Road Trip Wednesday - Dream Writing Retreat

Going to try adding Wednesday to my blogging schedule. I doubt I have enough brain power to come up with something stunningly creative for Wednesdays on my own, so I'm going to hop on the YA Highway's Road Trip Wednesday. 


Today's RTW prompt is: 
Describe your dream writing retreat. Where would you go? Who and what would you bring?


London
If I were to craft the perfect writing retreat it would be a week (or more, what the hell, it's a fantasy) in a quiet hotel in Bloomsbury, in easy walking distance to the British Library, the Strand and the river. I'd write in the morning, walk in the afternoon and meet with friends for dinner and drinks in the evening. I might even take a few day trips out of King's Cross.

British Library

In any season London is a walker's paradise. And I write best in my head while walking. I used to work in the City (a lowly tea-lady, not a high powered venture capitalist, in case you were wondering) and sometimes, instead of hoping on the tube, I'd walk down High Holborn, into the West End, down to Victoria Embankment, across Hungerford Bridge and once, I walked all the way home to Balham. 

Victoria Embankment

Stories are buried in every nook and cranny of the city. For me, it's a layered, never ending source of ideas. Sometimes, I walk through London in my dreams. 


I actually wouldn't take anyone with me. I'm surrounded by people who need me all the time right now and the optimal writing experience would be mostly silent. I know there will be other times in my life when I'll want/need others to spark my creativity, but that's not now.


As for what I would take with me, laptop, of course. And I would probably take Writing the BreakOut Novel by Donald Maass in case I get stuck. Ipod and lots of music is also not negotiable - I know this goes against my previous request for silence, but I don't consider music noise, I consider it writing impetus.


What about you, what's your idea of a perfect writing retreat?

My Christmas* Present Was Better Than Yours, Pt 1

*Insert Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, etc. holiday here.


Since we started dating when I was 19, my husband and I have had 21 Christmases together. Most of the gifts he gave me, I don't remember. I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember most of the ones I gave him, either. Gifts between us are truly about gesture and not object.

But this year, husband did the unthinkable. He gave me a present that was so amazing, so utterly perfect yet awe inspiring, that I will never top it. I'm either not going to try to top it, or spend the rest of my life trying to top it. Haven't decided which one yet.

This is what he gave me:

He gave me my own book back. When I finished with the last round of edits on December 18, I emailed it to him with a 'ta-da!' Unbeknownst to me he laid out all of the text (he's a Creative Director, so he knows how to do the fancy stuff), designed the cover and sent it out to blurb.com.

When I opened the little package on Christmas Eve, I burst into tears. I've only done that once before, when my eldest daughter was born and I found out she was a girl. One minute I'm going "What the...?" the next I've got my head buried in my pillow, just bawling my eyes out. It was intense.

There was also an unforeseen benefit to having my words in print. Reading the book that I thought was done in book format let me find lots of edits. Not huge, oh my gothness edits, but ones that I'm happy I made. I cut nearly 1000 words from this I Swear It's Really Final version. And I send it to BP tomorrow.

But wait. There is more. The next day, Christmas Day, husband gave me a present that was equal in awesomeness to the book, but in a completely different way...Stay tuned.

What's the best present you ever got?

Happy Holidays

Whatever you celebrate, I hope you celebrate big. Hope you get everything you want and deserve and I hope you spend lots of time with the ones you love.

See you in 2012!

Lazy and Confused

A week ago my husband did what he's often done for me in the last year. He took the kids completely off my hands so I could write. It was Sunday, so he took the girls to church. Took them to feed the ducks on the Delaware. Split up crying jags and fisticuffs. He even handled it when my older daughter's play date threatened to end in ex-bff tears.

I sat in various locales (Panera, Barnes & Noble, Starbucks) and revised and revised and revised, just like I have for the last three months. But this Sunday was different. I was so close to being finished. Usually I feel guilty about spending the entire day writing that I come home after a few hours. But not this time. I emailed my husband and told him I wouldn't be home for dinner, I'd stay out until I finished.

I did finish after about 12 hours out (disclaimer, this wasn't 12 hours of revising - I wandered, I walked, I flipped through magazines, I surfed, I stared into space.) I was in a Friendly's eating a garden burger with bacon (I know, Why? Don't ask. I eat weird things when revising) and I was thinking about the last page of my book. I read it over and over and each time I got a sense of completeness. I did (yet another) spell check, and googled 'manuscript formatting.' Finally, over chocolate chip ice cream, I realized that I was well and truly done. Every issue that I had with it, every issue that my three beta readers had with it had been addressed. There was literally nothing left to do.

I went home. My husband gave me a gin and tonic with a little paper umbrella in it, since he didn't have any champagne. I gave him an ice cream sundae. Then I went to bed.

Since then I've been at a loss. Whenever the kids are at school or at a play date I have that same pavlovian impulse - Quick! Write, you have a little time! But I don't know what to do. I'm not sending out queries until January, and I've already polished up my query letter. To tell the truth, I'm feeling both lazy and confused. Tapped out and, even if I were to force myself to write, not sure where to go.

So, here are my questions for you. What do you do when you're completely finished with one work? Do you automatically jump into something else, or do you take a little time 'off'?

And, bonus question - how do you decide what do write next? Maybe you can help me decide by voting in my poll -  I couldn't figure out how to put the poll in this blogpost, but it's over yonder in the sidebar - please chime in, the poll is up for a few days.

Ideas and the New Baby Smell

All babies are awesome. I'm not talking about cuteness or that new baby smell or how they seem to be lit up from the inside. Even if you don't like babies and would rather chew off your own arm than change a diaper, you'll concede that babies are awesome. Because babies are possibilities. They aren't the seven year old that slams the door on your face when you ask to have a play date with their sister. They aren't the double crossing ex-friend who told everyone about your embarrassing rash. They aren't the sociopath budding into a serial killer. They're just babies, the beginning of everything.

Ideas are like babies. There are no bad ideas (ok, yes there are, or seem to be, but even bad ideas, in the right context and execution can be good ideas, like prisoners reenacting the Thriller video - which, for me, never gets old.) In fact, ideas are so awesome that it's hard to know what idea is going to blossom into a good thing.

When I went to my first conference I was freaked out. Everyone I talked to had a good idea. I definitely gravitated more towards some than others, but they all sounded good, plausible, real. All of them would make, at the very least, decent books. How could I compete when everyone drinking at the hotel bar was sitting on an awesome idea? People told me my idea was awesome too, but I was like "So what? That's like saying the earth is round!"

I have no trouble coming up with ideas. Do you? All my trouble is centered around getting the idea out and making sense. Then revising the ever living sunshine out of it. Another problem I have is falling in love with an idea that is beautiful and has a nice singing voice but is wrong for me. I usually find out we aren't meant to be after I've written three or four chapters. I think what's most addictive about ideas is their limitless potential. It can make me giddy and, sometimes, unwilling to put the work in on the other thing, the ms. that is no longer an idea but a lumbering, sometimes misbehaving, reality.

So, to celebrate the IDEA in all it's glory, here's a link to the Black List, "An annual list of Hollywood's most liked unproduced screenplays." There are some great ones here. It's nice to see that there's a screenplay for Kody Keplinger's DUFF floating around out there - hope that gets made. But my favorite idea is Maggie. Here's the blurb from the Black List:

As a “walking dead” virus spreads across the country, 

a farm family helps their eldest daughter come to 

terms with her infection as she slowly becomes a 

flesh-eating zombie. 

What's your favorite unrealized idea, be it one of your own, one on this list, or one you heard of?