At this time last week, I was at the beach with a group of incredibly talented writers, cranking out words, brainstorming story ideas and eating an impressive amount of pad thai and curry. (I was also fighting off a serious cold aka “the death rattle,” but I’ll save that story for another time.)
The very first Twitterbloc Writers’ Retreat, which we named ILM13 because we held it in Wilmington, N.C., was four days of writing bliss. I got to spend time with some of my favorite people in the world, and I wrote thousands of words in two different manuscripts.
Yes, two. You see, I had a bit of an affair with New WIP. I hated to cheat on WL, but New WIP was looking mighty fine at the beach and I just gave in to temptation. Luckily, WL forgave me and I’m back on track with revisions now.
ILM13 was exactly what I needed to remind me why I love writing and re-inspire me about the project I’ve been slugging through. At one point, I declared WL on hold while I started New WIP, and one of my crit partners sat down next to me and said “Well, if you’re not going to finish WL yet, can you tell me how it ends?” I agreed and ended up laying out my entire plot before her, and I saw her excitement about the story and it reminded me why I wanted to write WL in the first place. Thirty minutes later, New WIP was on hold and I was back to writing WL.
This is what crit partners are for. I’m SO lucky to have such amazing people in my life.
In addition to morning walks on the beach, daily critique sessions and thousands and thousands of words written among us, we also had dinner (not Thai food this time) with author Rebecca Petruck. I met Rebecca at Yallfest last year and was thrilled when she agreed to meet with us and answer the millions of questions we hurled at her about writing and publishing.
Rebecca’s debut novel, “A Weird Kind of Normal” will be released by Abrams/Amulet next spring, so she took us through her journey to publication — from writing and querying to submissions and signing her contract. Hearing about the details of her contract and her editing process was absolutely fascinating to those of us on the outside, and she gave us each such great advice. Talking to her about agents and querying was especially helpful to me, and I feel a whole lot more confident about the process now.
Clearly, I’m still glowing from my experience at ILM13. I’m re-commited to my story and I’m excited about it again. Plus, I have a whole new book under way (Oh, New WIP. You temptress, you!). In short, a writers’ retreat was exactly what I needed.
Thinking of planning your own writers’ retreat? Here are some tips:
1. Get someone organized and awesome like Deb to handle all the difficult stuff like booking the perfect beach condo, negotiating security deposits, etc. (If you have a Deb in your group, count yourself lucky!)
2. Set up committees to spread the work around and get everyone involved. We had people in charge of food and menus, scheduling, and transportation, and we set up several Google Hangouts so we could talk through the finer details like dietary restrictions, airport rides and who was bringing the blender. (We love to blend!)
3. Make a schedule. When we all get together, it’s easy to wile away hours catching up and talking about books and cute fictional boys, so we had a schedule to keep us (mostly) on track. If you’d like to see the rough schedule I made for ILM13, I’ve pasted it below.
Continue reading →
Over the weekend, I sent my PowerPoint presentation, notes and handouts from the DFW Writers’ Conference‘s “Art of the Interview” class to those who’d requested them. If I forgot to include you on that email (sorry!) or if you missed my class and would like notes, let me know.
 faction){kind=link}
){kind=link}