I had a boss one time who told me, “80 percent, Tara. Your 100% is great, but we don’t need great to be productive. We need 80%.” That same boss also called me (kindly) a perfectionist. He is not the only person to have ever said that. I don’t think he was right about the perfectionism, exactly. But for many reasons, I continue to be grateful for that conversation. It’s been helpful. 80%, it turns out, often is plenty better than good-enough.

The 80% in the title of this post has nothing immediately to do with that (unless we want to file it under ‘doing an 80% job with your Proseletter titles.’) It’s actually a 20%, as in: maybe 20% of what I write—what I seriously write, with my love and attention and skill and time—gets anywhere near a publisher of any kind, ever. Which means 80% of it is compost. Non-productive. Grist for the mill. Practice. Nobody ever sees it—and God willing, they never will.

That 80% comes from this short interview I did with the wonderful women who run Rockvale Writers’ Colony, where I am facilitating a weekend retreat this October, from the 4th through the 6th.

I have made at least 80% of a writing career so far out of burying the lede, so this is me absolutely on-brand. Ledes are great, I guess, but they lack nuance. Here’s the lede: the retreat—Creative Attention: Invitational Play and Practice for Writers—still has spots available, and I would be delighted if you claimed one. I believe the maximum enrollment is 12.

Rockvale is a special place (I’ve been resident there previously), central Tennessee is gorgeous in the fall, and I can confidently say you will enjoy a nourishing and very comfortable long weekend. (For accommodations, think lovingly-restored old house, spacious private bedroom and bathroom, homemade meals.)

The workshop is not exactly about writing as compost. But one thing it’s emphatically interested in is temporarily removing the entire idea of productivity (80% or otherwise) from your writing life. The idea is to “step back from our plans, our goals, even from the work itself, and just give our attention…to our practice, to our inspirations, to others’ work, to the people and places and objects we encounter.”

Are you going to ‘produce’ some writing? Maybe! What you’re definitely going to do is invite your words.

They may or may not flow like a river this moment, in the polished ways you want them to flow. But you will get to relax and play and just attend and enjoy for the sake of it. The one and only goal of which is just that.

‘Just that’ will also help fill your cup. Put some good nourishing stuff in your compost heap. Gather ideas and practices like flowers you are picking for yourself alone. Which will, in turn—in its own time, which is not yours; in ways you can’t predict and you shouldn’t try to—also benefit your ability to produce good writing. It’s a beautiful Mystery.

You can do this on your own, of course. Doing it with the support of a group, though: that’s powerful, in a specific way I’m looking forward to exploring again. That power is ease. Slowness. Beauty and discovery for their own sake. When I was thinking about what this retreat means for me, the lines that came were not my own:

“…And you, too, have come into the world to do this:
to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
-Mary Oliver, from When I Am Among the Trees

Important note: You do not have to be a poet to come retreat with us. You should probably be comfortable with poetry as an idea, because I am a poet and I will probably read you some poetry. (Bug or feature? you decide.) But the exercises we’ll do and the conversations we’ll have should be equally applicable (compostable) for writers of novels, comics, memoir, deep reporting, auto-fiction—whatever the craft you give your love and time and skill to.

I’ve said enough words today. If you want to read more—about why I chose this theme, my “writing rituals,” what I’m reading, why RWC rocks, and why I’m fine with my 80% compost—that’s here.

You can also sign up for the retreat right here. If you can’t come, or it’s not your jam, would you consider passing the word along to a friend?

I’m excited about this special weekend, and I can’t wait to meet (and re-encounter) the amazing humans who are about to co-create it with me.