The Writing Retreat

The Writing Retreat is a künstlerroman, the story of an artist’s coming of age. Alex overcomes her writer’s block, confronts her conflicted feelings about sexuality, and completes a novel in the process. She becomes the writer she has always wanted to be, whose work is modeled after Roza’s successful (and, it turns out, stolen) books. The Writing Retreat’s interest in the act of writing and its attendant pitfalls thus go beyond its exploration of appropriation. Alex is challenged to overcome her writer’s block. She is compelled to use her emotional pain as a spur to productivity instead of drowning in its reactivity. And she is persuaded to use herself as a spiritual channel for the sake of her fictional creations. Her own book, The Great Commission, metaphorically grapples with all of these complications.

Roza, for one, firmly believes that pain is a necessary motivator for writers. She broaches the subject during an early meeting with Alex, with regards to her painful relationship with Wren. Roza emphasizes it again after she hears Alex’s family history: “Suffering attaches itself to people,” Roza claims. “It makes for the best writing, dear” (133). Roza hence suggests that Alex’s tortured relationship with Wren can assist her creative process. Moreover, she reasons that the generational suffering of Alex’s Jewish family could also drive her work. In Roza’s mind, pain paves the way for illustrious writing. This sentiment does not originate with Roza, of course: It is a long and dearly held trope within literary circles that great art arises from great suffering. Roza’s writing retreat certainly adheres to this notion. It is not merely a friendly competition, but a fight for freedom and survival. Roza constantly ups the ante, each time arguing that higher stakes equal better writing. After Poppy/Zoe goes missing and is presumed dead, Keira laments, “You happy, Roza? Is this enough suffering for you?” (170). Apparently not, as Keira herself later discovers.

Writing, however, is about channeling inspiration as much as it is about enduring pain. Roza tells Alex, “The writer’s mind is a channel, dear. When we open, glorious truths can flow in. Rather like Daphne channeling her demoness, wouldn’t you say?” (82). This comment strikes multiple chords: First, it challenges Alex to write truthfully by opening herself up to what she fears—for example, her sexual feelings for women. Second, it establishes a connection between Roza and Lamia and between Alex and Daphne. Roza serves as a metaphorical demoness who inspires Alex to create The Great Commission. While under her “possession,” even Alex admits how easily her writing flows: “It did feel like I was channeling the story” (130). In this sense, channeling symbolizes the opposite of pain: Channeling represents the painless transmission of thoughts into words, as opposed to the painful transformation of difficult emotions into beautiful writing. When acting as a channel, a writer is merely a conduit through which outside ideas flow. In The Great Commission, Alex has Daphne express this by saying, “A husk could be a channel, could transmit great amounts of energy from one world to the next” (137). This is how both women, Alex and Daphne (and, by extension, Roza and Lamia), exert their power. Only Daphne can interpret Lamia’s wishes, while only Alex, inspired by Roza, knows the ending to her own story.

For her part, Roza believes that her talent is in “channeling” the genius of others. “My role,” she states, “is not to create but to facilitate.” When Alex observes that this sounds like the role of an editor, Roza replies, “This is more like tapping into a great force” (248), which makes her much like Daphne’s husk. It also helps her avoid seeing herself a villain, which is why she is unpleasantly surprised when Alex turns Lamia into the antagonist (273). Regardless, Roza’s attraction to Alex is part of her unabashed attraction to power writ large. Like Daphne, Alex comes to understand her own potency: “Lamia was correct that Daphne had suffered. But she had also survived. That meant that she, Daphne, had her own type of power” (287). Alex is a survivor multiple times over: of her family, of her breakup with Wren, of her time with Roza and Roza’s writing retreat. Consequently, Alex learns that her power is superior to Roza’s: The power to create is always stronger than the power to steal or to conquer. When Alex throws her manuscript into the fire, she thus taunts Roza, “you’ll never have this power” (289). Lamia’s hubris causes her to underestimate Daphne’s survival skills, just as Roza’s hubris drives her to overestimate her own ability to persuade Alex to offer up her manuscript. While Alex cannot quite extricate herself from Roza, at least as a writer, she also cannot bring herself to relinquish her work and become Roza’s partner in crime.

Finally, the word “commission” itself reverberates with multiple meanings. It can indicate military command; it can mean the restoration of something to working order; and it can also refer to an artistic commission, wherein someone requests the production of a creative work by another. In this sense, Roza’s work as a “commissioner” is over, while Alex’s has just begun. Roza admits, “I knew my role as a facilitator of masterpieces was coming to an end” (249). Roza knows that she can no longer command an author to do her bidding, even under threat of death. Alex, for her part, refuses to turn over her work to Roza: “They could do whatever they wanted to my body, but they couldn’t have my story” (290). This refers not only to her novel but also to her life. Her “great commission,” it seems, is to further her own artistic and romantic pursuits. She may still write for Roza, at least a little, but in the end she creates for herself.