My trip to Jupiter
Finding creative community in outer space
Hi friends!
I’m delighted to finally share my experience co-leading the Journey to Jupiter retreat with Ralph Walker. For a closer look at the attendee experience, check out these posts from Penny, Lori, Paul, Adam, and Caroline.
After lunch on the first full day at the Journey to Jupiter Retreat, I slipped away from the group and went for a walk in the woods by myself before the afternoon session, a discussion on plot I was leading. I was nervous and hoped the trees would calm me.
Offering a multi-day retreat has been on my list of work aspirations since I became fully self-employed three years ago. It’s worth noting that my business plan since then has consisted of one word, both noun and verb: Dream. I come up with ideas that inspire me and trust I will eventually discover and learn whatever I need to realize each specific dream.
I had been waiting a while for this particular dream to manifest, in part because an in-person retreat has a lot of associated logistics—finding the right place, convincing people to come along for the ride, preparing something meaningful to offer them, not to mention all the smaller stuff like dietary restrictions and swag bags. Every time I thought about an in-person retreat, my heart got excited and my brain got overwhelmed.
The Jupiter retreat started with a text from Ralph—Do you also see this bright planet in the sky? I did. After many hours of conversation and brainstorming, we landed on a framework for an in-person retreat: a few days for people to get away from their lives, be with other writers, and find their way to a more authentic version of the story they were trying to tell.
We spent a year planning the Journey to Jupiter Retreat, and although we had gone over every detail a dozen times by liftoff, it still felt a little risky, a little unknown. Like going to outer space. Like writing a book.
The first retreat I ever did was at Wildacres, in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina, where for a week I got a cabin to myself and meals in the dining hall with the staff and other guests. I drove out there on Labor Day, full of fear and want. In the passenger seat was my first novel, the one that had failed to get an agent, the one that, after a period of doubt and grief, I’d revised for six solid months. I drove to Wildacres wondering how it looked, what I would find, if I was writer at all.
Wildacres is a conference and retreat center that also runs an artists’ residency. So while a few residents are hunkered in their cabins, the main lodge and buildings are filled with people at, say, an African drum retreat or a violin making workshop. But for the first few days I was at Wildacres, there were no groups booked—the place was empty, the dining hall dormant. I spent the first three days entirely by myself. In that time, I reread my book, took notes and walks, spoke to no one except my spouse for a few minutes in the evening. When I was done reading, I took a walk, tried to tell myself it was OK I didn’t know what was next, that I’d figure it out. When I got back to my cabin, the questions that had been plaguing me morphed into a full-blown panic attack.
What the fuck was I thinking? This thing is still a hot mess and I’m never going to find my way out. Why did I believe I could write a book, a good one, that anyone would want to read? I am a failure. I am alone in the world.
I had the good sense to draw a bath and fire up a podcast: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons. In each episode, Liz has a conversation with someone who wants to make art but is struggling to. She asks questions, listens, helps them figure out how they can get back to drawing or take up trombone or learn photography like they’ve always wanted to. After that, Liz calls up one of her friends, say Neil Gaiman or Ann Patchett, and they talk about the good, hard work of making art, of showing up for yourself and your creativity, of strategies they’ve used or suggested to others who are blocked.
I got out of the bath renewed, comforted by the voices of others familiar with the struggle of self-doubt, of imposter syndrome. I spread the book out on the floor of my cabin and spent the next three days going through it page by page, beat by beat. I saw all the places the story wasn’t holding together and started scrawling edits on the spaces between the lines. For the bigger edits and revelations, I pulled out some blank blue paper. I left that cabin with twelve paper-clipped chapters and an understanding of the book I’d never had before.
The trees at Camp Zeke, where we hosted the Jupiter Retreat, were gorgeous, and just a few minutes into my walk I was within the stillness, the quiet beauty of fall foliage next to a placid lake. I felt the same settling I’d felt at the end of my first visit to Wildacres, moving through the forest with my thoughts and my breath, the ground beneath my feet reminding me I belong to this world.
At Wildacres, at Jupiter, I was far away from a lot of things, but very close to something else: that deep, true voice inside of me that tells stories, that cares for and shepherds other people’ stories. I walked into the auditorium for the afternoon session with a blissy smile and a heart excited and open for the work ahead.
I’ve always wanted to lead a multi-day retreat because I know how special it is, and how hard. It takes tenacity to disappear from the logistics of life. But that’s the easy part.
The harder part is when you get in your car and drive away from your life and realize you’ve put it all on hold to face your art. That part is fucking terrifying. I wanted to help guide people through that terror I knew so well.
We talked a lot at Jupiter about taking up space, about giving ourselves permission, about what a radical act of joy and self-care it is to spend time on our art and on the community that supports our art. Some people—people who’ve never found the courage to make art—might think it’s a hobby or a pastime. But it’s not. Making art is exercise for your heart.
I knew the retreat experience would be transformative for the Jupiter crew. What I didn’t know is how much it would change me.
When I got in his car the day before the retreat started, Ralph asked me if I’d ever been to New Jersey. We had just left Newark Airport. Above us, planes ascended and descended. To my left was the giant Ikea in Elizabeth, NJ. On my right, the skyline of Manhattan unfurled. I laughed.
Over ten years ago, my parents retired to New York City, where they grew up. When I was a kid, we drove there so often I knew every rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. My spouse’s best friend lives in New Jersey, not far from Ralph. “Yeah,” I replied. “I’ve been to New Jersey.”
Despite having talked about writing for hundreds of hours, Ralph and I had major gaps in our biographical knowledge of each other. We spent the day pingponging between Jupiter talk and catching up on places we’d lived, jobs we’d had, working through the timeline of adulthood that you recite to every new friend you make, that gets longer as you age.
When Ralph first floated the idea of co-leading a multi-day retreat, I knew even less about him. But we’d each attended a virtual workshop led by the other and saw that we had complementary strengths as instructors. I trusted my intuition and immediately said yes. I had no idea how we would pull off such a complex and wondrous endeavor, but I was game to give it a shot. Especially with a competent teammate.
I spent a lot of my early years as a writer literally and metaphorically alone in my garret. During the first two years I spent writing my first book, I showed it to no one. I needed that solitude and safety to get the words down, but I could only get so far on my own.
It was only through the feedback and insight I got from trusted friends and readers that I was able to write a great book, one that, yes, an agent read and loved, but more importantly, one that I read and loved. One that said what my heart was trying to say.
Community is not a perk. It’s necessary and essential. It enriches our individual identity and humanity, gives us the strength and courage to the do the hard, messy work of writing (and living), and makes us smarter, bolder, and happier than we are alone.
Over the course of the weekend, 14 people who hardly knew each other became friends and creative allies. Together, we dove deep into craft and story, had thoughtful discussions over meals and around the campfire. Together, we looked hard at ourselves and our writing. We made discoveries about our books we never would have come up with alone. Together, we got to Jupiter.
Loved this! Community has made me a better person and a better writer.
Will you be doing this again???