Writings da' Bomb!

Don't you hate it when a good thing has to come to an end. I spent this weekend, Thursday through Sunday at the Chesapeake Romance Writer's Spring Retreat. What a fantastic experience. This isn't my first retreat with them but it certainly has been my most productive. While the attendance was down from the previous years it was still a huge success. Eleven of us, writers converged on Chanco on the James in Spring Grove, Virginia (in the forest) on Thursday afternoon. We lodged in the Watson Lodge, a huge eight bedroom house, three levels with eight bedrooms. Sleeps 20 people. A wonderful set up with no television, no phones and very and I do mean very limited cell and internet reception. Each writer came with different backgrounds, different concepts and different goals. We even had an aspiring ten year old join us this year who turned out to be very determined in getting the job done. She come with goal of writing 20 pages and completed the weekend with a total of 35. Wow. there were goals of perfecting the query letter and pitch with someone who was headed to the Romance Writer's National Conferance in two weeks and she had editor and agent appointments, someone else had the goal of finishing the edits to her latest work, another had the goal of writing something, anything. She'd just gotten back into the writing groove and was looking for some inspiration. I had the goal of getting started on a new story that came to me as I was selling my books at the West Orange street fair in New Jersey, this past Memorial day weekend. I wanted ot make a good dent in it. The dent went out the window. I totalled that baby. I finished the story! It's a novella and it topped out at 110 pages, but wow! Happy dance time. Everyone got what they came for this weekend. The writing atmosphere was so intense and every one met their goals. We topped off with 1,128 pages completed collectively by the 11 people who attended. How's that for butt in chair and hands on key board!