A piece of solitude, on loan
Author Adeline Yen Mah and her husband understand what writers need, so they've opened their Laguna Beach residence as the ultimate retreat.
By Janet Eastman
October 19, 2006
ANDREW WINER has characters and dialogues and plot lines in his head that get drowned out by
the distractions at home. So each weekday afternoon, the author of the coming-of-age bestseller
“The Color Midnight Made”kisses his wife and toddler goodbye, bundles up his laptop and notes
for a second novel,and drives to a place where he can conjure an imaginary world.
E.L. Doctorow said that all he needed to write was a blank wall. Eudora Welty created all of her
fiction in her family home. Winer has found that he prefers the foreign silence and solitude of
someone else’s house to get the job done— a fact he has discovered asthe first personto be in-
vited by author Adeline Yen Mahand her husband, Bob, to use their weekend residence in Laguna Beach as a
writer’s retreat. No cost, no interruptions, no time limit.
When Winer finishes his book, the Mahs plan to open the six-bedroom dwelling to other writers. Forthe couple,
who had lucrative careers in science before retiring, the gifted space fulfills their dream of supporting emerging and
established writers. In their starkly modern retreat, Winer has found a place where he can composeand revise his
complicated story about art, marriage, religion and false identity set in Vienna during World War II. He credits an increased
flow of prose to working in this expan-
sive, almost empty place that lets his
creativity roam.
“I can’t be left alone in our cottage
because my daughter will find me, and I
worked for years at the public library,
but I found I was always shushing loud
talkers and cellphone users and that got
my heart racing,” says Winer, standing
in the Mahs’ elevated living room with
soaring windows that frame a Zen gar-
den and the ocean.
“But here it’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’
such a different world. It’s quiet and the
angles of the house draw me out into the
canyon, air and space. I feel as if I’m
floating on the edge of something, and
there is a sense of limitlessness and po-
tential.”
Though it may seem counterintuitive
to start a deeply personal endeavor like
writing in a place that by definition isn’t
personal, Winer says the Mahs’ gesture
inspires a sense of purpose and has be-
come a symbol of encouragement —
from one writer to another. “It’s not just
any other house,” he says. “It’s about
writing.”
Winer likes to work at a table in the
dining room, facing a wall of glass, but
after a while he no longer notices the
view. Instead, he’s transported into
whatever scene he’s constructing.
“I have New York agents who ask,
‘How do you ever get anything done in
California? You just want to surf. You
write, then walk on the beach,’” says
Winer, who also teaches at UC Riverside
in its master’s program in creative writ-
ing. “I tell them that I don’t want any-
thing to affect whatever emotion is
called for, but I also don’t believe that a
writer has to be in a banal or ugly place
to work.”
When the momentum stops, Winer
simply walks out to one of the terraces.
“This place makes me feel a little more free,” he says. “Unencumbered.”
THE house, as Adeline
envisioned it, needed
privacy but also a sense
of community, a colony
where storytellers could
gather and share their
struggle of capturing the
right words on a page.
“Writing is a solitary experience and
although writers are not all alike, I think
many of us would like to have a serene
environment,” says Adeline, 68, a former
physician who spent decades scribbling
thoughts in hospital dining halls before
quitting medicine to complete “Falling
Leaves,”her 1997million-selling memoir
about growing up in China, unwanted
by her family. “For myself, I also need
the company of interesting people for in-
tellectual stimulation between bouts of
writing.”
The couple bought this contempo-
rary house from a developer before it
was completed in 2004, with the inten-
tion of making it a writers retreat. They
spent a year redesigning it with archi-
tect David M. Parker.The floors are pol-
ished concrete, the Modernist furnish-
ings selected by Adeline. On the walls
are abstract paintings by Bob, 73, a
UCLA microbiology professor who
started painting after he retired.
The décor is spare, even austere in
places; some rooms look as blank as a
new sheet of paper.
“Writers need to have a place that is
uncluttered and aesthetically appealing
to inspire what comes forth,” says Ade-
line, who writes in a white-walled office
in the couple’s longtime Huntington
Beach home and spends weekends in
the Laguna Beach house hosting din-
ners for artists.
Instead of showy furnishings and fin-
ishes, this house shines with its unpre-
dictable architectural lines.
The galvanized-iron roof rises and
falls in seemingly random fashion. The
largest window in front is an angular
oddity, slanted at one end and wedged
into place like a geometric jigsaw puzzle
piece. Inside, steel supports lean at 45
degrees, corridors jig and jag, and
railings bow like actors after a perform-
ance.
The couple liked the galley kitchen’s
asymmetrical walls but thought the
center island took up too much space. It
was removed to make room for a built-in
banquette.
“Writers can sit and talk here,” says
Adeline, looking out the window at the
view that extends to Santa Catalina Is-
land.
COLONIES for writers,
composers, designers
and other artists have ex-
isted in the United States
for more than a century.
Of the 250 identified by
the Rhode Island-based
Alliance of Artists Communities, about
three-quarters have been founded in the
past 25 years. Most offer room and
board for a few days to a few months,
and 60% don’t charge a fee, says alliance
program director Caitlin Strokosch.
The two best-known artists’ commu-
nities in Southern California are the
18th Street Arts Centerin Santa Monica
and the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony,
arustic retreat in Temecula beloved by
“The Lovely Bones” author Alice Se-
bold. It’s being rebuilt after its 10 build-
ings burned in 2004.
Although most colonies are in rural
settings, isolating participants from big-
city noise, more are being built in urban
areas, Strokosch says, adding, “Having
aplace to retreat to is inspiring in itself.”
The Mahs wanted to start modestly
and in their own community.
“I’m merely giving my dream a trial
run on a very small scale,” says Adeline,
sitting with Bob in two reclining chairs
in the den off the kitchen. They acknowl-
edge that the screening process will be
difficult. Once the word spreads, how
will they decide who gets a key to the
front door? How many writers can com-
fortably work in the 5,500-square-foot
house at the same time, and how long
can they stay?
“We haven’t come up with the house
rules yet,” Adeline says, who adds that
no applications are being accepted. The
would like to have a serene environment.”