Long weekends are good for writing. Thing is, they're also good for not writing. This past weekend I ventured off to my usual retreat spot--a small inn on the shores of Lake Michigan, where it's usually just me and the water and the words for days.
What I brought with me:
— A lofty list of goals.
— A Nock Sinclair loaded with good pens.
— My laptop, because one of the things on my list was to finish a rewrite and revision of a new short story I needed to turn in.
— A printed draft of the current novel I'm editing/synopsizing.
— Two notebooks that each contain the beginning of the same novel that I accidentally wrote twice, years apart, so that I could combine them into one preferred draft.
— My stack of planning notebooks for several writing projects (the short story planning notebook, the novel planning notebook for the novel I am synopsizing, the novel planning notebook for the new novel I am drafting, and the random ideas notebook in case I had any random ideas.)
— Far too many snacks.
— Far too little discipline.
I also brought a writing friend this time, a dear person with whom I normally would have been attending a writing convention that same weekend. This was our substitute for that lost convention. It was also the first time we'd seen each other in nearly two years, and perhaps we didn't take that enough into account when making our lofty goals.
I did finish the short story and turned it in on time. I also managed to fix my diverging novel drafts. I did not make it far on my synopsis--the main thing that I had hoped to finish. I only completed three of the twenty chapters.
What I did instead:
I visited with my friend. We had many snacks, and took walks, and chatted. We watched the waves on the lake and boats passing by. We watched a beautiful red moon rise, listened to audiobooks and podcasts. We came across a trove of fossils and climbed over boulders to meticulously document our discoveries. We inconvenienced seagulls. We had the best ice cream ever. We spent five hours strolling a beach, picnicking, sifting through rocks, finding more fossils, dozing in the sunshine. We exhausted ourselves with fresh air and fell asleep early with our work undone.
Sometimes I need to remember, when I look at my lofty lists of goals, that I can't just write. I need to write about something. And if you're going to write about life, you also have to live it--soak up the experiences you can draw from later. If you only write about the world as you see it from your office window, it will be a filtered view, textureless, scentless, incomplete.
I didn't get done what I needed to get done, but I did what I needed to do, and while today's drafts are half empty, tomorrow's are half full. There are lots of ways to work on your writing, and sometimes that work involves ice cream, spectacular rocks, and neglected stationery.
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