Create Your Own Writer's Retreat

All of the pictures and photos shown throughout this lens are actual photos on The Private Writing Retreat of Maine author Wendy C. Allen. All photos were taken by and are copyright to Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts, and are used here with permission.

P.S. After reading this lens, go back and see if you can find The Goldeneagle hiding in these photos.

I just love roses, I've got tons of them, they are all over my yard. Best thing for me to relax and rejuvenate is for me to take my cats (13 of them) and my dog, and we all head out to the garden, and that is where I do my writing (both for my books/stories and for my Squidoo lenses)and my sewing (I sew by hand). For me writing and sewing are like my *inner energy* like they are the fuel that drives me forward. Weird I know, but it's true. Both are relaxing to do, and yet both refuel me so I can go on and do everything else I need to do in life.

I've got this huge ancient rose bush in my garden (it's over 200 years old, belonged to my great-grand mother), it's one of those wild white roses but it thinks it's a tree and now it's over 13 feet tall! But it arches across my garden and makes a great little shady nook, and that's where me and my cats and dog hang out while I get my writing and sewing done.

My writing goal is to write between 1,000 to 2,000 words per day. My average per day, is much less, more like 400 - 700 per day, once every three days instead of every day. Well, it's better than nothing, and I'm still inching my way to my goal. Once in a while I get really ambitious and I make up for it, by writing 10,000 - 12,000 words all in one day, but that only happens once in a blue moon.

My problem seems to lie in that I get the urge to write at times when I just can't write, but than at the time I set aside to write, I'm to bored or restless or want to read or whatever, anything that is not writing basically.

I'll be right in the middle of something, say walking my dog, or cleaning the cat box, when this great idea well pop into my head, with not a pen or paper in sight. Than an hour or two later, I'll finally get to some paper, and I find I can't think of what I wanted to write down, or else I can't get it worded right, or worse I've forgotten it all together!

I write amazing outlines. You should see the detailed historical time lines I can come up with for my story ideas, than I sit down, my outline in hand, ready to type the story itself and nothing. I'll just sit staring at a blank screen wondering what to write about.

Than I'll start typing away, got a 1,000 words before I know it. WOO-HOO! I'm done for the day! Than I read what I wrote. Not one word of it goes with the book I'm working on; instead it goes with some book idea I gave up on 4 or 5 years ago.

sheesh! Now I have to start all over again, cause those 1,000 words didn't count!

I find myself doing this all the time, the result is I end up working on 4 maybe 5 stories at any one given time, and never finish them on deadline.

The up side: When I do get finished, I have 4 or 5 stories finished at the same time.

I've got a flower garden, with tall rose bushes over 13 feet tall. There's one on each side of the path, and they grew up entwining to make a natural archway. Little songbirds sing and twitter all day long. It's so peaceful and relaxing. There's these old mossy logs, I sit on to do my writing. I find that if I'm stuck on my typing on the computer, that the best way for me to get back on focus is to pack up a few pens and a lot of paper and head out and sit in the garden. By the time it's dark I'll have 30 or 40 pages written and I get to stay up all night typing them into the computer. For me that is the best cure for "writer's block". I can't explain it, but I do my best writing and my highest word count writing when sitting in the garden, listen to song birds and writing in longhand.

~~EK






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How much land you need to create your writer's retreat is totally up to you and what you have available to use.

If you live in the city, than it may be harder for you to create an outdoor retreat. In this case, you would take a corner of a room, put a comfy chair or desk and chair near the window. Hang bird feeders outside of your window. Buy several plants: a couple of tall tree-like ones, several hanging potted plants to hang from the ceiling. A window box. Small potted flowers on your desk. I have done this, myself, turning a corner space barely 4 feet square into a jungle like writing corner. This is were I write on days when I can not write outdoors, such as when it is raining, or during our cold Maine winters.

If you have a front porch or a balcony, you can turn it into your private writing corner. You don't need much space, just a spot where you can sit and write without being disturbed.

If you live in a place where you have a plot of land than you can expand greatly on this. The larger your plot of land is, the larger you can build your writing space. My outdoor writing space is quite large and covers approximately one-eighth of an acre. It started as a plot of land about 12 feet square and over the years my garden grew and expanded and grew some more as each year I added more and more plants to my garden. As the years went by my garden expanded to include a small barn for my bantams and a final resting spot for my dearly departed car.

There is no limits on how big you can make your writing garden.


Black Eye Susans by eelkat
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In Maine on the coast, our weather does limit my ability to write out doors, since we get deep snow 7 months of the year, and heavy rains on what days it's not snowing. My home is in swamplands, which are lush and green, due to our near steady almost constant rains and snowfall. What that means is, than if it's raining or snowing, I have to move my writing indoors, and so, I have a corner retreat in my bedroom, for writing.

Indoors, you have the addition of lush green houseplants, and aquariums for fish and plants, both of which add to the peaceful nature of an indoor retreat. Likewise, cats and birds make up a part of my indoor retreat.

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My personal writing garden, also happens to be a woodland garden. Woodland or shade gardens are a bit more difficult for beginning gardeners, however, not so much so that a beginner should not try it.

At the heart of my own garden grow two Great White Pines, both over 150 feet tall, each over 200 years old. Both casting shade over most of my garden, nearly all day long. There are other trees off to the sides, bringing in more shade, and a forest at the back, that blocks out the sun.

My garden is limited to what it well grow, not only by Maine's very short growing season, but also by these giant pine trees, which block out the sun.

The result, is that my garden is filled with "specialty" plats, that well grow in the shade and withstand deep winter frost. Below is a list of plants that you well find when walking through my garden.


Woodland Fern Tie by eelkat
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I live in a swamp, in the woods, on a beach. My writing garden is right in the middle of all that. Our location results in difficult growing conditions. Heavy shade, combined with heavy rain falls, deep snow several month of the year, salty high winds, dense fogs from dusk till dawn. It's wet, it's windy, and there is very little direct sun. As a result it's lush and green and covered in moss. I love it.

I love birds. In high school I was studying to be an ornithologist. It was what I planned to do. My private library added more than a hundred books on birds, bird gardening, an ornithology during that time. The locals who already thought I was crazy at age 8, now thought I was even crazier at age 16, when my obsession with birds and becoming an ornithologist took over my life, and I spent months turning my garden into a bird haven, and sat motionless for hours, just so I could get birds to land on me. Locals rolled their eyes when I started writing a book on how to "speak" to birds in their own language, something I had learned to do. I had already stopped speaking years before, so my now speaking in bird chirps instead of words, "confirmed" their fears that I had lost my mind completely.

My ornithology goal, took over my life. A goal, which sadly got cut short by the fact that I could not afford to go to college. However, much of my writing, art, and photography during my teen and young adult years, focused on birds, and my garden quickly grew to reflect on this.

It is not an uncommon thing for visitors to my yard, to see my garden and exclaim :"Why did you let is get so over run!" They are stunned when I tell them that I planted it this way on purpose. My roses run wild, untrimmed, climbing the walls of the barn and up the pine tree. Huge bamboo stalks tower over my garden, blocking out what little light the pine trees allowed to come in. Lilac bushes branch out in all directions ready to grab the hair of any one not quick enough to duck away from their swaying in the breeze. Concord grapes run rampant sending their vines all over everything. On first appearances it would seem that this is an untended garden. Looks are deceiving though, and a closer observation will reveal something else about my garden: It is over burdened with birds, dozens and dozens of them.

For more than 15 years a pair of cardinals have lived deep within the tangled mess of grape vines, protected from all predators. In the top of the pine tree there lives three large flocks: one of goldfinches, one of black capped chickadees, and one of titmouse. Nesting on the ground, in the leaves beneath the roses, are a couple of pairs of yellow throats. Down the rust colored pine "path" waddles a pair of mallards, a wood duck, and a handful of mourning doves. Catbirds, mockingbirds, and grackles, roost in the lilacs. Several pairs of ruby throated humming birds nest in the rose bushes. Two flocks of wild turkeys, about 30 birds each flock, daily wander through. Five turkey vultures, an osprey, and a golden eagle roost in my pine tree several times each year. Buntings, warblers, larks, crows, blackbirds, blue jays, nuthatch, and downy woodpeckers are seen daily. A rare scarlet tanger, has been sighted a few times each year. And the prize of my garden, the bird that stunned everyone whose seen him: not one, but three ivory billed woodpeckers, a bird reported as extinct nearly a hundred years ago.

My garden sets on the outskirts of an old growth forest, that remains virtually unexplored, and is just as it was 300 years ago. A brook, runs through my garden. Between the giant trees, the running water, and my seemingly "unkept" flower garden, the birds have a safe haven, where they gather year round.



Baby Cardinal by eelkat
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Water is essential to getting birds into your garden. I am fortunate to have a brook running through my garden and swamp land all around, so water is in no short supply. If you have a brook in your yard, than make your garden near it, or situate it so that the brook runs through the garden (keeping in mind that all brooks have a flooding season, and you'll need to plant accordingly.)

If you've the land to do so, another option you have is to build a small pond. Both ponds and brooks will attract not only birds, but also frogs, newts, salamanders, turtles, toads, snakes, deer, bobcat, and other wildlife.

For those without the space for a pond (or who just don't want to build one), you can always bring water into your garden, by means of a birdbath or a garden fountain.

Even if you don't want to attract birds, having water in your garden, makes for a soothing background noise, one that is great for helping you to relax and be able to get on with your writing.

One of the most unsual and most useful features in my Writing garden is the car that is featured in so many of my books. The real car that inspired the car in my books, has been in my family since 1975, bought just one month after I was born. Here is the true story behind that car...


Shot at 2007-04-04

Hello! I am a 1964 Dodge 330 4-door sedan, VIN 4142216364, my name is The Goldeneagle. This site was created by my owner Wendy C. Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to save my life.

I am the main character of the original Twighlight Manor book, and a major supporting character of more that 30 other books and short stories by Maine author Wendy C. Allen.

I started out in life as a silver undercover Police car in Maine. In 1975 I retired from my job as a police car and was sent to Marcott Motors of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where I was painted gold by some fool with a paint brush. He totally ruined my lovely silver paint job and left me streaked with brush lines. I was only there a few months before I was bought by the Allen family, who sanded me down and painted a lovely shade of metallic orange.

I remained the faithful family chauffeur for the next ten years. Together we drove on many road trips throughout the North East. In 1978, I took them to New York where we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge during it's major repair construction. That same year we went to Washington D.C. I took the Allen family to Arcadia in Bar Harbor to see The Thunder Hole in 1981. Every year I drove them to New Hampshire where we visited The Old Man on the Mountain and Story Land and The Swift River. Three times I climbed Mt. Washington.

I've brought home puppies and baby chickens. I waited in hospital parking lots and veterinary clinics. I remained forever and always a faithful friend. The only friend who was always there, steadfast and unmovable, silent and nonjudgmental. My red plush seats always there like a shoulder to cry on when no one else would lend and ear or a shoulder. I alone remained to one true friend, the only friend to the child who loved me and defend me when no one else would put up with my break downs and failures.

Over the years I grew old and tired, my engine weak and my transmission failing. My last trip was a desperate trip to the hospital, one dark and stormy night in 1985 when a hurricane flooded the town, sending the Atlantic Ocean over the Pier and up Maine Street. My last trip came when ambulances could ride faster than my Mopar engine and Mrs Allen had to be rushed to the hospital at 3AM. We speed through Old Orchard faster than ever before, through hurricane floods that went higher than my door panels seeping water into my interior and flooding my floors, filling my transmission and engine with icy salt water, we made it to the hospital with Mrs. Allen, but I did not make it back home on my own and was towed home by a friend's little VW Rabbit.

In spite of my loyalty, with a dead transmission and an engine full of salt, I was useless, and parked in the yard, put up for sale for junk.

I was rescued from a trip to the junk yard in 1985 by 9 year old, Wendy C. Allen, after my trans died. Since 1985 I have remained a decoration on the hill in her rose garden, where she sits in my seats or on my hood to write the stories in which I appear. Without me, she can not write these stories for I am the one that inspires them. I have been happy in my life of peace and rest here in Old Orchard Beach these past 30 years. That has now changed.

New town ordinances and zoning laws have been set in Old Orchard Beach. As a result the police, the code enforcements officers, and the town manager are now in attempt to see my death and destruction, with threats of stealing me from my rightful owner and sending me to become scrap metal in the junk yard.

This is an outrage! They well not listen to reason.

My profile now comes to you to spread the word and ask for your help in saving my life. An entire network of websites devoted to my plight are now in the works and links to them well be added here within the next few hours.

Please join the protest and put an end to the Old Orchard Beach reign of terror. Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty, they have no right to take me from my home and kill me!

PLEASE DON'T LET THEM KILL ME!!!!!

I saw these ads and wanted to add them to my lens. Why? Why not? I figured I should comment on them, and at least give myself some more or less logical reason for putting them on here right? Okay. Here is goes:

We all need a place to write. I have had several over the years. The hammock has got to be one of my favorites. Over the years I've had two hammocks. One was yellow, the other was blue. I spent many hours sitting and swinging and writing on them.



The only picnic table I ever had got water logged during a hurricane and rotted away. I need a new one, but never got around to it. It was stained brink red, and we had gotten it in the 1970's. Had it for years. It used to sit at the edge of the swamp, right near where Etiole was first sighted. As a child I spent hours drawing at that table. When is finally got to bad off we used it for fire wood. I miss having a picnic table. I need to get another one.



I've got some wooden chairs around, but I never seem to use them. I'm too busy sitting on mossy logs instead! On mossy logs I can hang my bare feet in the brook, while I write. Thus I use logs instead of chairs. Go figure. But anyways, I like these bright colorful chairs in this picture here, and now I think I want some bright colored chairs to add to my garden. I'm only one person, I don't need so many chairs, why do I keep getting new chairs? I've got chairs all over the place, and I use them like book shelves setting my stuff in them instead of sitting on them. Weird.



I love my swing seat. That's where I sit to do most of my writing. It's old. It's metal. It's rusted. It hasn't swung for years. I sit there for hours during the day, and have been known to sit there for hours at night as well.



In the 1970's through the 1980's and 1990's I had a white gazebo in my garden. It was lovely. Sort of an archway, it went over the path and had a seat on each side and a garden bench where I used to start plants on. There were 4 concord grapes, old wild and huge, growing all over it. I used to sit on the bench, eating grapes, and painting canvases. It was my ultimate writing retreat, my little hallow, where I spent many hours in meditation, during my childhood.

Hurricane Bob sent a pine tree toppling through it in August of 1991, just one week before the brutal murder of my best friend, which would result in my no longer speaking. I had my garden turned upside down, my place of retreat laying in ruins, and before I was able to rebuild it, it would become the site where 5 of my friends were murdered later that same week. I was never able to rebuild this section of my garden, and it remains today in ruins.

Someday I want another gazebo, but it's been nearly 20 years since I found the bodies of my friends and for some reason, the memory of that day still prevents me from ever putting another gazebo in my garden.



I've had several canopies and screen houses. Go through at least one a year. However, high winds coming in off the ocean, means that canopies don't last long, and are quickly torn to shreds and hanging from the nearest pine tree. The year I was homeless, I went through hell trying to keep the "tent" in place, which is the reason for all the cinder blocks tied to all sides of the tarp. We have a lot of heavy winds here.

/

In the midst of my wonderful enchanted looking forested garden, sits a clutter of about 20 beach chairs. They look terribly out of place, and match nothing, but hey, they are comfortable to sit in, and well, there is the Atlantic Ocean right on the other side of those trees!



I never had a fire pit until 2006, the year I became homeless. I still had my garden, but I no longer had a house to live in or a place to cook, and so, I ended up building a fire pit. In the summer, cooking dinner on a fire pit is easy, but once the snows came, it was very hard to find wood to burn, as everything was wet from ice.

You know, building this lens, has helped me to look at things in my life, and things people say about my life when they show up in my yard and see the ay I live first hand.

Was just realizing that I live the life of a Nun/Monk . . . the codes I live by, the standards I have (including no sex), the foods I eat (and don't eat) the way I live in tune with nature and animals, even the way I dress (1600's robes) all says I'm a Nun of some sort. Yet, I follow no religion.

Even things like my not talking and not driving a car, suggest a monks life style.

I have 14 cats, 2 ranchu, and 40 roosters . . . my lowest amount of animals . . . prior to the fire I rarely ever had fewer than 500 animals at a time . . . again, suggestive of a monk life style

I'm a vegetarian, with what most people describe as a very strict (way too strict) diet. . . again . . . monk life style.

My refusal to cut my hair and refusal to wear modern cloths, instead wearing long robes and capes from 1600's or earlier (and often being chided for it, and usually being told I'm a witch as a result) most of the locals are terrified of me because of the way I dress . . . but again, if my clothes were brown instead of black, blue, or purple, I'd be dressed no different than a monk

My long time desire to breed chickens, while also to putting an end to all human consumption of chickens, again, suggests a monk attitude.

My daily habit for sitting down and thinking deep thoughts for hours on end, contemplating on one question at a time (as I am now doing ) is suggestive of the meditative habits of a monk.

My building of this strange wild garden retreat of towering bamboo, wild roses, and grapes, all centered around an ancient car where I sit and write, surrounded by the wild birds that flock to shelter within my garden . . . . and the fact that my garden houses the strange creature/demon/faerie "Etiole" whom only one other person has seen, again, suggests a monk, both the garden itself and the fact that I've seen it's odd inhabitant

My absolute refusal to work what people call a "normal job" and instead to make a living writing and painting and rescuing animals . . . . more monkness.

My lack of verbal speech. I talk to the animals. I talk to my family. I talk to no one else. Nor will I make eye contact with you.

Few people in the area, are even aware of my existence, and when they do find out I live here they marvel over the fact that they have never meet a real live hermit before. Hermit? Am I? I never thought of it that way, but that's what the trespassers who show up in my yard call me.

Living the life of a hermit, going years on end without contact with humans, and than the few rare occasions I do leave the farm, where do I go: the library, the beach, Rachael Carson's Wildlife Hiking Trails, the Botanical Garden, walks through the Ross Forest . . .

Am I some sort of monk/nun and never realized it before? If so, what should I do about it? Is there such a thing as a monk/nun without a religion? Are there others out there who live the same type lifestyle like I do?

I am deeply saddened by the acts of vandalism that are often thwarted at me, my pets, and my home, due to people finding my lifestyle so out of the mainstream

I has occurred to me, that maybe I should open some sort of a meditation retreat where people can come and be at one with cats and chickens and roses and trees, the same way I live.

How does one go about opening a place like that? and where? (Pyrenees comes to mind right quick. . . at the top of a mountain)

Of course opening such a place would mean contact with humans . . . I'm not very good at that, that could pose a problem. I was an only child, in an area where children are rare, in a vast town which during my childhood had just 2,000 people in it, I was home schooled so never let the farm during my childhood either. I've never had contact with humans. Only animals. I am at a complete loss as to how to speak to humans, or how to interact with them. I find their methods, actions, and ways to be bizarre in the extreme. And yet, they repeatably come here and treat me like I'm a zoo animal.

That I would be very good at running a writer's retreat is not in question, but would I be able to tolerate the act of having humans near enough to me that I could see them . . . that is something I may not be able to do.



What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!