RETREAT!

I’m going to talk about an event that’s going to take place this week for myself and my friends. We will all be jumping in our cars and driving 3-4+ hours to reach an incredible place where we will spend the next three and a half days at a writing retreat.

This is a time of fun, getting together with like-minded friends who also happen to be writers – and writing. Lots of writing. Or editing. Or brainstorming. Or outlining. If it has to do with writing, we do it. There are no workshops to attend, no agents or editors to impress, no schedules to adhere to (well, almost none, but I’ll get to that.) It’s just an intense time of writing and is something we look forward to all year. This will be our tenth year of doing this.

When we first started the retreat, it went from Friday evening to Sunday morning. So actually, we only had one full day of writing. It was fun and we got a lot done, but still… one day. That wasn’t much. So we expanded it to now include Thursday to Sunday right before lunch (though most of us do leave right after breakfast because of the distance involved).

Now you may think that two days isn’t much time to get anything done. But you’d be wrong. You’d be surprised how much you can get done when you have nothing else to worry about. We stay in a hotel-like establishment. Our meals are provided for us as well as snacks. For those who need breaks, there are hiking trails (though at least two of our members are no longer permitted on them without a GPS – a story for another day), exercise and activity rooms, and a small museum on site. The only schedules we adhere to are meal times. And we do take some time both Friday and Saturday evenings for a little relaxation and time with each other (but those are optional – if you’re in the middle of an intense scene – keep on writing!).

We go full of excitement and anticipation; we work hard, play harder and return exhausted and brain dead, but usually satisfied with what we accomplished.

So my suggestion to you is… plan your own writing retreat. It doesn’t have to be as elaborate as ours. Can you get away for a weekend? Or even just an hour? Yes, you can have a retreat for an hour. You go into your room/office/place of writing – turn off the internet and other distractions and concentrate on nothing but your writing.

You might be surprised what you can get accomplished – even in just an hour.

Vicky

Today’s Notes: March 31

Birthdays: Octavio Paz, Leo Buscaglia, Judith Rossner, Marge Piercy

Tips and Teasers:  Finish this scene using: snow, game, cell phone, timer: Mama, forgive me…

Thought for the day: “The first and most important part of writing fiction is just to think about the story.” – Terry Brooks

Today’s Notes: March 30

Birthdays: Anna Sewell, Sean O’Casey

Tips and Teasers:  Show the characters through their emotions rather than telling us about them. Don’t tell the reader she’s angry, show her throwing the vase.

Thought for the day: “Writing is a privilege. A joy. A pain in the ass. The easiest thing in the world to do. The most difficult feat to pull off. It is profound. It is ridiculous. Better than making love. Akin to dying. More trouble than it’s worth. Like rolling down a hill. Like scaling the Alps. Whatever it is…it’s not for amateurs. You really have to want to write, to write.” – Rod McKuen.

Today’s Notes: March 29

Today is National Mom and Pop Business Owner’s Day – do them, and yourself, a favor and stop in at an independently owned store, like Aaron’s Books in Lititz, PA, and help a small store out.

Birthdays: Ernst Junger, Eric Idle

Tips and Teasers:  Create a comic book superhero. Male or female? Human? What powers does s/he/it possess?

Thought for the day: “To write is a humiliation.” – Edward Dahlberg

Today’s Notes: March 28

Birthdays: St. Teresa of Avila, Nelson Algren

Tips and Teasers:  Go through your latest manuscript and use a colored pen to mark all your main character’s dialogue. Use different colors to mark other’s dialogue. Your hero/heroine should be the one with the most to say.

Thought for the day: “To write is to create music. The words you write make sounds, and when those sounds are in harmony, the writing will work.” – Gary Provost

Who has the time?

In my “real” life, I am an editor and I work at a small, independent bookstore so my life is surrounded by books. I was also a reviewer for a national magazine for almost twenty years, and have a degree in library science. All this goes to say – I love books. I can’t get enough of them. Though sometimes…

As an editor, I spend my days making other people’s books better. I look at plot lines, continuity, grammar, spelling… everything. It’s not easy work and I don’t always like the book the publisher sends me to work on, but I do work on them all with the same level of integrity and attention, no matter the subject. It is my job to take these rough rocks and turn them into polished gems.

All this is to say that, by the end of my “work” day, I am usually more than ready to turn off the computer and do something that does not involve whether to hyphenate “face to face” or capitalize “Google”. Unfortunately, my own writing time suffers because of this – by the time I finish, I’m just not ready to work on my own stuff. It took some doing, but I finally figured out that, unless I’m under a deadline, I’m going to have to be a weekend writer. I don’t edit on weekends (again, unless I’m under a deadline) so that is my time to write – and I’ve found I’m actually more productive.

When I carved out time in the evenings, it always took a little time for me to figure out where I was in the story and where I needed to be next, and there was never enough time to really give the work justice. But by setting my weekends up for just that (and yes, all the other stuff I have to do on weekends – but I’m still adjusting the schedule), I have a lot more time and can write longer and better than a little here and a little there.

I’m still tweaking the schedule, and probably will for some time, but for now, it’s working. So look to see new stuff from me soon – or as soon as I can find a new publisher! In the meantime, check out Danger on Xy-One – a non-erotic futuristic romance. For more info, checkout my Bookshelf

Today’s Notes: March 27

Birthdays: Alfred de Vigny, Heinrich Mann,

Tips and Teasers:  Little things around your house are missing. This week, a small pillow; last week, an old t-shirt; food that you know you bought is gone from the cabinet. Who or what is taking the stuff? How and why?

Thought for the day: “Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.” – Elie Wiesel

Today’s Notes: March 26

Birthdays: Robert Frost, Alfred Housman, Joseph Campbell, Tennessee Williams, Erica Jong, Bob Woodward, Patrick Suskind,

Tips and Teasers:  Your best characters will rise from personal experience. Dredge up everything bad (or good) that’s ever happened to you and let your characters experience it.

Thought for the day: “Never present ideas except in terms of temperaments and characters.” – Andre Gide

Today’s Notes: March 25

Today is Waffle Day and Pecan Day – sounds like a day for Pecan Waffles! Topped with whipped cream. Yum!

Birthdays: Gloria Steinem, Flannery O’Connor

Tips and Teasers:  Re-read one of your old stories. Circle adjectives that merely label or explain and replace them with descriptive nouns or adjectives that evoke concrete, sensory qualities

Thought for the day: “No rejection is fatal until the writer walks away from the battle leaving dreams and goals behind.” – Jeff Herman (literary agent)

Today’s Notes: March 24

Today is National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day. Who knew there was a special day just for this treat? Interesting.

Birthdays: William Morris, Dario Fo, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Tips and Teasers:  A vandal has trashed your street. When you find out who did it, you are shocked. Who did it and why?

Thought for the day: “Sometimes the only reason to keep writing is ‘just because.’” – Ralph Keyes