Home Sweet (Temporary) Home

This weekend, my writer friends and I rented a cabin in the Poconos and created our own mini writer's retreat. After brainstorming some cheesy names for our cabin in the woods (The Writer's Block, Backspace Bungalo, Writer's Residence, Paper and Pen Pad, etc) and picking up the necessary food stuffs at a grocery store along the way (and also a quick run for the eco-friendly version of Duraflame logs, because let's face it, fires are hard to start), we were ready to hole up for the weekend!


(and, okay, maybe there were small amounts of booze involved in our supplies as well)

Friday night we devised our plan of attack and discussed our goals. My personal goal was to finish my work-in-progress. I was at the 35,000-word mark, and I hoped to squeeze in around 15,000 more words before the ending. Other goals for the group included: get out of not-writing funks and just get some words on the page, edit a certain number of chapters, or edit a very old project and start a new one in between edits.

Saturday morning, we got up, made tea, and set to work. I don't know what it was. Maybe a combination of not figuring out the internet password until halfway through the day, seeing all of the other writers here working away at their own projects, or maybe it had something to do with the big, fat, first real winter snowflakes I've seen all year that started falling halfway through the day...


But something kicked my productive side in the pants.

I started this project at the beginning of January, and I've made pretty good progress on it so far. But I'd been averaging around 2,000 words a day, on the days that I actually dedicated time to it. I wasn't really expecting to meet my goal this weekend.

At 1 p.m. on Saturday, we stopped writing to take an inspirational walk in the woods, and I stared at my word count. I'd done 5,000 words already. The wonders that happen when you actually wake up early on a weekend!



We hiked around our neighborhood and snapped photos, stumbled through snow, and stocked up on kindling for our next night's fire. By the time we returned to the cabin and whipped up a quick (and surprisingly healthy) lunch, I was ready to tackle more pages.

Come the end of Saturday night, when we called an end for the day, popped open a bottle of wine, and curled up with marshmellows next to the fire, I'd reached 8,000 words. To celebrate, we each read snippets of our work aloud (and let me just say, hearing something out loud gives you a whole new perspective to the scene, even if it's just you reading it to yourself!).

Sunday was pretty much a redo of the same. More writing, broken up by a hike to the nearby lake and an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet hosted at what appeared to be the local bingo hall.



The good news is, by the end of Sunday, I'd finished draft 1 of Criss-Cross! ... The bad news is, even after revising the ending a couple times throughout the day, I'm still 2,000 words short of where I was hoping to be by the final page. 48,000 words is a little short for a YA novel, even a contemporary thriller.

At the end of the day, I'm happy with this draft. The basics of the plot, the characters and the story are all there. I'm probably going to take a couple weeks off from working on it to recharge (and enjoy my vacation time coming up in early March). Then I'll be ready to revise.

All in all, this weekend was exactly what I needed. Time to recharge my batteries on long leisurely walks in the brisk Pennsylvania woods, and time to hunker down beside a warm fire and write until my fingers hurt.



To anyone like me who doesn't have the money at the moment to go on a formal writer's retreat right now, I would definitely suggest this approach, if you have a handful of writing buddies to tag along with. We spent, in total, maybe $200 each, counting food and drinks and the rest? Totally worth it for the battery recharge, the productive output, and the awesome company!

Dear beautiful PA countryside, I hope we see you again soon!


(maybe this time when it's warm out...)