Just When You Need It

This story needs a little background. During the mid-1980s, Rob and I led trips to the Peruvian Amazon for travel writers. One of the writers who joined us for the 350 mile trip from Leticia, Colombia to Iquitos, Peru, was Gary Provost. He was a frequent contributor to Writers’ Digest, a book reviewer, and author who had an amazing gift for taking what is essentially a right-brain process – fiction writing – and breaking it down in a left-brain way so that he could teach the craft to others. He and his wife Gail, founded the Writers’ Retreat Workshop to pass on that wisdom to aspiring writers.
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Gary and Gail started the Writers’ Retreat Workshop in 1987. It’s a ten-day intensive workshop for fiction writers. The idea is immersion -classes geared specifically to the craft of fiction writing taught by the staff, with visiting authors, editors, and agents who teach and lecture as well. Gary passed away suddenly in 1994, but the retreat continued.

Fast forward to 1998. Gail had remarried and she and her husband, Lance, were struggling to continue the retreats. “Enrollment had dropped, we no longer had a location for the retreat, we didn’t have a budget for advertising,” Gail says. “It was a real low point. The future of the retreat looked pretty bleak.” But they kept reaching out, hoping, following leads, trying different fund-raising venues.

Upon returning from a depressing fund-raising trip, Gail felt like she had reached a low point. “I remember walking in the door of our house that Saturday morning, feeling frustrated and defeated,” Gail says. “I was ready to just give up the whole thing. Then I went into my office and found more than a hundred messages on the answering machine, all from people who wanted to know where they could sign up for the retreat. It turned out that the day before, USA Today had run a travel story on ten educational vacations and the Writers Retreat Workshop was mentioned.”

She and Lance began returning phone calls, signing up students, found a location for the right price, and started hiring staff. To this day, Gail isn’t sure how USA Today found out about the retreat. But the break arrived just when they needed it.

Today, the WRW draws students from all over the world and many of the aspiring writers who have gone through the course have been published.

I just returned from the 37th WRW, my third time there as a guest speaker, and I was delighted to find that the spirit with which Gary and Gail started the retreat is flourishing. The 22 students, an overflow from a retreat in May, ranged in age from a 20-year-old college student to retirees. They arrived with their laptops and manuscripts, their dreams and dedication to honing their craft. They came from all over the U.S., and from the Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, Malaysia, and India.

Several years ago, Gail turned the retreat over to another writer, but she still attends as a guest staff member. After a talk I gave on synchronicity my second day there, she said, “Trish, did I ever tell you how synchronicity is why the WRW still exists?” And then she told me this story.