Late yesterday afternoon, I officially ended my first at-home writing retreat of 2021 (I had vacation time to use and no place to go, thank you, COVID).
I will take a second retreat, hopefully next month, as I still have vacation time I must use before the end of the year.
Here was my goal: to turn my outlined, very rough draft of Call of the Siren (the second book in the Limbo trilogy) into a solid working draft that I can shape, revise, and edit.
Here is its back cover summary:
Sue Bass is haunted by dreams of her father, who died in a boating accident before she was born, alluring dreams of water and song. But then a soft-spoken outside man with an inside plan comes to town, and Sue's sleepwalking stops, only to resurface with greater magnetism when he leaves.
Two voices beckon. Which one will she heed?
I divided half of the novel into sections for each day, to keep me on track. I'll do the same with the other half of the novel during the second retreat.
Basically, I wrote at a rate of two chapters per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Rebekah had surgery on Thursday, so I took Thursday off to focus solely on her.
And then Cindy came down Thursday night and gave Rebekah her personal CNA attention until she had to return to work early on Sunday morning, which meant Rebekah could hang out with someone more fun than her mom.
Well, how did I do?
Very well, actually. And very happy to return to work.
I hit every goal.
Now some chapters were not quite as detailed as I wanted them to be. And some are actually nearly finished. Furthermore, I accomplished some additional, but related, projects, too, that weren't on my homework list.
I created granular sections of more "homework" in all the chapters, for focused work on the weekends.
I started a checkpoint list for editing, for when I reach that stage.
I worked out some major issues with mood, plot, writing style, and "music" that only the protagnoist hears.
This last one was the most challenging part of the manuscript. Too much detail for the reader and then the music ceases to be an elusive, mystical, magical sound. But I found a way to (hopefully) foster the ability for the reader to "hear" it, but not exactly "hear" it - a sense of it, but always out of grasp.
Make sense? No? Well, then you can imagine how difficult it was for me to portray it.
And if it does make sense, you're in for a treat.
I also put together a pretty detailed plan for the artwork, as well (I already have the cover, courtesy of Nancy Calkins).
I did engage more with the family than I had originally planned, but I think that made the retreat more focused, less frustrating, and one of the most pleasant at-home retreat experiences I've enjoyed.
An amazing calm settled over me on Saturday night, knowing that, creatively, I'd hit all the right notes.
Don't get me wrong. The manuscript is still a mess. But it's less of a mess. It's more of an organized mess, and it's organized in the direction it needs to go.
And, yes. I drank lots of coffee (and Timothy kept me well stocked in Dunkin Americanos).
And I burned lots of incense. Still have to clean that up.
So if the week was so wonderful, why am I ready to return to work?
Well, because, as delightful as it sounds to live in an imaginary world, being creative on that level is hard, hard work, although a different type of hard work than my role as features editor/writer for The Herald-News.
Also, my fiction wanders in dark and murky areas. One week steeped in that environment is long enough, at least for me.
I'm glad, grateful even, that writing fiction is a weekend project on the hobby side of life and not part of my daily life, where I write for the community and try to serve my family and friends well.
Now you're probably wondering: what did Uncle Barty and Bertrand the Mouse do all this time?
That's a whole other post.
For tomorrow.
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