It’s 7:15 on Sunday night as I write this, but I’m officially retiring my WIP for the night. Sure, it’s a bit early for that, but I’ve spent the entire weekend on it. Yes, that’s accurate, the entire weekend.
I took a writingcation. I happen to live in a vacation area and there’s a lovely inn that I have access to when the rooms are not otherwise occupied with paying customers. So I checked myself and my laptop in Friday evening after work, and I didn’t emerge until noon today. Aside from the odd break, I spent that entire time focused on my revisions. Whether I was on the beach, or at the nearby pub, by the pool, or in the room, my laptop was with me and I was writing or brainstorming.
You’d think I’d have finished the revisions with all that time. But a lot of what I did was researching or tightening up my worldbuilding or backstory behind the scenes. It will make the rest of the process much faster but it means that I still have about half of the manuscript to go until this round of revisions is finished.
But it was AMAZING. I’m over the moon with how much the whole thing has improved from all that focused attention. A much clearer vision, lots of supporting documents to consult, and stories from side characters or from another character’s POV for insight, have made the MS itself is so much clearer, tighter, and focused.
Have you ever taken a writingcation? How do you handle it when you’re got big issues to tackle in your MS?
I’ve never done this, but it sounds like a great idea. I tend to lock myself into my own apartment (because I live alone), but end up distracted by other toys and housework.
Thanks for the idea. I’ll have to try this sometime in March for NaNoEdMo ( http://www.nanoedmo.net/xoops2/ ).
Glad it worked out! I’ve done this once…and it’s worked out very differently than I had expected. I ended up with two short stories that had been in my head that needed to be cleared out before I could finish TPF. After that, I finished the first draft of the novel in a 10 days…
Can’t wait to read the next version!
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