The Retreat Was Successful, Now Get Back to Work!

Life gets in again... I had a very successful retreat up to Powell River. I wrote on the coach on the way there, I wrote on the ferry, I wrote in my little room in Myst and Jonathan's house, I wrote in the coffee shop, I wrote in the bakery in Lund, I wrote on the way home... They fed me, they didn't mind when I ignored them for hours, they discussed writing with me. I came home feeling stoked about book three and just getting back into writing after a long hiatus. Of course now that I'm home I have two kids and a house and responsibilities to get in the way, but I'm in a way better frame of mind than I usually am at the beginning of summer holidays.

Part of what helped me, I think, is that I stopped worrying about what I was going to write while I was away. I told myself that in order to get the ball rolling again I had to simply write and not worry about what I was producing. "The first 100 pages you write are going to be shite," I told myself, "so just get them over with, and then you can proceed." It seemed to work, because I didn't worry about what I was writing, and I managed to produce some stuff that might actually turn out to be useful. It certainly helped me with the goal of generating ideas for book three! And I even tackled a problem that affects the story as a whole and I came up with a solution.

So, onward and upward! And when Myst and Jonathan eventually open up their Writers' Hideaway Retreat destination, I will highly recommend it to all my writer friends (so long as I get first dibs).

Back to it.