There is nothing I love more than a good writer’s retreat. Perhaps a lot of this love stems from the fact that I have a full time job other than writing, so I don’t get to write nearly as much as I’d like to. Therefore, those times I can escape my daily routine and focus on writing for hours on end are like little drops of heaven to me.
I was lucky enough to have two separate personal writer’s retreats recently. By personal, I mean it was just me. I usually prefer to have at least one other writer-friend with me so we can bounce ideas off each other, encourage each other, and hold each other accountable while we write. Unfortunately that just didn’t work out this time, but I still enjoyed myself.
The first one I went on was a mini retreat. I took a Friday off work and drove down to the picturesque Hocking Hills region of Southeastern Ohio, where I’d book a weekend stay in Ravenwood Castle. Yes, you read that correctly, I slept in a castle. Ravenwood is a bed and breakfast built in the 1990s to look like a medieval castle, and it is as amazing as it sounds. Actually, it’s more amazing. The rooms are gorgeous and it really does feel like an old-world castle. I was so inspired with my writing while I was there because I felt like I was living in the worlds my characters were in. During this trip I did some proof reading of In The Land of Magic and outlined my new novel, Mistress of Fate. I left that weekend feeling refreshed and very excited about my new novel.
The second writer’s retreat I went on was for a full week up at my family’s cabin on Lake Owen. This is the third time in as many years I’ve gone up to our cabin for the purpose of working on my writing projects. It’s about as ideal a location as you can get for fantasy writing. A quaint cabin in a quiet Northern Wisconsin pine forest sitting right on a peaceful and clear lake. Perfect right? It’s so quiet up there so I can really concentrate without a lot of distractions. I literally spent at least 6 hours each day sitting down at the pier, gazing over the lake as I worked. It was just sublime. Since I already had Mistress of Fate outlined, I spent all my time actually writing the first draft. I wrote 44,900 words in just 6 days!!!!!! Which is an average of about 7,400 words a day. In case you don’t know how to gauge that, most of the authors I follow on social media are super pleased when they write 5,000 words in a day. I don’t mention this to imply that I’m super awesome and better than most writers. If anything, it’s to show how incredibly inspired I was during my time up there. Usually on weekends at home devoted to writing, I’ll put about 3,000-4,000 words down, so this trip was definitely beneficial. I ended up finishing the writing I had planned for the novel based on my outline, but it’s not nearly as long as it should be so I’m going to have to go back and figure out where I can add more to the story.
Oh, and extra kudos to those of you who noticed the name of the lake is Lake OWEN and my main character of In The Land of Magic is Lucy OWEN. Yes, that was on purpose.
