Blog

My goals for my writ­ing retreat, 2018 edi­tion, were pret­ty simple:

1. Get at least 10,000 words writ­ten in Trans­la­tions, prefer­ably more like 12,500.
2. Do some astropho­tog­ra­phy and just gen­er­al photography.
3. Do some kayak­ing and bike riding.

How’d I do?

At the start of the week, my nov­el sat at 65, 968 words. As I write this, I’ve just crossed the 80,000–word mark. So I man­aged 14,055 new words in this first draft. I’m hap­py with that—especially con­sid­er­ing that I essen­tial­ly took Fri­day off from writing.

Also, I got a pile of pho­tos tak­en. I had hoped for some good shots of the Milky Way, but the moon was near­ing full, so the skies were too bright for that. I did get a cou­ple nice star-trail shots, though.

I also went to Win­nipeg, for Chad­wick­’s book launch, and had a love­ly chat in the evening with Mike & Michelle, a cou­ple friends I haven’t seen in a long time.

As far as kayaking—well, the weath­er did­n’t coop­er­ate. It was con­sis­tent­ly around 20°C here this week, which is a bit chilly to go out on the lake. It’s sup­posed to hit 27 or 28 Mon­day, but by then I’ll be back at the office. I did go for a few bike rides, which was nice, and as I write this on Sun­day, I’m plan­ning one more before I pack up and leave.

So, on the whole, I’m going to call Writ­ing Retreat 2018 a suc­cess. It’s been a pro­duc­tive, fun, glo­ri­ous time, and I’m going to miss it.

Same time next year.

Friday

The neigh­bours start­ed show­ing up at their cab­ins on Fri­day. After hav­ing the run of the place, I had to reac­cli­ma­tize myself to peo­ple. It was­n’t easy. (If I used emo­ji on this blog, there would be a winky face right here.)

The fam­i­ly to the north is hav­ing Hydro-relat­ed issues (the short ver­sion is they have no elec­tric­i­ty, and prob­a­bly won’t till at least Mon­day). Ed, who owns the cab­in where I live, let them run  a cou­ple exten­sion cords from his out­side plug so they could have refrig­er­a­tion. In return, they’ve turned on their wifi and gave me the pass­word. So now I can post with­out hav­ing to go down to the cof­fee shop in town (not that that was any great hardship).

I gave myself Fri­day off from writ­ing, but I still did a bunch of writ­ing-relat­ed busi­ness: I read out on the deck, I checked in on the sta­tus of “Me and the Bee” with the mar­kets that have had it since Feb­ru­ary (one rejec­tion, damn it, and one has­n’t yet replied) and did some research on The Sub­mis­sion Grinder, look­ing for a pos­si­ble home for it. I’m start­ing to think  I might just have to pub­lish it here and be done, but I’ll wait a while longer.

In the evening I head­ed out to do some star-trail pho­tog­ra­phy, but got about ten min­utes out and the clouds rolled in, so I returned to the cab­in and went to bed instead.

Saturday

Sat­ur­day I final­ly got out onto the deck to do some writ­ing. It was pret­ty nice, though it’s a lit­tle annoy­ing hav­ing to shut my lap­top down com­plete­ly to move it from one plug to anoth­er (the bat­tery’s shot, so it’s just the way it is).

I did my 1,250 words, then took a dri­ve to Shi­lo with Kath­leen and a cou­ple oth­ers, where we served as non-skat­ing offi­cials (or “flamin­goes”, thanks to the pink shirts we were giv­en to wear) at Scar­let Fever’s deci­sive vic­to­ry over a Win­nipeg roller-der­by team whose name, sor­ry to say, eludes me at the moment.

It was about mid­night when we left the after-par­ty (first in last out, woo), and then I hemmed and hawed about whether I’d go back to the cab­in or sleep at home. In the end, the cloud­less night con­vinced me, and I man­aged to get the pho­to above (star trails over a pond and canola field, just north of Minnedosa). It was 3 AM by the time I got to bed.

Sunday

And now here I am, out on the deck again, writ­ing this post. Once it’s done, I’ll do my 1,250 words, and then I guess pack every­thing up and head home.

Thanks, Karen and Ed, for the use of the cab­in. I real­ly appre­ci­ate it.

Thanks, Minnedosa. It’s been great. Same time next year?