DOMaInEVaLEnT

Writing Retreat Guidebook

Food

Eating food that makes you comfortable and happy is very important to your creativity and productivity. We aim to provide personalized food service which is also ethical and delicious.

For breakfast we have on hand a wide variety of options. You tell us what you want (by whatsap message) and we’ll bring it to your room along with coffee or tea made to your specifications.

When you are ready for lunch you can send us a message with some idea of what you’d like and we’ll make your plate and serve it when and where you want.

From 15:00 to 18:00, we have sweet and savory snacking foods (and junk food) available in the public part of the kitchen.

For dinner each night, we design a meal based on seasonal and local ingredients which can be customized to the dietary preferences of the writers in residence. You are always welcome to tell us that you just want a salad (or toast and jam). You can also tell us what time you’d like to eat and if you would like to join others in the dining room, eat in solitude at one of our outdoor tables, or at your desk. We serve wine with dinner. If you prefer beer, please talk to us about options before your arrival.

With the exception of the junk food drawer, we do not use any industrial ingredients in our food preparation. We also buy all of our vegetables directly from farmers at two weekly farmers markets and we cook from what is available seasonally and locally. Our beans are from 10km away. We serve Camargue rice and French quinoa. Our cheeses come from local and regional farmers in the Occitanie and from the Basque region of Spain. We buy pork, chicken, duck, and lamb from local farmers and beef from a local butcher. We do not typically prepare fish because it is not a product we can buy locally and ethically. We also do not serve tropical products like mangos and avocados or fruit that is out of season (berries when it’s not summer). If your diet depends on fish, bananas, or something else non-local, we will of course make an exception but it’s important that you inform us of this.

Throughout the day you can prepare your own tea, coffee, and sodas with our sodastream and sirops. Our tap water is clean and safe to drink. We ask that you bring your water glass or prepare your own beverages at lunch and dinner unless we are bringing it to you at your desk, in which case just include that information with your request.

You will also have a chance to visit a very special farmers market with us on Saturday morning.

The form and content of coaching is different for every writer.

Many of our writers do not want any coaching and do not even discuss their work with us, and that’s fine.

Others come to chat in the kitchen, or talk through it during a private yoga session.

Those who do want coaching need to articulate their desires.

If you want Amory to read your work, please paste the text into an email (not an attachment) and send to office@amorystarr.com. Be sure to state at the top what kind of feedback you are looking for. Then send a whatsap message alerting her that you’ve sent something.

It’s more common that writers want to talk about their writing without sending any text, and that’s fine. In that case just send a message and we’ll find the first convenient moment to meet.

Our services include but are not limited to:

  • morning wake-up service, other schedule reminders
  • bringing you coffee, tea, and snacks at your desk
  • doing your laundry
  • needs from the pharmacy (Wednesdays, Saturdays, or emergencies)

Coaching includes any or none of the following:

  • morning workplan report
  • evening accountability
  • spontaneous talking it through to get unstuck
  • reading and feedback (Amory is professional nonfiction, amateur for fiction)

We do not have a lot of rules, but they are important. There are certain behaviors we cannot support. If you repeatedly violate the house rules, you will be asked to leave the retreat.

  • Respect the solitude of other guests.
  • Do not make excessive noise.
  • Be nice to the cats and keep doors closed when we ask.
  • Be nice to the antique furniture. Move it gently and do not put drinks, wet towels, or oily cosmetics on fragile surfaces. (We will tell you which surfaces are fragile.)
  • Respect the public-private boundaries. This means don’t go exploring private areas in the house or take food from the private areas of the kitchen.
  • Clean up after yourself in the bathroom (toilet, splashed water, spilled products, fallen hair) so you always leave it nice for the other writer with whom you are sharing.
  • No nudity in the swimming pool or other public places.
  • Do not disable any wifi equipment.
 

To maximize your opportunity to focus, we recommend that you place your phones and tablets on the downstairs hallway charger at or before 23:00, and leave them there until 13:00 or later the next day. The primary reason for this is to ensure that you do not allow other people’s stories to intrude into your morning. We also recommend that you do not use your phone for breaks.

If you would like to be restricted from the wifi, we can block your devices upon request.

 

Contemplation: To maximize your creativity, we recommend that you create multiple sessions of contemplation during the day. This means that you gather a notebook and pen and step away from your desk, devices, and other people to a location with a view. It helps to have a beverage.

Creative pausing: We highly recommend that you do not push yourself past fatigue. When you realize your focus is waning or you are becoming fatigued stop work immediately. We encourage you NOT to grab your phone or the internet at this moment. Instead:

  • If you feel sleepy: immediately take a 10-20-minute nap (use the timer in your room for wakeup.)
  • If you feel stuck: walk directly outside on the terrace, stretch, and breathe. Then come back inside, put on your shoes (and something warm, if necessary), prepare a tea or snack and then walk through the orchard to the southwest part of the property. Stand there a while regarding the mountains or continue your walk through the forest. You can also walk up the road for great views, but sometimes that seems like more of a project, so we recommend to just have a wander  on the property because that requires less activation energy.
  • For those doing work-trade, we recommend not scheduling the work in advance, but instead using it as a form of creative pause. Moving your attention to something completely different facilitates creativity.

You are under no expectation to socialize with hosts or other writers. We will invite you to visit farmers markets and to have aperó (early evening cocktail and fingerfood), Please feel totally great about saying “no” when you are in flow or into solitude. If you prefer to stay in silence when you are in the kitchen or other social contexts, just make a gesture to that effect (and respect when others do so). You are always welcome to eat alone at your desk or in another location.

When you want to spontaneously talk through your work or you feel lonely and want to chat, just find Amory. She is interrupt-friendly even while working at her desk, and loves to talk while cooking or working in the house. Before launching into a chat with other writers, please secure their consent by asking “do you want to chat?” (And feel really great about saying something like  “no, I’m into something on my own.”

We have a bed-desk if you prefer to work in bed.

We have 24″ and 30″ Apple Cinema external monitors, and a 21″ non-Apple monitor with HDMI port. If you want to use one of the Cinemas please get in touch so we can sort out the connection to your computer.

If you need music amplification, we have both portable wired speakers and a bluetooth speaker. If you are the only writer in residence, you are free to play music in total liberty. If there is another writer, please be sure you are not disturbing them. 

We have e-bikes for exercise and exploring. Please check the brakes and seat-height before taking off and ride safely.

Daniel is a licensed fitness coach and can take you through a muscle workout with weights and equipment in his gym. (€35 fee)

Amory does Vinyasa yoga at 0900 whenever possible, and at 16:00 on days when the morning is occupied. (free) Please note that Amory is not a certified yoga teacher, just a practitioner for 15 years.

Zen meditation with Amory or Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō meditation with Rodolphe are organized on request.

Amory performs Argentine Tango and Daniel performs stunt combat and we would love to introduce you to our artforms. Private Argentine Tango lessons are €75 and a stunt-combat choreography and filming is €125.

You are coming to the French countryside. Don’t expect to find familiar things  here. Furthermore you don’t want to spend your time here shopping for these things.

Please bring: 

  • Slippers or flip-flops for inside the house.
  • All your toiletries. Because most of our guests are very particular, we only provide liquid hand soap for the bathrooms. The rest is up to you.
  • Clothes that make you feel both comfortable and smart.
  • May-October: Bathing suit 
  • October-April: Warm comfortable indoor clothes for long hours at your desk. We provide central heating from November through March. And we provide very warm blankets to use at your desk. But if you are used to a very warm climate or a very hot house, we recommend you bring silk or cashmere long underwear and lightweight wool or fleece leggings and pullovers.
  • At least one notebook and several of your favorite pens or pencils so that you can take notes outside and away from your desk and devices.

Consider packing:

  • Important creature comforts, like your favorite soap, handcream, lip balm.
  • Important medicines and supplements.
  • A flash drive in case you want to print your draft.
  • We will have green, black, and flower tea and very good coffee, but if you have favorites, bring them. Different roasts of coffee cause slightly different brain performance,
  • Sneakers for walking in the countryside.

FYI: Things you will NOT need to bring:

  • Towels are provided.
  • We have electricity converters for UK and US plugs.
  • We have music speakers.
  • We have 3 choices of pillows: memory foam, feathers, and polyester-fill.
  • Cones and paper for pour-over coffee.
! If you realize during your journey toward us that you’ve forgotten something, send us a message as soon as possible so we can try to procure it before your arrival.

Payment is due 2 weeks before arrival.

Airport pickup/return and additional services may be paid while you are here.

You have several options for payment: 

  • cash in Euros
  • bank transfer in the EU (please ask for banking details)
  • credit/debit card payment  here (click “register” under your room and then change the amount)

Spend a little time contemplating and noting the objectives of your project.

Consider your objectives for the retreat.

Compose a one-page set of notes, your Manifesto for the project and the retreat:

  • One sentence summary of the project
  • A list of reminders of what’s important about the project. (Scope, audience, style, what you want to evoke in your readers.)
  • List of uncertainties: Things about the project you want to clarify through research, experiments, or coaching.
  • A workplan for the retreat days.

Writing means getting and keeping your ideas front and center. This requires reducing other peoples’ stories bouncing around in your mind. This means reducing the world’s access to you through email, reducing participation in your friends’ and family’s ongoing dramas, reducing information from news and social media, and not falling into polite chatter.

You may want to warn close friends, family, and work partners that you plan to be less available during this period, and you would appreciate their reducing demands on you. You can tell them that you’ll be checking your phone and responding to messages every day in the late afternoon or after dinner.

The nearest large city is Toulouse, France.

Please send us your arrival and departure information as soon as you book your tickets. 

AIR

The nearest airport is Toulouse Blagnac (TLS). 

Taxi or uber service from the airport costs €120. We provide airport pickup/return for €50 for Flights arriving 0900-2100, €70 for arrivals and departures 21:00-24:00. If your flight departs before 10:00, we charge €100 for early-morning deliveries.

If you book airport pickup, you will be put into whatsap contact with your driver. Please communicate your status directly to your driver on arrival day.

Our driver aims to meet you 45 minutes after the arrival time of your flight. Please collect your luggage and then find the Starbucks on the ground floor. Your driver will be carrying a bouquet of flowers.

Please note that if there are delays that cause our driver to have to wait for you at the airport after arriving, we will charge a surcharge of €10 for every 30 minutes. 

If you prefer to use public transportation: From the airport you can take a €9 shuttle to the main train station, Matabiau. The shuttle runs every 20 minutes and takes 22 minutes to arrive. To ease the logistics a bit, you could also take a taxi or uber to the train station. 

Adjoining the train station Matabiau is the bus station, Gare Routière. There you will find Bus 365 which will bring you for €2 to the stop Montbernard-La Vierge, just 1 km from the Domaine. We pick you up from there. The last bus departs at 18:30.

If you are arriving to the train station after 18:30, you can take a local train to Boussens, where we pick you up for €20.

TRAIN

Toulouse main train station is Matabiau. Due to bad traffic and bad pickup facilities, we do not provide pickup or return to Matabiau.

From Matabiau station, there is  Bus 365 (€2) that arrives to our road. Our stop is Montbernard-La Vierge. The last bus departs at 18:30.

If you arrive too late for that bus, you can take a local train to Boussens.

We offer pickup/return to Boussens for €20.

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Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

If you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction.

Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.