On the Eve of the End

This is it, folks. The third annual WWF Retreat is coming to an end tomorrow. Sad Face. 😦

To avoid confusion and possible excommunication,
I’ll just lay things bare:
WWF in this version of reality means
Writing With Friends
and Writing With Friends only.

To commemorate the end of the world as we know it, I’d like to present a helpful how-to checklist for writers aspiring to blissfully retreat:

• First, find yourself some super-fantastic friends with a super-fantastic farmhouse and convince them that anywhere is warmer than Wisconsin in January. Arrange temperatures reaching 40 below. Then calmly persuade Mr. And Mrs. Fantastic to purchase plane tickets to aforementioned anywhere, and–the coup mortel–to utilize you and your entire WWF group to housesit. (You may want to clearly define the acronym if your plan is to succeed.) Be sure that the Fantastics have a wood stove. If their house is immaculately gorgeous, filled with love and greenery and woodcarvings, and home to enough comfortable beds for your whole crew, you get bonus points. And an inferiority complex. Prepare for this.

• Next, ask them to provide you with a very old puppy who needs near-constant love and affection, sometimes needs you to hold her up when she poops, always needs you to help her through the ice to her pee spot, and hums when you rub her ears just right. The very old puppy is a critical writing companion. The more hobbling, the better, if you’re looking to feel better about your own aches and pains. Prepare to fall in love.

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What is with the horrid gallery layouts?

• An ice storm is always nice, for ambiance, and for the guilty pleasure of not having to leave. If you have an in with the gods of weather–which you do, because forty below–pen your requests. Minimally, you will require snowy trails on which to tread when your eyeballs can’t stand the screen anymore and your hips begin to seize up. Look for friends with a beautiful manor estate with a creek flowing through their woods. A smattering of picturesque red barns and outbuildings is helpful. Extra credit if there is a fully operational outhouse. Double points if it’s a two-holer.

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• Finally–and you may have to special order this last one–you’ll need a part-Houdini mouse for entertainment. This mouse, ideally, will spring your trap not with his cute little nose, but with his tail, or alternatively with his rear haunch. He will then drag said trap–his latest fashion statement–into the inaccessible recesses of the kitchen cabinetry underbelly, and will forevermore provide a backdrop of clatter and commotion as he tries unsuccessfully to fit through any of his former highways and byways. Repeatedly. His cute little nose will be reserved for intermittent peep shows through the hole under the stove were he will eat the gas line warning labels for nourishment and silently request assistance in his predicament. There is absolutely nothing you will be able to do for this new pet of your super-fantastic friends, but you will continue to peer under with your headlight, just to offer moral support. He’ll need a name, and Marley might be appropriate. He will haunt the rest of your days with his springloaded tailpiece.

That’s it, folks. Everything you need in four easy steps.* If you really want to impress your super-fantastic friends so that they definitely ask you back again for next year’s Escape the Tundra, break their chair. You want to make an impression.

* Four easy steps that the new WordPress editor won’t allow me to number and simultaneously insert photos within. There are a few issues with this Gutenberg fiasco. And by a few, I here mean many. My troubles are trivial, however, next to Marley’s, so I won’t complain.

If you need me, I’ll be headed back home,
KJ

P.S. Apologies for yesterday’s boring bio post and annoying notification. I was experimenting with another theme, because I am a high-maintenance blogger, and it appears that there is no way on WordPress’s Digital Earth, to put up a post without notifying everyone you’ve ever known. I may have to write a letter. I’ll also mention my displeasure with Gutenberg’s miserable failures.