Read Write Retreat - Day 1

Read the intro post in this series.

A friend read my intro Retreat post (link above) and messaged me to ask what kind of writing I was going to do. *forehead slap* That would have been meaningful information to include, right? Sorry. I buried the lead.¹ This is classic forest-for-the-trees behavior on my part.

Some of you may know that I finished my first novel last year, and it’s out in the world trying to attract me a literary agent. In the meantime, I’m starting on my second novel. And there’s Read Write Repeat and its many sections. So here’s what I think I’ll be writing while I’m on this retreat:

1. For my first novel, I sent queries to agents who only request a query letter or short synopsis. Those were relatively quick and easy to put together. Another bunch of agents, however, request a long synopsis, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30 pages. It essentially distills each paragraph of your novel into a sentence. So I’m working on writing that long synopsis, which is every bit as tedious as it sounds. I’ve synopsized² 130 pages of the novel, and I have 263 to go. It would feel like a meaningful accomplishment to wrap this up this week so I can send the novel to more agents. But it’s boring.

2. I want to do some work on my second novel. What exactly this work will be is something I’ll discover as I go. With only one novel done, I don’t know yet if I’m a “planner” or a “pantser” (a writer who works “by the seat of their pants”). I think I’m both. With the first book, I just started writing, and I did that until the amount of scenes and characters and plot points started to overwhelm me. Then I stopped to write a plot outline, and write some mini bios for my characters, and establish a calendar of events (to help with the details of setting like weather and leaves turning and times of sunrise and sunset). For the new book, I’ve been researching plot structures, and my tentative plan for this week is to use one (or more) of those established structures to build the framework for novel #2.

3. Many of you are subscribed to Story Course, my guided study of short fiction here on Read Write Repeat (and if you’re not subscribed, here’s your invitation). I’ll devote some of my writing time this week to discussing the latest Story Course lesson with you and writing the next one or two lessons.

4. And then there’s this retreat itself. I intend to publish reports on my writing progress, my experiment with the Pomodoro technique, and my travelogue of the remote locations I’ll visit this week.

My “work work” brain, the one that leads people and manages projects and optimizes for output, wants to have a clear plan with measurable results that prioritizes the most urgent writing or the writing of greatest value. My “I’m on vacation” brain says screw that, do whatever you feel like doing. Stay tuned to see which brain wins.

I left Phoenix around 1:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon, and even with the surprisingly congested, slow-and-go traffic I encountered on the interstate south of downtown Tucson, I arrived at my Airbnb in Cochise in just over 3 hours. Most of the drive was interstate and familiar, but the last 30 minutes on two-lane highway and then dirt road was more scenic and interesting as it rounded the northern edge of the Dragoon Mountains and passed pecan (I think) orchards and wineries.

I rolled onto the property and stepped out of my car as the host came out to greet me. He was a friendly guy, around my age, whose appearance immediately reminded me of Harry Shearer, except for the NRA cap and NRA vest he was wearing.

Ron gave me a tour of the huge travel trailer where I will be spending the next three days. It’s permanently parked on a concrete slab about 100 yards up a gravel road from the hosts’ home, connected to a large propane tank for hot water and cooking and central heat. This property comprises 40 acres, so it’s isolated and quiet and serene. The east side of my trailer is screened by five young lodgepole pine trees that are always full of birds — I’ve already spotted dozens of black-throated sparrows and a couple of northern cardinals and a covey of the fattest quail I think I’ve ever seen — and to the west is an expansive and unspoiled view across the high desert chaparral to the Dragoon Mountains.

I asked Ron if I should lock the trailer when I go out. “Nobody locks their doors out here,” he said. “Everybody is armed.”

“Well, I’m not armed,” I said with a laugh.

“Would you like to be?” he offered. I declined. I think I’ll be okay. But the computer goes with me when I leave the property.

I got unpacked and immediately set to work prepping food for my dinner as the sun dropped below the mountains. I lit the gas stove inside and the gas grill on the patio, set out a strip steak and rubbed it with olive oil and seasoning, and chopped some squash and zucchini and onion and tossed the vegetables with EVOO, salt, and pepper. I put the vegetables in the oven to roast, put the steak on the grill, and made a salad of mixed greens, grape tomatoes, and vinaigrette.

I went back outside to flip the steak when I caught sight of a dark shape emerging from behind some shrubs just off the patio where I was standing. It was a javelina, and he strode right up to the patio to get a good look at what I was doing. Then two more came from behind the shrub, and then a bunch more emerged from the knee-high dried grasses that surround my trailer. There must have been a dozen or more of them. I was momentarily unnerved, but I quickly realized that they were as docile as a bunch of Corgis. They wandered off to forage and drink water from the depressions beneath the pine trees, and I served up my meal.

After I’d eaten my dinner and washed the dishes, I went outside to sit on a bench under a clear sky and a waxing gibbous moon. The Dragoon Mountains to the east were just discernible in the darkness, with only the faint glow of nautical twilight to limn their silhouette. I was able to identify the constellations Orion, Pleiades, and Cassiopeia from memory, and I spotted a group of stars that look like a swan in flight and which I would name Cygnus if not for that already being the name of some other constellation.

I sat in the quiet and darkness and tried to activate all of my senses, to let my eyes adjust until I could make out some detail from within the silhouetted forms of trees and shrubs, to hear every sound that came from the chaparral that surrounded me or from the creaks of the trailer behind me, to get to know the specific smells of the dirt and the night air here, to feel the cold settle down around me.

I made it maybe eight minutes before I had the urge to take my cell phone out of my pocket — although, in my defense, I only wanted to use my night sky app to confirm that the reddish “star” over the WSW horizon was actually Mars, and also in my defense, I didn’t do it. I didn’t take my phone out. I resisted.

I was warm and comfortable in my light down jacket and my knit cap, a bit drowsy from my drive today and my full belly. I leaned back against the bench, stretched out my legs. My mind was clear.

And then I cracked.

It was the quiet that did it. It was just so very quiet. Maybe because I was sitting alone on a bench in the dark, exposed, in an unfamiliar setting, far from anyone else — it felt like that moment in a horror film when the music fades to nothing, and the crickets stop chirping, and there’s no sound, nothing, and you know, you can feel it in the hairs on the back of your neck, you just know that somebody’s about to get stabbed.

That’s when I went back inside the trailer and shut the door.

Read the next post in this series.

1. Yes, I know journalists spell it “bury the lede.” But that’s just weird. English is weird enough without us inventing new weird ways to confuse people.

2. Can you believe that’s a word? I almost put it in quotation marks, because it feels like something I just invented, which shouldn’t be taken seriously. But there it is, in my Merriam Webster. See what I mean about weird English?