An Idea and a Story

think about this...

Here’s an invitation and a story.

First the invitation. Join us. I’m planning a Retreat for Writers (and Writers in Waiting) at Okoboji this coming September. It’s been decades since I’ve done one.

Now the story.

I organized my first Writers’ Retreat in 1992 in the midst of one of my several re-invention periods. I assembled a group of speakers to cover various aspects of writing and sent out invitations to writers and wanna be writers to show up. And a funny thing happened during the countdown for the event. I had booked Camp Wesley Woods, north of Indianola, and told potential speakers it would be great fun. Plus, they could sell books if they had written any.

One such invitee was then the Dean of the Business College at the University of Northern Iowa. He occasionally wrote essays for the Des Moines Register's opinion pages, where reader reaction was intense. His pieces were a lightning rod for praise and criticism.

"Sure," he said when I extended the invitation. "By the way, I've written a little novel, and it's getting a lot of attention from independent booksellers."

I was skeptical that an unknown author would have much success but good for him, I said.

As the weeks leading up to the event went by, I picked up his 'little novel' and read it in one sitting. It was a real tear-jerker.

By the time of the retreat, his “little novel” had been 13 weeks atop the New York Times best seller list. The book, “Bridges of Madison County” had catapulted its author, Robert James Waller, to rock-star status in the ‘peoples choice’ of the publishing world. It went on to sell over 50 million copies.

The reaction to the book was bizarre. Waller published it in April of 1992, and by the time my retreat took place in September, he was famous. Waller even turned down an invitation to be on 'Good Morning America' the day of my retreat to keep this months- long commitment to me.

Waller's penchant for being a lightning rod became national. Reaction from authors who had toiled for years with nowhere near Waller’s overnight commercial success ranged from envy to outrage.

Celebrity sells. My first writers' retreat had a line of participants snaking down the main camp hall's dirt road. So, I thought, this is an easy way to support myself. I then proceeded to put on well-attended writers' retreats in the Blue Ridge Mountains of WVA, the San Juan Islands, Vail, and another in Okoboji. Then I got bored and stopped.

In all, I held three events featuring Waller. I wouldn't say we became friends, but it was a mutually rewarding experience. I had grabbed onto a snatch of his coat tails and made enough to pay my mortgage.

Because of this relationship, a literary agent reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in writing an 'unauthorized' biography of Robert James Waller. His surprise fame was a great fascination to all, especially in the publishing world.

The thought of a potential $60k advance to this otherwise unemployed single parent was tantalizing. I didn't like the term 'unauthorized' and hoped Waller would cooperate, but he had become tired of the negativity around the fame associated with his success, and he refused. Even reporters from the paper that launched his writing career became critics.

Well, I needed the money. I headed to Cedar Falls, where he had lived, and started interviewing people.

His friends felt abandoned by Waller once fame struck and said so.

I drove home sickened by these interviews and had a real talk with myself. Did I want my legacy to be that I, too, wrote something that trashed Robert Waller? The answer: no.

I told the agent I was withdrawing from the project. She wasn't happy with me.

A few days later, I got a call from Waller's lawyer in Waterloo. We knew each other. He started the call chuckling, saying he knew there weren't legal grounds to ask me not to write the book, but his client (Waller) wanted it stopped, so he had to place the call.

Why didn't Waller call me himself? I thought about revisiting the idea. But I had already let go of the project and told the lawyer so.

Waller was complicated. He was a short kid who became a star basketball player; a mathematician who wrote lyrical essays; and a college dean who played guitar at local bars.

I won't pretend to understand Robert James Waller. At that first writers' retreat, he talked about fathers and the powerful impact they have. He alluded to his childhood and said his was difficult.

Waller likened writing 'Bridges' to a spiritual experience. It took him only four days to write the guts of the book. He said It was as though an invisible force was moving his hand.

Artists have a word for that experience: Flow. It's like driving on a city street when all the lights you come to are green.

I would have loved to explore those events in Waller’s life that shaped who he was. It was not to be. He died of multiple myeloma in 2017 at his ranch in Texas.

The Waller story, his real-life story, was not told. Besides, to have your life described only by others doesn't give the complete story anyway. How can you write about a house when you've only looked through one window from the outside?

Put siblings in a room together, and each will have a different take on the same family event.

Fast forward to September 20-22, 2021.

We have emerging authors coming to the writers' retreat, too. Maybe one will be a rock star by the time it rolls around. I have great expectations for a recently fired Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist. Her Substack writings are earning widespread acclaim. We have one Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist speaking, and by September, there could be another. If not this year, eventually.

Connecting people is my thing. And I love writers.

Join us. Learn how to tell stories. Your stories.

Okoboji Writers’ Retreat

And, like the Lion in the Wizard of Oz, discover that your courage is already within.