The Write Stuff

And then, it was time to buckle back down to work. I’d invited my North Carolina writer’s group–Diane Chamberlain, Margaret Maron, Sarah Shaber and Alex Sokoloff to come down to The Breeze Inn for one of our twice-yearly retreats, and they finally took me up on my plea/offer. We missed absent members Kathy Munger and Bren Witchger, but boy did we buckle down to work. Half “the girls” stayed at Castaway Cottage, which is right next door to The Breeze Inn, so everybody had their own working space. People often ask us what a writer’s retreat is, and we usually liken it to a writer’s bootcamp. All of us are multi-published veteran authors, so we are all serious and committed to our work, which is not to say we don’t have fun. We do. But work comes first! Our schedule usually follows a pretty set routine. We meet in the morning, and over coffee/Diet Coke, we talk about the day’s work. We write down our concrete writing goals for the day,–for instance, a plot point reached, or a page or word count achieved, and if anybody has an issue or problem with the work in progress, they ask for some brainstorming.The brainstorming is such a tremendous help! Together, we’ve come up with plot twists, titles, subplots, character names and much more for each other’s books. At lunchtime, we usually meet over a sandwich or leftovers, and talk about our progress so far, and then it’s back to work until we break for dinner. Not wanting to waste valuable work time by going out to dinner, we usually eat in, with each member taking turns supplying soup, stew, casserole, ect. Over dinner we assess the day’s progress and again brainstorm. Finally, after that, it’s usually some kind of diversion, usually a word game like Balderdash, Taboo or Scrabble, although we have also watched movies. The interesting thing this time around was that we were all at different stages of a WIP–(work in progress). Margaret is just starting her next mystery. Diane is facing a May deadline. Alex was mid-book and also starting to plot out her next book, Sarah was turning an old screenplay into a new novel, and I was mid-book, facing a summer deadline. While we were at the retreat, I received five pages of notes from my new editor, with suggestions on how to strengthen what I’d already written, and direction for the second half of the book. Those notes came at a perfect time, with my friends ready with ideas on how to achieve my editor’s goals. Together, we all hashed out tiny details (Diane’s female characters all had names ending in ‘a’), to big picture quandrys–how to add emotional depth to my lead protagonist. By Friday night, we were ready for a celebratory dinner out–at Sundae Cafe. And Saturday morning was getaway day for all. I think we all left satisfied with what we’d accomplished and excited with the prospect of our upcoming projects. We still need a name for our writer’s group, so if anybody has any suggestions, we’d love to hear ’em.