First of all, Happy Easter! And if you are not into that holiday, then you can always celebrate the coming of spring. As a kid growing up in the Unitarian church, that was the emphasis we learned.
As you read this newsletter, I’ll be settling into an apartment in Lyon, France for two days, my month-long writing retreat in Ceret over. It was a great success. I wrote 33,000 words of a new novel and then switched gears to focus on a rewrite of a different novel to my agent’s notes. That required a lot of rearranging and so forth, and I’m happy to report that I got a new annotated outline done. So all I have to do now is plunge into the actual writing.
But beyond that, I learned some good lessons this past month. These are taken directly from what the five of us talked, stressed and obsessed about:
–Motivating your characters—giving them credible motivation—is all important. If your character’s motivation is weak or illogical, it throws everything off. But figuring out motivation is hard. Sometimes it takes a lot of thought and working through several drafts in order to truly understand your character.
–Arc in character, plot and scene, in other words, macro and micro is also crucial.
–Timelines are a bear. First of all you have to try to keep track of them. Then you need to monkey them around so they conform to the plot. It’s enough to send a writer to drink. Fortunately, this region of France is full of good, cheap wine.
–Having expansive time and space in which to concentrate on writing is truly remarkable.
–But, for me, probably the best part of this retreat has been the writerly camaraderie. The opportunity to discuss plot over Happy Hour is so helpful. One afternoon, I went to the upstairs apartment and blathered on my character’s lack of motivation. Jenni said one thing, Debbie said another and all of a sudden I said, “I’ve got it! I think I figured it out!” This is for a novel on which I am three drafts in, and I never would have discovered it without their input—and the strong espresso. Never underestimate how powerful writing community is. We writers work in isolation far too much.
I’m grateful for the time I’ve had to concentrate so deeply on my writing and also have a lot of fun. This week its back to the states. And it will be good to be home, too. And more writing surrounded by family and friends—which will be wonderful in its own way.
The moral of my story today is that if you get the chance to go on a writing retreat of any length even one day, do it!
Have you ever taken a writing retreat? What was the result? Leave a comment!
