Currently, I am at my writer's retreat in North Conway, New Hampshire. This is the retreat when I get together with the same lovelies I have been getting together with for the last ten years. The core group is made up of mostly YA (young adult) and MG (middle grade) and PB (picture book) authors, with a few of us who have also self-published rom-com (me!) and romantic fantasy.
We love getting together and gossip and trading horror stories and successes and even finances. My writer friends drink wine and I drink my tea (Earl Grey Green Tea, for those who are still reeling over my choice to be dry but caffeinated). Sometimes there's singing, many times there's dancing, and on an occasion or two, there may or may not have been a "pee tree" involved. ;o)
During these retreats, we like setting goals and attempting to achieve them. Mine this time around have included a lot of housekeeping I like to put off. Things like reconfiguring a story's timeline, fixing some links, tweaking some minor book cover issues, moving a current Word document into Scrivener so I can look at it more carefully (my ADHD brain likes to lessen the noise where I can). Done, done, done, and done. There is approximately 36 hours left at said writing retreat, and I still plan to write 5,000 words on my new YA, create a few more plot "candybars" for a rom-com I'm revising, re-layout an older, revised story into a print book, and to fix small issues in three other print books.
Can I do it? My ADHD brain says "Heck yes!" My practical, human side that needs sleep and a nervous system that wouldn't like to be on the edge of hyperventilation say... "Hmm. Time to prioritize, divide, and attack!"
What did I end up doing in those 36 hours? (I am updating this post five days later--I was at the retreat Thursday through Sunday and now it's Monday.)
-I wrote 1500 words on my YA novel
-I laid out a paperback
-I revised three layouts
-I created candybars for an in-process YA novel and finished rom-com.
Out of everything, I didn't hit the 5000 words I wanted to. But that was because another book (the rom-com) now has a deadline of September 30. That moved to the top of the Priority List.
Overall, I would say this was a very successful retreat.
And I'm thankful that our next retreat is already booked for October.
