Writing on Madeline Island

A few years ago the term was the Quarter life crisis was coined. It was something that people in their 20's experienced as they transitioned out of college and into the real world.

I have decided that I need to coin the phrase Three Quarter Life crisis for the phase my father is in his life. I miss the midlife crisis days when I came home one day to find he had purchased a BMW convertible and then a week later he bought a 45 foot sail boat. I really miss the boat.

Recently my father went to Mexico where he married a 27 year old he met in Cabo. *My parents have been divorced forever so this is OK*

This would be OK if it meant that my vacation to Alaska with my Dad didn't get cancelled. Bummer.

But rather than be bummed and feel out of control of my own summer plans I decided that this would be the perfect chance for me to take a writing retreat. My mom thinks it would be the perfect time for me to take an adventure vacation, but I don't think "hotel in the woods" is what the adventure website means when they say "camping".

So I've been researching writing retreats for the last week. I live in MN so Split Rock was where I started looking but alas the weeks I have off they are full. I looked elsewhere. I even thought about the Iowa Summer Writers Festival but that is in Iowa and I'm from Iowa so Iowa City is not a vacation.

Finally I discovered Madeline Island School of the Arts and this is where I want to go. The website didn't answer enough of my questions so I called today and found out, much to my sadness that the classes I want to take are probably going to be cancelled due to lack of enrollment.

It is the first year the classes have run and they aren't really listed in a lot of places that writers would see. I'm super bummed because this sounds way cooler than spending a week in Iowa City, even though I have happy memories of Iowa City. I'm not really sure how I found them. Maybe I saw an ad or something. They did not pop up on the multiple Google searches I did looking for a summer writing retreat.

The man who answered the phone was so nice about answering my questions and taking my name and number in case the class does run. He encouraged me to tell my friends about the class and I said I would facebook, blog, email and tell everyone I could. He told me he finds the telephone useful for getting the word out.