Days 5 and 6 of the Writing Retreat (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Adjust accordingly as you read.)

I know why they call it a writing retreat: because eventually you will want to retreat from your writing. I’m so glad it’s Christmas Eve and a break is coming.

I see what I assume is one of the same deer from yesterday across the river. I wonder if he’s thinking the same of me, although I’m in a snowflake-covered sweatshirt today. Maybe I seem like a different person to him.

WR saw nothing she wanted for breakfast, though she knew she had to fuel. Yesterday’s writing was brutal. Nothing generative, writing wise, except one “guiding paragraph,” a set of principles I need to convince myself to follow or I’ll end up chasing my tail. Ugh, ugh, UGH.

(The Little Debbie tree I brought along is hidden from WR until break. I asked for an apple instead. She’s not happy, but I didn’t say never, WR. Just not now.)

We are, again, at that difficult, necessary climb in the novel. Writing feels like scaling a dune. You want to do it. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you roll back down and try again tomorrow.

I’m overthinking it. That’s my specialty. TBH, I’m just grateful I’ve convinced myself back to the novel. I wasn’t sure I could do it. 

Still, WR wrote four poems between yesterday and this morning. She revised a few more. She’s getting better at giving up lines that are defiant but not pertinent, and keeping the ones that are defiant and necessary.

Now it’s Coke Zero and a deep dive. Some days when I dread writing, I have the best writing day ever.

Here’s hoping.

Day 6

WR and I submitted poetry last night. Six packets so far this week. That makes me happy.

Christmas lunch today was at Namaste, the Indian restaurant Barry and I discovered last year. WR wanted to dance with the Bollywood dancers on TV. I persuaded her to sit down. She enjoyed her samosas, the tandoori chicken, the naan. Plain, of course.

Back at the hotel, I finished Fun Home. I’ve meant to read it for years. Not exactly festive, but important. I loved how her family story wove through her literary lineage. Or is it vice versa? Daring and well done. And it didn’t hurt that I totally got all of her novel references and adore The Importance of Being Earnest. (It’s probably no accident that there’s a character in my WIP named Ernest.)

I wanted to nap after I finished reading it. WR grabbed the Freewrite instead. That meant more poems, not the novel. I let her.

While she updated it, I opened my MacBook and checked the calendar. I’d left myself a note for every day of the retreat:

“I show up for the novel every morning. Everything else is a gift, not a demand.”

Maybe it sounds trite. Too bad. I needed it today. Even though it’s Christmas, even though it’s not morning, I WILL open my novel today. 

Yesterday’s work was structural. The logic piece. The foundation. It’s sorted now. Every scene needs to answer a question:

Are you doing your job?

The characters meant to move the plot must not try to hold the novel’s philosophical center. The ones meant to build atmosphere must not try to deliver the novel’s meaning. They can cross over sometimes, but if they swap jobs too often, the whole thing gets muddy.

Everything is clearer now. What’s left is to walk through each thread and ask whether it’s earning its place. Some scenes will go. Others will need to be written.

I miss writing freely. This is a cousin to revision. But in a novel as ambitious as this, I need to know who can do what. One character requires special attention to her language. I can’t exaggerate it, but I have to track her voice closely.

I truly believe this novel fills a gap. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t write it. Or maybe I would, IDK…

In the end, I’ll trust this: when my eye and ear can pass over a page without snagging, it’s as finished as I can make it. That doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. It means it’s time to let it rest, or to pass it up the chain.

WR says the FreeWrite is ready again. She wants to write more poetry, though lately it’s lump-in-the-throat stuff. Some of it has a good line here or there. 

She also wants to return to reading The Dictionary of Lost Words. So do I. But if I do something small on the novel tonight, I can reenter it tomorrow with calm and eagerness.

So I’ll open the file and take a peek. Poetry will need to wait, WR. And it will. 

Merry Christmas, if you celebrate it.

For those of you who create and are now at loose ends after dinner, get your asses back into your chairs or to your easels!

Submit some poetry or a short story. Rumor has it that editors often check their inboxes over the holidays. 

For those of you for whom this day is a mix of joy and grief, I see you, too. We’ve got this. 

We’ve got this.