Another Productive Retreat

I felt called to take myself on retreat again. It's so hard for me to write during the work week, and with the holidays coming up and then a knee replacement looming in January, I wanted to make some real headway with the second book in my Local Foods Mystery series. 

I found a Quaker retreat house in West Falmouth, which is on the near edge of Cape Cod, on  Buzzard's Bay. The house is just across a Friends graveyard from the West Falmouth Friends Meetinghouse that was built in 1842. I reserved a room for $25 per night, but no one else was going to be there, so that was the price of the entire house.

I drove down after work on a Friday with a bad cold and stocked a few simple provisions. I set up my netbook, made some tea, and set to writing. My only distractions were my own: going for a walk, reading, thinking. The house did NOT come equipped with internet. This turned out to be a huge blessing. I crossed the street to the library once a day to check for any messages that needed acting on and otherwise left cyberspace alone.

I wrote and wrote and wrote. I took care of my cold and kept writing. I gazed out the back window at the remnants of the Meeting garden, moseyed out to pluck some bits of parsley for my soup, and kept writing. I went for a walk down to the bay and sat and listened to the calm winter lapping of the bay, then went back and kept writing

I had recently re-read Rachel Aaron's post on how she writes 10,000 words a day (and thanks to Ramona DeFelice Long for reminding me of that post last week). One of her secrets is to leave home for few hours. Check, in spades. Another is to only write the interesting scenes (and really, if you aren't compelled to write it, readers probably won't be compelled to read it, either).  I had plotted a few scenes ahead. So I jumped to the really interesting one and wrote that. Then I went back and wrote the scenes leading up to that one, making them more interesting, too. Check.


I took meal breaks at the kitchen counter and finished Kaye George's latest funny mystery set in Texas, Smoke, and then started Jeri Westerson's latest in her fabulous Crispin Guest series, Blood Lance, but I only let myself read as long as I was eating. Then, guess what, I kept writing. 



I walked through the graveyard to sit in worship with Friends on Sunday morning, then got to know a few of them, handing out bookmarks for Speaking of Murder as I did (well, it does have a Quaker protagonist). Then I went back to write.

My cold was still pretty bad late Sunday night (despite adding a bit of brandy to my tea with honey and lemon) and my cough wasn't fit for human company. I cancelled my plan to drive very early to work on Monday morning and filed for a sick day, instead. I stayed at my writing station until midday on Monday. Final tally for just under 3 full days of retreat? 15,071 words. Wow! 

The work in progress is now just under 100 pages long. It isn't due until July 1 but I feel very comfortable with this headway. Sure, it's a rough first draft. Now, though, I am confident that I will have enough time to schedule in revision and polishing before I have to send it off. 

Quaker House, I will return to thee.

What's your favorite retreat center? Where are you most productive writing when you can grab a stretch of time, whether it's three hours or three days?

Sleepless in Ipswich

Sleep. We all need it. Research shows that it's during sleep that we heal our bodies and our minds. If we don't get enough or wake up at the wrong moment in the sleep cycle, it can hurt us, make us fat, hamper our work life, endanger our driving, and more.

This is my last week at the day job I've held for three years. My three-day writing retreat starts tomorrow. I have next week off to write and to catch up on a myriad of appointments and organizing that I don't usually have time for. After that I start a new job with a new commute and more hours.

As a result, my brain is full of plans, ideas, things I want to remember. Lists go something like:

• Don't forget to bring the lesson on the Three-Act structure to the retreat. And peanut butter. And the wine opener.
• Remember to finish filling out the multi-page Author's Questionnaire from Kensington Publishing.
• Call Mom and remind her you'll be out of phone contact on the weekend.
• Write up that memo for your replacement at the job saying where your files are and how you create PDFs of the user guides.
• Call the tax preparer. But first, get all the tax stuff together: Find the mortgage interest statement. List all the charitable contributions from two checkbooks and twelve Visa statements. List all professional expenses (from two checkbooks and twelve Visa statements). And so on.
• Make appointment for 60,000-mile service on the Prius.
• And the wine. And some apples. And the dark chocolate. And the yoga mat. And the laptop charger.

See what I mean?

So when I wake up at three AM, I start thinking. I add to the lists in my mind. Often I have a hard time getting back to sleep. One time-honored trick I use is to count backwards from 1000.

Another, often used simultaneously with counting, is to imagine I'm floating in a cove at a Greek beach, warm water, gentle sunshine, rocking motion.

I do keep a little pad of paper and a pen by my bed so I can reach out and jot an item down. Occasionally that helps. And I always get exercise earlier in the day, which should assist good sleeping.

But those tricks don't always work. When I know the alarm is going to off at five AM, the slight panic that sets in doesn't help.

What's your favorite trick for getting back to sleep?