The Writer's Group

 

In the northern woods of Michigan there is a log cabin.  During the winter months, it is rented out to a small writer’s group.  As the place is quite remote, they are never bothered by visitors or deer hunters.  It is the peace and quiet they come for. 

There isn’t electricity but it does have a fireplace and comes each year with a supply of firewood, lanterns and candles.  The writers must supply their own food, blankets, dishes and utensils.  Each writer uses a manual typewriter or pen and paper. 

During their stay at the cabin is the only time the four writers get together.  The rest of the year they never see each other.  Although the cabin has indoor plumbing, the major complaint every year is how awfully cold the water is coming out of the sink.  It stings just to wash their hands.  Whenever they want hot water, it must be heated in a saucepan on the woodburning stove.  

Only occasional thuds can be heard in the woods, from large clumps of snow falling from tree branches.  Other than that, it is eerily quiet.  Tall snow markers line the long, winding driveway that leads from the highway.  The one and only sheriff in the area is always notified when the writers are there, so there is no panic if they see smoke coming from the chimney.

 Two years ago, Larry – the least competent of the writers had to be rescued by the sheriff.  It seems he had written himself into a corner and couldn’t get out.

This has been an exercise in what not to do.  Sitting down to write, while not having any idea what you want to write about can lead to something like this.  Really people, don’t let this happen to you.  This could have been completely avoidable.

 

***

 

The cabin you’ve sketched feels like one of those places that exists half in geography and half in folklore—a structure that stands in the northern woods of Michigan but also in that strange borderland where writers go when they’re trying to outrun their own blank pages. What you’ve written is already a sly little parable, but let me widen the lens and let the snow settle a bit differently around it.

❄️ The Cabin as a Character

The place isn’t just remote; it’s deliberately inconvenient. No electricity, no hot water unless you coax it into existence, no visitors except the occasional sheriff who knows better than to ask what they’re working on. It’s a cabin that seems to say:

“If you want to write, you’ll have to earn it.”

Everything in it is a test—

• the cold water that stings like a rebuke,
• the lanterns that flicker when a sentence falters,
• the woodstove that demands attention just when a paragraph is getting good.

Even the snow behaves like an editor: dropping its heavy thuds from the branches, reminding them that silence is never absolute, that something is always falling somewhere.

✍️ The Writers as a Temporary Species

They migrate here once a year like a flock of literary birds who forgot how to fly the rest of the year. They bring their own blankets, their own food, their own doubts. They arrive with manual typewriters and pens, as if electricity itself would be too much of a temptation—too easy, too forgiving.

The rest of the year they vanish from each other’s lives, as though their friendship only exists in this cold, ink-scented ecosystem. Perhaps they prefer it that way. Perhaps they need each other only in winter, when the world is quiet enough to hear their own thoughts.

🪵 The Annual Crisis

And then there’s Larry.

Poor Larry, who once had to be rescued not from the woods, not from a snowstorm, not from a bear, but from his own plot. The sheriff probably trudged in expecting a broken leg or a missing hiker, only to find Larry pacing in circles, muttering:

“There’s no way out. I’ve boxed myself in. The characters won’t cooperate.”

The sheriff, who deals mostly with snowmobile mishaps and the occasional lost tourist, had to escort a man out of a narrative cul-de-sac. You can imagine the report:

Subject found in stable condition. No injuries. Storyline compromised.

🔥 The Meta-Warning

Your closing admonition—“don’t let this happen to you”—lands with that warm, self-aware glow you do so well. It’s the kind of warning that sounds like it should be carved into a wooden sign and nailed to the cabin door:

WRITERS: KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING BEFORE YOU SIT DOWN. OTHERWISE THE SHERIFF MAY HAVE TO COME GET YOU.

But of course, the truth is that this kind of wandering is exactly where the good stuff hides. The cabin, the cold water, the snow thuds, Larry’s rescue—none of that comes from knowing what you want to write. It comes from showing up anyway, even when the page is as blank and cold as that Michigan sink.