Rainforest Writer’s Retreat and a lack of self-discovery

[elfs]

Eagle over Lake Quinalt

I would like to say that my time at the Quinalt Rainforest Writer’s Retreat for 2009 resolved some questions for me about my writing habit obsession hobby career whatever one way or another, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. What I did learn is that the secret to productivity is to Turn Off The Goddamn Internet And Go Someplace Quiet. I had very slow wifi web-only (no email, no usenet, no last.fm, and no video feeds) access for five hours or so every day when the bar was open, and there was always a writer’s alley in the tables along the bay-window walkway that looked out over Lake Quinalt, but the most productive sessions, the ones that produced 1000 words an hour or more, were when I locked myself in my hotel room and just wrote.  While in the bar with the other writers, my word count dove to 300 words per hour.

I kinda like the Cult of Done, but I also have to face two uncomfortable facts. First, my ADHD, spurred by my constant need to be in interrupt mode when home with the kids, makes it hard to concentrate on anything for a week, and second, my best stories, the ones that have sold, have all been re-writes. Not “I agonized over this and re-wrote it five times looking for the story before I found it” re-writes, but the “I loved this story the first time I wrote it, and, upon re-writing, discovered a much better story, a story good enough that I convinced myself writing is worth the effort.”

Re-writing is so much harder than writing. It involves tracking and retracking, putting the plot up on the board and decididng what to keep and what to throw away, killing moments you cackled over the first time but that don’t contribute to the plot, theme, and characters you’ve come to love. Re-writing has no metric. There’s no word-count in a re-write. My re-written stories are always smaller than the originals.

My final word count for the weekend was 12,646 words, scattered through four Journal Entries, some Caprice Starr work, a Yowler short, and so on. My problem remains the same: I need to concentrate on one story long enough to get to done on it. And for that, I need to remind myself of why I love writing in the first place. The love is still there, but the reasons for that love seem to escape me these days.

This entry was automatically cross-posted from Elf's writing journal, Pendorwright.com. Feel free to comment on either LiveJournal or Pendorwright.

Comments

[solarbird]

I like the idea of the Cult of Done, but I dislike intensely one item: "Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it."

I'd never finish any song ever. Seriously, not one. In less than a year I have enough for an album, which isn't a great speed but isn't too bad, and following this idea, I'd have finished no songs evar. I work interleaved across many ideas at once and I don't really see that changing.

Turn Off The Goddamn Internet And Go Someplace Quiet.

[brandywilliams.livejournal.com]

This is what I mean by writing retreat :-). I hole up in a hotel room and spend a weekend writing. My happiest moments.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should try to think of ways to do the occasional weekend or over-nighter a few times a year. Something cheaper and/or fewer days at a time, and closer so you don't waste so much time in travel, that will still allow you the time to bang out some words or concentrate on re-writes.

For example, in the warmer months you could take a tent out to one of the cheaper campsites around Rainier (there's a hostel style chalet up that way too, I could check my bookmarks for the URL). Or instead of limiting yourself to sites without net access, bring a basic laptop that won't allow you net access and load it up with what you want to work on.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Turn Off The Goddamn Internet And Go Someplace Quiet

And yet, that sounds so much like Shaving the Yak and Desperately Trying to Find Time to Write.

Life is full of distractions. Currently I have a cat in my lap and my wife is giving me that come hither look, yet I'm taking 2 minutes to write this paragraph.

But I'd have to admit, setting my email to check between every 30 minutes (which my boss finds almost acceptable) and an hour does wonders for my productivity at work.