking writer could give to him or herself.

Check it out for next year:  www.sagehillwriting.ca

Annette Yourk