Writing Retreat 2022: Wrap-up

How’d I do against my goals?

  • write at least 10,000 words in “Dried Flow­ers”: Check. The nov­el went from 33,000 words to 45,000.
  • get some astropho­tog­ra­phy done. Check: see below.
  • read some books. I read the last chap­ter in Fugi­tive Teleme­try, the last 6 chap­ters in The Book of the New Sun, and made my way a bit over half-way through Catch-22. Also, I bor­rowed the next Sand­man col­lec­tion from one of the library’s online resources, and read a cou­ple chap­ters in it. 
  • ride my bike. A lit­tle; one 6km ride and a few quick runs across the dam into town to go to the cof­fee shop, so as to use their wifi.
  • go kayak­ing. I got out on the water on Thurs­day and Fri­day, for a total of about 8½km.
  • relax. Yes? I had a hard time sleep­ing past 7 am, but oth­er­wise it was a relax­ing week.

All in all, this was a good retreat. As always, I wish it had been longer, but you know what they say: so it goes.

Series: Writing Retreat 2022

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Goals; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Mon­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Tues­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wednes­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Thurs­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Fri­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wrap-up.

Writing Retreat 2022: Friday

In the morn­ing I wrote my 1,000 words after break­fast, then read a few more chap­ters in Catch-22. Man, that book is con­vo­lut­ed; I think it’s a good re-read, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that my cur­rent project is some­what non-lin­ear too.[1]It crossed my mind, as I was in the kayak, that Peace and Jacob’s Lad­der will also have inter­est­ing things to say to me, as I write this tale. But I think I’ll wait till the first draft is done.

After lunch I went to the cof­fee shop to post yes­ter­day’s mis­sive, then—since the weath­er was, if any­thing, more love­ly than yesterday—I took the kayak out onto the lake again. As I was return­ing, I checked my dis­tance, and found I’d gone 4.31 km. I decid­ed that anoth­er quick pass by the pub­lic beach/floating play struc­ture and back should eas­i­ly add anoth­er 0.69 km, and I was right—my final dis­tance as I beached my craft was just over 5 km. I can live with that.

I read a bit more, had supper—the last of the burg­ers I bar­be­cued, which leaves only 6.02×10²³ smok­ies, cool cool cool. And now I’m about to start writ­ing, with a glass of iced cof­fee[2]Made from the dregs of my morn­ing cof­fee, poured into a glass and stored in the fridge, where it devel­oped a thin skin of ice. beside me.

The sky was cloud­less after dark, so I packed my gear and head­ed north for a few kilo­me­ters. I found a nice dark spot on a side road just before the entry to the riv­er val­ley, and shot some pho­tos of the Milky Way again.

Sample

She walked toward the lake. Her san­dals filled with sand, fine and soft as talc, annoy­ing her. She took the san­dals off and car­ried them, loop­ing their straps over her mid­dle and index fin­gers and crook­ing her hand into a loose fist at her side. The san­dals’ heels thumped her thigh soft­ly with every step, which was a dif­fer­ent kind of annoying.

At the edge of the water the sand dark­ened, not because it was wet, she saw, but because words had snagged in it, lay flat on it: water-coloured sans-serif let­ters over­lap­ping in sense­less pro­fu­sion. A mil­lion thes and as and saids in blue and aqua­ma­rine and smoke grey were scat­tered as far as she could see, and tens of thou­sands of words less common—less invis­i­ble as one of her edi­tors had put it—were lay­ered below and above, fresh­ly deposit­ed or soak­ing into the sand, dark­en­ing, dis­ap­pear­ing: birth, house, joy, spar­row, rose, for­mi­da­ble. Soft wavelets made of bluish words capped with small white word­caps dropped new words as she watched, the white foam of win­dow whirl bribe fad­ing, dark­en­ing, becom­ing part of the great smear of words.

She set her san­dals down where the sand was still heart­break­ing­ly bright, where the waves had­n’t come in and crest­ed and crashed only to recede. Where the paper was still unblem­ished, the page still holy and blank. She walked into the water; no, the lake of words.

Water isn’t wet, she remem­bered some­one telling her, after some­one else had made the “water wet, fire hot, sky blue” joke at some TV report about a new dis­cov­ery that was painful­ly obvi­ous if you just applied com­mon sense. Water makes oth­er things wet, but wet­ness, he told her, jab­bing a fin­ger to make his point stick (and it must have worked, because here she was think­ing about it) is not an intrin­sic prop­er­ty of the water itself.

The words touched her and did not feel wet, did not wet her ankles or (as she pro­gressed) her calves. They clung to her as water would, mold­ing them­selves against her shapes. She felt tran­som and for­get and peace against the backs of her knees, in amid the whirling yeses and saids and thes. She walked fur­ther, deep­er. Her skirt did­n’t cling against her as it would in water, but the words crowd­ed onto its dark fab­ric too. The tail of her blouse was dec­o­rat­ed with now and togeth­er, dried and he.

She took a breath and ducked under the surface.

Series: Writing Retreat 2022

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Goals; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Mon­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Tues­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wednes­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Thurs­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Fri­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wrap-up.

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
1 It crossed my mind, as I was in the kayak, that Peace and Jacob’s Lad­der will also have inter­est­ing things to say to me, as I write this tale. But I think I’ll wait till the first draft is done.
2 Made from the dregs of my morn­ing cof­fee, poured into a glass and stored in the fridge, where it devel­oped a thin skin of ice.

Writing Retreat 2022: Thursday

Star Trails from the deck of the cabin

I got up ear­li­er than I would have liked. The cab­in got chilly overnight—the out­side tem­per­a­ture dropped to some­where around 8°C last night—and so I opened up the cur­tains any­where the sun would shine in. Then I made cof­fee and had a banana, and sat down to process last night’s pho­tos and charge up the cam­era batteries.

I wrote about 1,000 words in the morn­ing and then read some more of my nice light beach read, Catch-22. (I’ve always men­tal­ly paired Catch-22 with Slaugh­ter­house-Five, since both are anti-war satires and both have titles of the form word dash num­ber. There’s anoth­er way they’re linked, I’ve decid­ed, because both of them unstick the read­er in time. In Slaugh­ter­house-Five it’s explic­it; one of the first lines is “Bil­ly Pil­grim has come unstuck in time”. In Catch-22, it’s implic­it; Yos­sar­i­an’s sto­ry bounces around in the time­line, with flash­backs, rem­i­nis­cences, and fore­shad­ow­ing leav­ing the read­er unsure just when in the sto­ry we might be. Are they fly­ing 30 mis­sions or 55? Has Snow­den per­ished yet or is he still alive?)

I biked down across the dam to the cof­fee shop to post yes­ter­day’s update (which I’m sure you’ve read) and mut­ter to myself about the 503 Service Unavailable error my site is still inter­mit­tent­ly throw­ing. (I’ve got an open tech sup­port tick­et reach­ing back to, I dun­no, July or so; appar­ent­ly it’s a hard prob­lem to solve[1]As the old joke goes, there are only two hard prob­lems in com­put­er sci­ence: nam­ing vari­ables, cache inval­i­da­tion, and off-by-one errors..)

Back at the cab­in, I had a brief chat with my friend Ed, who was trim­ming the grass at his daugh­ter’s cab­in across the street. He invit­ed me up the hill for a vis­it later.

I took the kayak out—finally, a day warm enough to go out on the water!—and pad­dled about 3½ km, up the lake and back again. If this isn’t nice, what is?

I had some supper—it’s becom­ing appar­ent I BBQed enough smok­ies on Mon­day for lunch that I’ll be eat­ing smok­ies till the day after doomsday—and then sat down to write my evening’s 1,000 words, which end­ed up being a weird lit­tle acros­tic snip­pet that’ll need a lot of edit­ing. But as Sir Ter­ry Pratch­ett said, The first draft is just you telling your­self the sto­ry. It’s not gonna make sense, yet, to most any­one else. That les­son is both nec­es­sary and a hard one to learn; I think I re-learn it every time I sit down to write.

After writ­ing I went up to Karen and Ed’s cab­in, high atop the hill, and we sat on their deck and chat­ted for about two hours. They say hi, everyone.

The skies were clear when I got back to my bor­rowed cab­in, and I was sore tempt­ed to load up my cam­era gear and go snap some more pho­tos in the dark. But I was also still tired from the night before, so I com­pro­mised: I set up the cam­era on the deck and col­lect­ed an hour’s worth of star trails right here. Even in a light-pol­lut­ed spot like this—there’s a bright white lamp that shines down on the deck that’s eas­i­ly as bright as the full moon—you can see the stars. You can tell—the pho­to’s up above.

Sample

She made her cir­cuit again, in reverse this time: the small-win­dowed orig­i­nal build­ing, with its muse­um pieces, the green chair from The Rt. Hon. Alan T. Kim­pole, with­out whom per­haps there would be no library here, the dusty arti­facts with their small, neat­ly-typed plac­ards; then the First Annex, stodgy with dark wood (again, here, she found it dif­fi­cult to not imag­ine the place smelling of brandy and the com­bined smoke of gen­er­a­tions’ worth of cig­ars); the West Wing with its offices; the North Stacks with its prime min­is­ters flank­ing the very dat­ed por­trait of the Queen; and final­ly the O’Neir room, sur­pris­ing her not at all with its insis­tence on being last.

The last shall be first. Who said that? She should know. It used to be one of Nathan’s favourite quotes.

She hes­i­tat­ed before open­ing the door, her hand trem­bling a lit­tle. Please God, she thought, don’t let it be the funer­al home. Because she’d come to sus­pect why there was a pho­to of their wed­ding next to the rose­wood urn, and she did­n’t like the implications.

#

There was a lake in the room now.

Series: Writing Retreat 2022

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Goals; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Mon­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Tues­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wednes­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Thurs­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Fri­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wrap-up.

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
1 As the old joke goes, there are only two hard prob­lems in com­put­er sci­ence: nam­ing vari­ables, cache inval­i­da­tion, and off-by-one errors.

Writing Retreat 2022: Tuesday

Cabin decor: a mirror reflects the ceiling

Read­ing in bed, in the morn­ing, I noticed the mir­ror on the wall had a neat sym­me­try, reflect­ed the boards of the ceil­ing, so I snapped a photo.

After break­fast I wrote up some quick blog posts for Sun­day and Mon­day, which you’ve prob­a­bly already read. Then I stepped out onto the deck, intend­ing to see if the table there was dry enough to set a lap­top on (I do enjoy writ­ing out­side). The air was misty; it was­n’t rain­ing, but every so often it felt like a drop touched my skin. I grabbed my cam­era and head­ed down to the dam over the lake to snap some pho­tos of the fog. 

Then I sat down for my morn­ing writ­ing stint. After that I biked across the dam to the cof­fee shop, where I used the wifi to post the afore­men­tioned posts (and these pho­tos, while I was at it.)

After that, I read a few chap­ters in Catch-22, had some supper—leftovers, because it had start­ed to rain and I did­n’t feel like bar­be­cu­ing in the rain—and wrote for anoth­er hour or so. The rain came and went dur­ing the evening, but the clouds nev­er broke—at least not before mid­night, when I decid­ed it was bedtime.

I wrote about 2,200 words again yes­ter­day. Here’s a very first-draft sam­ple for you.

The hand­writ­ing end­ed. The next page was blank, and the next, and the next. All the way to the end of the book, as far as she could tell, quick­ly fan­ning through the remain­ing pages. June closed it and set it on the desk.

Did it mean any­thing, she won­dered, that the girl—Evelyn, she remem­bered, glanc­ing at the book’s cov­er, the author’s name in that faux-Goth­ic font—that Eve­lyn had cho­sen to rewrite a trick­ster story?

She sat alone for a long time under the mist­ed win­dows, wish­ing she could see out to the world. It looked like a bright sun­shiny day out there.

After a while, she got up and start­ed to pace. Back and forth, forth and back, slow pon­der­ing steps across the breadth of the Gath­er­ing Space. (Was it real­ly still a Gath­er­ing Space, if at most two gath­ered there? But then what was it that Nathan’s Jesus had said, Where two or more of you are gath­ered? Right? Some­thing like that. So she sup­posed it must count.)

(Especially—and her mind recoiled from the thought—if they two were all that remained in the world.)

Series: Writing Retreat 2022

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Goals; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Mon­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Tues­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wednes­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Thurs­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Fri­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wrap-up.

Writing Retreat 2022: Monday

I had me some cof­fee and some break­fast, then got to work. I got a bit over 2,200 words today in two writ­ing stints (morn­ing and after­noon), which put me over the 35,000-word mark. I fin­ished off the last six chap­ters of The Book of the New Sun (which was a lot clear­er to me on a sec­ond read; Michael-Andre Drius­si’s Lex­i­con Urthus was a huge help, too) and the final chap­ter of Fugi­tive Teleme­try, the lat­est of the Mur­der­bot novel­las by Martha Wells.

I ven­tured down to the Dari Isle and had take­out for sup­per. Their din­ing room is closed at the moment, but that’s all right. I enjoyed their chick­en fin­gers and par­fait in the com­fort of the cab­in. Then I start­ed my re-read of Catch-22 and—since the sky was cloud­ed over—fell asleep about midnight.

Sample

This is from one of the rewrit­ten palimpses­ts, titled “Low Key and the Ice”. It’s very first draft, and may change entire­ly in the final form.

The trick­ster and the drag­on met for the last time on an icy plain.

It was not the nat­ur­al home for either of them; the trick­ster came from shin­ing halls walled in gold, or at least he’d tell you if you chanced to ask that that was his home, as his father—one of his fathers, the one he claimed when he felt a need to prove his worth—had built it when the worlds were young. He was too caught up in the idea of his own her­it­ed nobil­i­ty to admit where he real­ly lived, which was, these late days, in exile among the rab­ble, those who died and did­n’t return.

The drag­on’s home was the seabord, where her innate fire com­plet­ed the four ele­ments (water, earth, and air being pro­vid­ed by the ocean, strand, and sky, of course) and brought them into, if not har­mo­ny, at least an uneasy balance.

Series: Writing Retreat 2022

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Goals; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Mon­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Tues­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wednes­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Thurs­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Fri­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wrap-up.

Writing Retreat 2022: Goals

Minnedosa in the fog

This year I’m at a cab­in with no wifi, so my posts will be spo­radic. I’m hop­ing to bor­row the cof­fee shop’s wifi, as I have in the past, but we’ll see. (Update: I’m using the cof­fee shop’s wifi, all right.)

Any­way: I’m at Minnedosa for the week. I arrived at the cab­in Sun­day night, got unpacked, and fell into bed.

Here’s what I’m hop­ing to accom­plish this week:

  • write at least 10,000 words in “Dried Flow­ers”, my cur­rent novella/novel project. Stretch goal: hit 50,000 words (right now it’s sit­ting at 35,000 and a bit).
  • get some astropho­tog­ra­phy done. The fore­cast calls for a cou­ple of clear nights lat­er in the week. I’m hop­ing to get the Milky Way and—if the sun should oblige—some aurora.
  • read some books. I brought The Book of the New Sun, Catch-22, The Secrets of Judo, and Fugi­tive Teleme­try, and I’ve got a few oth­ers saved on my phone if those aren’t enough. (In fair­ness, when I arrived I had 6 chap­ters left in BotNS and one chap­ter in FT, so those are kind of a gimme.)
  • ride my bike
  • go kayak­ing
  • relax

Here’s to a good week!

Series: Writing Retreat 2022

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Goals; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Mon­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Tues­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wednes­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Thurs­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Fri­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2022: Wrap-up.

Writing Retreat 2021, day 3

The Milky Way at Spruces in Riding Mountain National Park

Tues­day, I:

  • Wrote more in the out­line for “Praise the Torch”
  • Went for a bike ride (it was cool when I start­ed, but warmed up as the sun came out)
  • Read about a dozen chap­ters in William Gib­son’s Zero His­to­ry—it’s been a long time since I read it, so it’s pret­ty much like read­ing it again for the first time
  • Reworked a chap­ter in “The Slow Apoc­a­lypse” and made minor changes in a few oth­er places
  • Watched some Fire­fly
  • Met up with my friend Tim (who was camp­ing at Wasagam­ing) at Spruces for some very dark sky pho­tos (it’s been a long time since I saw the Milky Way so promi­nent to the naked eye)

I saw a cou­ple of mete­ors at Spruces, includ­ing one large, slow one that unfor­tu­nate­ly was­n’t where my cam­era was aimed.

Series: Writing Retreat 2021

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero; Writ­ing Retreat, Day One; Writ­ing Retreat, day 2; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 3; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 4; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 5; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 6.

Writing Retreat, day 2

A water drop glistening on a telephone wire during a rainfall

I woke up think­ing I heard hail. It turned out to be only rain—at times heavy rain—but almost every cab­in around here has a met­al roof, which ampli­fies that kind of thing.

No bike ride and no kayak trip. I wise­ly for­got to pack a rain­coat for my retreat here, so that was great plan­ning on my part.

  • More devel­op­ment on the “Praise the Torch When ‘Tis Burned” outline—the sto­ry is firm­ing up in my mind, at least, and that’s a good feeling
  • Rewrote the bulk of a scene between the POV wiz­ard and his lawyer wife, sip­pin’ Welsh whiskey in a restau­rant called Swansea, in “The Slow Apocalypse”
  • Watched a cou­ple episodes of Fire­fly
  • Tried to get some pho­tos of the rain; the only one I liked is above (it’s been a while since I saw water bead­ing on a tele­phone line)

Some of the thun­der was pret­ty exciting—shake-the-cabin exciting—but I could­n’t get a good angle to set up and try to get some light­ning pho­tos. Oh well, can’t win every time.

Series: Writing Retreat 2021

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero; Writ­ing Retreat, Day One; Writ­ing Retreat, day 2; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 3; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 4; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 5; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 6.

Writing Retreat 2021, Day Zero

Star Trails in the haze

It’s that time of year again: the 2021 edi­tion of my writ­ing retreat has begun. I booked my time at the cab­in to coin­cide with the new moon, to make for some bet­ter astropho­tog­ra­phy oppor­tu­ni­ties, and then found out lat­er that, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, I’d also be up here for the peak of the Per­seid mete­or show­er.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero”

Series: Writing Retreat 2021

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero; Writ­ing Retreat, Day One; Writ­ing Retreat, day 2; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 3; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 4; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 5; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 6.