Writing Retreat 2019

Reading Provenance and sipping Writer's Tears whiskey

Last night I arrived at Minnedosa, to start the 2019 edi­tion of my annu­al week-long writ­ing retreat.

Goals this year:

  • 2,000 words a day, or about 15,000 words, in the first draft of Trans­la­tions.
    • Sub-goal: Get to the ending.
  • Pho­tos of the Milky Way.
  • Pho­tos, gen­er­al­ly; there are a few spots I’d like to get to. The Cana­di­an prairie is pho­to­genic, and I want to cap­ture that.
  • Ride my bike a lot, and also go kayak­ing a few times. The weath­er fore­cast seems to agree with this plan.
  • Read at least a cou­ple of the books I brought: Prove­nance by Ann Leck­ie (I’m about ¾ of the way through, so that should work out); The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishig­uro; Drey­er’s Eng­lish by Ben­jamin Drey­er; and The Knight by Gene Wolfe (because it’s a tra­di­tion, appar­ent­ly, that I read Wolfe while I’m at the cabin). 

I’m also due in Win­nipeg for my nephew’s birth­day par­ty, which means I’ll be able to pick up the copy of Michael Swan­wick­’s The Iron Drag­on’s Moth­er that I pre-ordered in (checks notes) (…these notes are illeg­i­ble) Feb­ru­ary? maybe. And a friend is camp­ing at Clear Lake start­ing mid-week, so I’ll prob­a­bly go both­er him for an after­noon or something.

As my dar­ling wife is wont to say, “Write faster, Johan­neson.”

Head­er image: last night, read­ing Prove­nance on the deck with a glass of Writer’s Tears.

Series: Writing Retreat 2019

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2019; Writ­ing Retreat 2019, Day 1; Writ­ing Retreat 2019, Day 2; Writ­ing Retreat: Days 3 through 5; Writ­ing Retreat, Day 6.