Virtual Writing Retreat

Blog Post No. 430

2017 AWP Retreat

If you missed last week’s post, I wouldn’t be surprised because it wasn’t terribly popular. They can’t all be winners. Either way, in that post I mentioned that over the weekend I would be attempting a Virtual Writing Retreat with the Wrecking Writing crew. Starting on the Friday, we had a group chat for about an hour before logging off and getting to work on whatever projects we each had planned for the weekend. We had set a rough goal for 10am to 2pm in the day and 7 to 10pm at night. The general idea was to keep in touch over messenger and be free to take breaks or call the sessions for ourselves when we saw fit. It was as close to a real writers retreat as we could get without being together at a cottage over a weekend.

The Weekend of Firsts

Blog No. 172

A few years ago (as documented in the deep bowels of this blog) I worked at Chapters. Initially, it was a love affair for the ages. Raises came quickly, the people were great, and I was surrounded by books. For a university list student, it was great. Eventually, all things must end, and my time at Chapters did just that. I moved on and (a little while later) started down the road of writing, perusing my dream of becoming a working writer, free from the shackles of any job, be it book based or otherwise.

During my time at Chapters, there were a few things that constantly ran through my mind. Gee, some of these books are terrible, how did they get published? Even I can write something that bad. Why aren’t I writing? And the big, Wow, some of these authors who come in to do singings are just people. I’m people. Why not me? There were other thoughts, but they mostly revolved around lunch and when my next break was. The pertinent ones are those first italicised thoughts. In January, a few years after leaving Chapters, I fulfilled the first of those quests. My book was published (by Christian and me) and it was put on the shelf in Chapters. Now, Saturday in fact (from 1pm to 4pm to be precise) I will be doing my first Chapter signing.

Crash!

Blog No. 93

A few nights ago, Christian and I were diligently working on some writing and editing. Admittedly we did spend an hour or so chatting, discussing, and planning, as we are wont to do. It’s a regular routine that we manage a few days a week. Sometimes we manage more writing and less talking, sometimes we slip into an entire wasted evening of conversation. (Not that all our discussions are wasted. Our topics are usually writing, Adventure Worlds, and our upcoming books. Sometimes it’s just superheroes and cinema though). The evening in question, we had just finished a lively discussion about the future of our website and how we want to progress before realizing we had wasted a whole hour of talking. With so much work to do (all the time, it never ends) we refocused and got started. At the end of the evening (we usually wrap up around nine) I went to check a couple of words in an online dictionary before saving and poof!