Schreiblust

I wish it were still last week.

Last Wednesday I left for my B-S Writing Weekend.  My friend, and #1 writing companion, and I packed up our stuff, including our newly completed first drafts, and took off for four nights at a hotel with two goals -- relax (a.k.a. pool time) and work on our writing.

People hear about our little getaway and they think we're a bit odd.

"You go to a hotel and do what?  Write?"

But it's one of the things I really look forward to every year and it really drives me to finish the goals I set in order to earn the weekend.  One of these days the B-S Writing Weekend will turn into a writing week. 

This year's hotel had a small living room area which served perfectly as our writing space.  A few years ago we had a whole condo, but I guess we can't expect that every year.  :)  I got so much done:  new stories started, old ones worked on and critiquing and rewrite time too.  It always gives me a fresh shot of energy and enthusiasm.  I'm definitely full of Schreiblust!

We did a new thing this year -- I'll call it a spot critique.  It was really beneficial.  We took turns choosing random pages from the other person's manuscript, read them aloud and critiqued/discussed the page and it's relation to the overall story.  Neither of us have read the other person's entire book yet, so some questions had to do with context and storyline, but we got into some pretty lengthy discussions about techniques and story development during our spot critique time.  It's amazing how much you can get from looking at just one page.  Multiply that by however many pages you can get through over the course of two 3-4 hour spot critiquing sessions and, well, I'll just say that I already have a lot to consider as I go over my novel for its first major revision.  The spot critiques are definitely going to be a new staple in our writing weekends. 

I've been trying to decide which story to take to the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Conference in June and now the decision is even harder.  I just stated a new story over the weekend and I'd kind of like to take it, but I don't know if I'll feel like it's developed enough to workshop yet.  Hmm.  Mal sehen.