Work, rest and play
or maybe the work is rest and play?
“We’re not playing to win; we’re playing to play… Engaging in active play and experimentation until we’re happily surprised is how the best work reveals itself.”
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Hi friends,
I’m at the end of another remote but no less intensive Arvon week as part of the two-year writing programme I’m on. I spent it in Largs on the west coast of Scotland (thanks to my in-laws for being on their holidays 🙏).
The sea and their big dining table both helped in their own ways.
On a week-long writing retreat, each day is imbued with its own specific energy / neurosis and if you want to know more about this, fire into my post from January which was written in sweat and tears (if not quite blood) at the end of the first online week with this gang:
In person, you’re babied a bit with all the cooking and not attempting to live your normal life at the same time, so if you’re looking for a window into that type of retreat experience head back to these posts from the archive. This first one from October 2024 when the course began and December 2023 at Moniack Mhor in the Scottish Highlands. Actually, click through for the photos alone because there was a lot of procrastination thinking and walking time on that one.
Arvon usually run week-long residential intensives alongside their online workshops and we're the first ever cohort to embark upon this kind of programme of sustained engagement. So how does this impact the rhythm of a week together? This is the third of six, alongside our monthly cohort tutorials and 1:1s, so the usual rules don’t seem to be holding as far as our tutors are concerned. In fact, maybe this whole week as our poetry tutor, Caroline Bird, said is our equivalent of a Wednesday? The day she calls the walking the tightrope day. What might that mean to each of us, she asked on Friday morning?