Tag Archive for: Writing Retreats

Chaos by Lynn Chandler Willis

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I have a confession to make. Oh, by the way––I’m Lynn, and I’m one of the new kids on the block. I too am an author. Let’s get that little fact out of the way so you’ll fully grasp the weight of my confession. Here goes…are you sitting down? You might want to sit down for this. 

I can’t write when my world is calm. I need chaos. I crave chaos.  

Not like I crave Dove milk chocolate but that’s an issue for another day. I only crave chaos when I’m trying to write so it’s not like I’m an adrenaline junkie or some weirdo. We all have our little quirks. Victor Hugo used to write naked. Hemingway wrote standing up. Lynn Chandler Willis writes while stirring the SpaghettiOs or changing a diaper or overseeing snack time. 

I discovered this about my self at, of all places, a writer’s retreat. I had just come off a 5-year stint of babysitting eight of my nine grandkids and could not wait to spend a week with other authors. All the learning and sharing and brainstorming––all taking place in a magnificent, ocean-front house with 46 bedrooms. Okay, it may have only been 16 bedrooms but I’ve never been in a house that big.

The first morning there, I take my cup of coffee to one of the dining tables that could seat a football team and open up the laptop to get started. Here goes…I’m going to write. Okay, maybe it was just a false start. I wasn’t fond of that word so I deleted it and started over. Again. And again. And…again.  

I look around the room at the other authors and everyone is engrossed in their work. Fingers are flying across keyboards, red pens are scribbling on paper, and not one single person is talking. Some are wearing headphones, perhaps listening to a playlist of their favorite music. Or maybe they’re wearing them to drown out the…silence?

I spent an obscene amount of time those first few days scrolling Facebook or reading and answering emails. I even read, and replied to, the spam. I don’t remember which day it was that the magic finally happened. Armed with the laptop and coffee, I sat at a covered bar on the second-floor balcony, overlooking the ocean. The sound of the waves crashing and the constant chatter from the seagulls was just the beginning. The house next door was massive, like ours. I have no idea if the people who were staying there were family or friends, but there was at least twenty of them. Not including the kids. 

When those kids ran outside and jumped in the pool, my heart fluttered. It wasn’t long before they were splashing and yelling and laughing so loud the neighbors could hear them. And the words came. I wrote a paragraph, and then another one, and another. 

Don’t get me wrong––I’d go on another writer’s retreat in a heartbeat. Now that I know my style and what I need to get the words down,  I can embrace it. I hug it, and squeeze it, and love it like the cherished quirk it is. I crave it.

The other night while working on the first book in a new series (coming Fall 2022, yeah!), I was struggling with a scene. It just would not come. But a text from my ten-year-old grandson did come. He asked if he could come down and watch his “show.”  Poor guy has a twin sister and another sister 11 months older and they don’t like The Flash so he comes down to my house where he rules the roost. 

He came down and curled up beside me on the couch where I was struggling with the right words. He turned on the tv, turned the volume up, and settled in. Every once in a while, he’d pause it and say, “Grandma watch this,” and I would. I’d look up from the laptop to watch some goofy scene that appealed to ten-year-old boys and I’d laugh with him, or I’d offer a wow! and then go back to writing, the word count climbing. Once again, I embraced the chaos.   

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A Writer’s Weekend

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 by
Paula Gail Benson

Sometimes
you have to dedicate time to your writing craft. In pre-Covid-19 days, that was
accomplished at writers’ conferences. You spend some time listening to master
classes and panels, then you learn what’s going on in the business by talking
with fellow writers in the hall and bar.

Now
that travel and in person gatherings are extremely limited, how do you
recapture the experience and energizing effects of a writing conference?

Fortunately,
virtual meetings have become the norm. By scheduling carefully, you can
piece together the perfect writing retreat. Just be sure to build in some
breaks so that you don’t exhaust yourself.

On
August 7 through 9, I stayed at a local Airbnb (more on that in tomorrow’s
WWK ) and set up to spend a day virtually with writing buds. I started with
Murder on the Beach’s presentation of John Dufresne’s “How to Write a Story.”
For $35.00, you got the program, plus the bookstore sent you Dufresne’s Storyville without shipping charges. I
found both to be extremely helpful and inspiring. The book is one to read brief
passages from each day to keep the encouragement going.

The following week, I attended Debra H. Goldstein’s excellent program on writing conflict. John and Debra’s events were part of what Murder on the Beach calls Florida Authors Academy Workshops. Future events are listed at this link. It’s a great and very economical series.

Next,
I attended the Triangle Chapter of SinC program to hear Lori Rader-Day talk
about “Turning an Idea into a Novel.” She spoke about her own journey in
writing The Lucky One and shared some
of her experiences in writing her current work in progress, a mystery based on
Agatha Christie housing children refugees during World War II.

Here’s a link to Triangle Sisters Website.

At the end of the
day, I joined the business meeting of Sacramento’s Capitol Crimes Chapter of
SinC. Hearing about how that chapter is regrouping and planning for the future
gave me ideas to suggest for our local chapter. Here’s a way to access the future events planned by Capitol Crimes. It has some great upcoming speakers.

What virtual programs have you been watching during the pandemic?

Retreating to Advance

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By Cathy Perkins
The weekend marked the 10th anniversary of our
writing retreat. Wow, ten years. Ten years ago, Rachel Grant, Rebecca Clark,
Courtney Milan, Darcy Burke and I were Golden Heart finalists and staged our
first retreat. (We invited Elisabeth Naughton to join us several years ago and
Kris Kennedy couldn’t come this year.) We’re all multi-published authors now,
but we’re also friends. We’ve seen each other’s children grow up, celebrated
successes and consoled losses.
The primary focus of the weekend is writing. Usually silence
reigns except for the clicking of Elisabeth’s keys, but there are lighter
moments too. We reviewed the 432 pictures from Darcy’s photo shoot and picked
favorites for book cover potential. Of course, we had to stage our own “shoot.” 
This is our “thoughtful” pose. 
Yeah, not.
One of the most helpful things for me was the business
discussion. We talked about goals for the upcoming year and mouths gaped as
Darcy described her publication schedule. “I treat it like a job, because
that’s what it is,” she explained. In order to meet her schedule, she sets—and
meets—daily word counts. 
Her comment echoed Steven King. I listened to On Writing
during the drive to Portland. (We change the location every year, but the house
is always in the Pacific Northwest.) King said he goes to his writing space
every morning and doesn’t come out until he has at least 1500 words on the
page. Some days he’s done by noon. Others, he’s there until dinner time.
That’s my takeaway from this year’s retreat. Consistency.
Discipline. Sure, I wrote nearly 15,000 words this weekend. Some of them will
turn out to be lousy, but the first draft of my latest novel is nearly complete
and editing will deal with the clunky sections. But every day since I’ve been
home, instead of checking email, social media, and the news when I get up, I
write. I’m roughly two scenes away from reaching “The End.”
And then the editing will begin…and the plotting of the next
book.
Thanks Darcy. And Steven. 
 


An award-winning author of financial mysteries, Cathy Perkins writes twisting dark suspense and light amateur sleuth stories.  When not writing, she battles with the beavers over the pond height or heads out on another travel adventure. She lives in Washington with her husband, children, several dogs and the resident deer herd. 
She’s hard at work on the next book in the Holly Price series, 
In It For The Money.

Retreating…

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By Cathy Perkins


What’s the appeal of a writing retreat? There are as many types of writing retreats
as there are writers. Some are world famous organized affairs, while most are events
planned with friends. Drop “writing retreat” into your internet browser and
pages of links will fill the screen.
Stepping
back, though, let’s look at the big picture. What’s mentioned most often as the
key ingredient for a writing retreat?
Time.

A
retreat reduces our usual distractions for guilt free writing time. Away from
home, spouse, family, friends, pets, day-jobs, laundry, and stacks of unopened
mail, we can relish the time and the freshness of a new place. When we step
through the door of our temporary haven, there are no defining expectations, no
history. In this place we are Writer
rather than cook, chauffeur, pet walker, diaper changer, Scout leader, event planner, or any
of the myriad roles layered on by our usual routine.

Of
course, this giddy freedom can also produce overly ambitious goals. I’ll work day and night and crank out a
hundred new pages, thousands of words!
Given how difficult it can be to carve out
time away from our jobs and lives, we might feel pressured to be uber productive. We feel guilty if we’re
not making every minute count. But that’s missing the other primary goal of a
writing retreat – a chance to rest, renew, and refill the creative well. The
goal is not to return home feeling you’ve just pulled a series of all-nighters.
Somewhere in between these two goals lives an
individual balance point. I have friends whose ideal writing retreat is a hotel
room with in-room dining service and a view of the roof top air-handling equipment.
They are there to write. Period. End of sentence. Maybe they have a deadline to
meet or that’s their personality, but the separation from the world is purely functional.
Other friends roll the retreat into a
mini-vacation. Write a couple of hours in the morning and afternoon and then indulge
the rest of the day with friends or, as The
Artist’s Way calls it, feeding the inner child. Visit galleries, spend time
with writing friends, walk on the beach or hike a mountain trail. Read in a clawfoot bathtub or bing-watch a complete season of Outlander. The writing
time flies by with flowing words and the writer goes home ready to tackle the
rest of the novel and the rest of her life.


I’m somewhere in the middle of these extremes. 
For several years. I’ve go to our fall retreat to write and I always get a lot done. “Done” can be
words written, a story spine planned, or the minutia of an upcoming release
scheduled. 
But it’s also a time of creative renewal for me to visit with
friends, to talk story with people who don’t roll their eyes (cough, cough,
family) and to walk for hours on the beach. 



What does your favorite or ideal writing retreat look like?






An award-winning author of financial mysteries, Cathy Perkins writes twisting dark suspense and light amateur sleuth stories.  When not writing, she battles with the beavers over the pond height or heads out on another travel adventure. She lives in Washington with her husband, children, several dogs and the resident deer herd. Her latest release is Double Down, available at major online retailers. 


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Retreating

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Retreating by Cathy Perkins


What
is it about a writing retreat that makes us so productive?


Is it the creative energy in the house? 

Knowing other people are writing away (and you should be too)? 

Or is it because you left behind ____ (fill in your own blank) and you better
make use of the time?

Way back in 2008, a group of
women from the Pacific Northwest finalled in the Golden Heart—and formed a bond
based first on writing and then on friendship. Every year since then, we’re
gotten together over the long Martin Luther King weekend for a writing retreat.
While there’s tons of writing, there’s also laughter and stories, Courtney
Milan’s lessons on branding, Rebecca Clark’s yoga sessions and Rachel Grant’s
chocolate martinis.


I’m halfway through a new
story, with most of the remaining scenes blocked out. I haven’t a clue about
the title or cover. Hmm… wonder what the women are doing this weekend?


Have you ever been on a
writing retreat? What do you think is the best part?

Cathy
Perkins is currently working on an as-yet-untitled story in the So About…
series.  She started writing when
recurring characters and dialogue populated her day job commuting daydreams.  Fortunately, that first novel lives under the
bed, but she was hooked on the joy of creating stories.  When not writing, she can be found doing
battle with the beavers over the pond height or setting off on another travel
adventure.  Born and raised in South
Carolina, she now lives in Washington with her husband, children, several dogs
and the resident deer herd.