Writing Retreat with John Stifler, M.F.A
June 22nd, 29th & 30th, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
This writing retreat at The Sanctuary is an opportunity to open up as many of your emotional, intellectual and/or spiritual channels as you want to, by writing in response to a variety of stimuli. We’ll do some writing exercises, each one lasting anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour. One or more of these may elicit from you some thoughts and phrases that haven’t ever occurred to you before – or that have been nagging at you for a long time while resisting being put into words. At the same time, feel free to come to this retreat with an already conceived idea of something you want to write about, what story you want to tell – or think you want to tell, because sometimes the story you think you want to tell is not the one you really want to tell.
Plan for Retreat
This retreat will take place over three days and two weeks, offering students a chance to do some sustained writing between the first and second/third meetings.
Schedule for Each Day
9 a.m. - Noon – Introduction followed by a series of three writing exercises. Each of these begins with a writing prompt and everyone writing in response for 20-25 minutes. Following, anyone may share what they wrote and we take a few moments to respond. We’ll take a 25-minute break somewhere in the middle.
Noon-1 p.m. Lunch, a walk, yoga and meditation
1:00 - 4:00 p.m. – An extended writing period, each participant with an objective either chosen by themselves or offered by me. Followed by discussion.
4:00-4:45 – Break. Extra writing time, or time for a walk, conversation with other participants, etc.
4:45-6 p.m. – General discussion, closing observations and questions, possibly one more short exercise, plus some suggestions for writing on one’s own in the days and weeks ahead. Includes a short list of recommended readings.
6-8 p.m. – Dinner Party
Guests are invited to stay at The Sanctuary the evening of June 29th.
Suggested donation: $250 one day, $400 for two days, $500 for all three days.
About Your Instructor, Tio Juan
I’m John, Uncle John, Tio Juan. I’m a writer and a teacher. I’ve written newspaper columns, magazine and journal articles, short stories, essays, fundraising pamphlets, school catalogues, book reviews.... I’ve written one book; the second is under way and a rough draft of the third is waiting for further attention. The most recent things I’ve published are a series of monthly local newspaper columns about running and an essay in the Summer 2023 issue of the journal Appalachia, about a incident in the White Mountains when a boulder rolled over my hiking buddy’s leg. I have written enough poetry to know that I’m much more of a prose writer than a poet, but three of four of those poems accomplished something rewarding for me. I appreciate the way poets, as one of them once observed, are the acrobats of language. I’ve also done considerable editing of other people’s work – anything from a PhD thesis to a travel book to a medical study to essays and stories.
My greatest experiences as a teacher have been 32 years of teaching writing in the economics department at the University of Massachusetts and several years of leading writing workshops, both in my home and in institutional settings. There’s nothing I would rather have been doing.
By the way, sometimes people ask me, “Do you teach creative writing?” By that question, I think they mean do I teach writing of fiction and poetry? I think practically any writing is creative, if it involves taking some material (an idea, data, descriptive details) and making something out of it. Also, I try to resist making strong distinctions between fiction and non-fiction, for reasons I can explain.
In case you’re curious for specific resume-type details, my writing has appeared in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Mass.), the International Herald Tribune, Runner’s World, American Health, New England Monthly, Walking, The Runner, Running Times, the Valley Advocate, The Sonora Review, Appalachia, Outdoors, Outside, Journeys, several publications in Sri Lanka
Should you do anything to prepare for this retreat?
Up to you, really. If you have a few days in advance of this retreat to meditate regularly, read a lot, play music, exercise, study your old diaries (if you are a diary-keeper), and hang out with pets, that’s good preparartion. If you’re flat-out with work/family/etc. and are coming to this retreat because you’ve managed to block all that other stuff for twelve hours or so, that’s good preparation too.
Show up with some writing materials. If you want to bring bread, cookies, fruit or cheese, feel free to do that too, but don’t feel obligated.
It will be helpful if, a few days before our meeting, you’ll send me a sample of something you have written. It may be a poem, a journal entry, a story, a dialogue, a list of sentences, a piece of a novel.... It can be some scribbling you haven’t quite figured out. It can be a polished, published work. It can be somewhere in between. Mainly, I’d like to have more sense, in advance, of what some of your writing is like.
More about WRITING AT THE SANCTUARY
A writing exercise may begin with my reading aloud part of an opening sentence, leaving you to complete the sentence and keep going wherever you lead yourself. It may begin with an object, a picture, or something else. It may begin by simply offering you a subject. These devices are what they seem: a means of tossing you into something you did not anticipate but can respond to without advance planning. Or, if you come to this retreat knowing that you must write something you’ve already started, or something you’ve determined you need to write about, you’re free to ignore my instructions and go in the direction you want to go. Note: It’s possible that focusing on the exercise suggested to everyone in the group will actually help you get further into what you thought in advance you wanted to write.
After some of these exercises, writers will be welcome (but not at all obligated) to read aloud what they’ve written, and the rest of us may comment. As I’ll explain in more detail when we meet, this stage of writing in a workshop is not a critique. It’s a time to remark on whatever we particularly remember from what we’ve just heard, and to mention what we like about it.
Between exercises, there’ll be time for you and me to meet and talk about your individual writing. We can talk about your goals and aspirations in writing, or we can talk about what made the piece you just wrote amazing. We can talk about something you’ve been working on for a while now, something you’ve sent me in advance of this retreat, so that I can read it before we all gather and make some notes on it. There’ll also be time for you to take any kind of break: sip tea, read over what you’ve written, read what someone else has written, visit the beaver pond, meditate, do some yoga, take a walk.