Well, this has been some kind of a week. I finished the 3 day, slept, cleaned the house, then set off on a four day retreat with my critiquing group. And now I am back home, and gearing up for the week long workshop in Banff. I have 7 7500 word manuscript chunks to critique, and was a tiny bit horrified to realize I have the dubious honour of having the most cliched beginning. One of those "waking up from a nightmare" starts. Crap. I'll just have to get over it. Was thinking I probably should have started with Chapter 2 anyhow. Beginnings. Sigh. I always do that massive stutter start, like a needle jumping across a record, before I really dig in to the story. And then, the beginning becomes the beginning, wherever it is. It's like that hole in the wallpaper. You swear you're going to patch it, then you don't even see it anymore. (Or maybe I should say me. You probably do.) None the less.

The 3 day was hard this time. And it wasn't even just because I didn't have a nice solid story idea going in. I just didn't feel like I fit this time. Don't know quite what the deal was. Maybe because I was actually taking time out of my writing schedule to fit the 3 day in. Does that make sense? I have my life set up (for the moment) so that I'm doing what I've always wanted to do. Write every day. Since I set that up, I've completed 2 novels, and am at work on a third. I had to stop working on the 3rd novel to write the 3 day -- which is writing a novel in 3 days. Part of me was screeching about leaving Lois hanging while I played around with Marcia and her little problems (not that trying to escape from a serial killer is a little problem). But part of me was whispering "You don't need to do this, this year. You have what you want. You don't need this." I think I'll probably give it a pass next year. Unless I come up with a screaming good idea. If I do that, I'm in. What the hell.

The retreat was good. Good food, good people all with the same thing in mind (writing, and all aspects of the craft), and a wonderful little cabin to use. The weather was spectacular, even to the lightening storm on the 3rd night. I'm glad I went. I worked out some big issues with novel 3 (which started off as a novella, and which I'm now expanding) and I can finally see the end. I know how it ends!! Yay! Couldn't see it before. And, I had the opportunity to get to know the people in my critiquing group a little better. That was interesting too. I hadn't realized just how much we concentrated on writing, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, when we get together for our meetings. Which shows you just how good our group is. The best part is, we came out of the weekend with our group intact, perhaps even stronger than when we went in. Could have gone much differently, but I'm glad to report it went very well.

And now I'm gearing up for the workshop. You remember, the one with the Science Fiction Author of Repute at the helm. And I didn't finish the first draft. God I hate people looking at work before it's done. Ah well. It's just the first 2 chapters. I'm sure the nightmares will stop.