We’re all home from the 4th Annual Stonehenge Circle Writers Retreat, and back to our regular days.  Our last day, Sunday, was a much shorter day, finishing up by 11 am, but still a nice end to the weekend retreat.

We only did a brief workshop, looking at some writing resources to help with dynamic description and writing in a more active style, and discussed how to structure a book bible.

We had some free write time as well–I’d finished my work (for now) on Guardian III, so I launched right into what I dearly hope will be the final final edits for Guardian I.  This was much less intense than the work needed for Guardian III–I had a print-out of the draft with minor edits already noted on it, and just needed to go through to implement in the digital file.  By the end of the day, I got through about about a third of the novel, so that was a solid amount of progress on that as well…some of it done on retreat, and some of it done after I got home.  Because obviously, when you get home from a writing retreat and have a spare hour, the thing to do is more writing! 🙂

Day Three Writing
Blog posts written: 1
Pages of Guardian I edited: 90

We closed out Day Two the 4th Annual Stonehenge Circle Writers Retreat, and just have a few hours left now!  Our second day, Saturday, was equally awesome, and I was happy to get more writing in.

Our focus on Saturday was on plot.  We went over common plot structures and how they compare (there are some pretty good parallels in the Hero’s Journey and the traditional Romantic plotline!)  We then used that structure to group-plot a book about Lola, yesterday’s character.  It was a pretty freeform, idea-tossing conversation that got the entire book plotted in a couple of hours.  It was pretty amazing–and you know you’re in a good point with writing when the sentence “so then the parkour group mobilizes with the coven to fight the vampires” makes complete sense. 🙂

We also finished The Fellowship of the Ring, compared the plot to the Hero’s Journey structure, and had some solid discussion on the really brilliant things both Tolkien and the filmmakers did in all the tiny details of that movie.

Outside of workshopping, I had a solid day in revising–I got through the end of Guardian III (!) per my retreat goal, went back to weave in references to a special performance I decided on at the end (mostly to satisfy my own need for a correct timeline, and otherwise why was there a performance on a Tuesday?  Conundrums), plus a couple other notes resolved to call this pass done.  I even resolved a note I’ve had in here since November of 2013, finally figuring out how to clarify something I’d left unsaid all this time.  So that is super exciting on so many levels!

And we still have about four and a half hours of retreating left…

Day Two Writing
Blog posts written: 1
Pages of Guardian III revised: 45

It’s relatively the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, and I thought I’d do an update on the first day of the 4th Annual Stonehenge Circle Writers Retreat.

A few people came Thursday night, but I arrived Friday morning and we kicked things off officially at 10 am.  We spent the day primarily discussing character creation.  In what was basically a writing jam session, we tossed ideas around to create a character as a group, using some character-building tools and online personality tests.

We ended up with Lola, a trash-talking chef who does parkour in her free time, who is slow to trust others because she was betrayed by her previous boss/mentor.  She has a buzzcut and is very buff from her parkour exercise, and has some insecurities about not being the conventional female standard of beauty.  Deep-down, she wants a long-term romantic relationship but doesn’t think she’ll find anyone, so she uses Tinder or the equivalent to casually date a lot of equally buff women.  Over the course of the book we may or may not group-write, she falls in love with a vegan ballerina.  She has complicated feelings with her large Hispanic, conservative Catholic family, and as a kind of guilty pleasure she likes Austen movies and pork rinds.

But believe me, that summary just scratches the surface!  By the end of the day, we all felt that we knew Lola personally, and she might show up at the door, possibly with Charlie the ballerina. 🙂

As a pre-start to our plotting workshops planned for today (Saturday), we watched the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring, with discussion on the plot and character threads set up at the beginning of the movie that carry through the trilogy.  We also wound up observing just how much Tolkien there is in Harry Potter! (Ring wraiths/dementors, Sauron bound to the ring/horcruxes, and of course, wizard mentors with large beards…)

Outside of workshopping, we did some free write time…although the retreat house also has a pool and a hot tub that had a nice view of the full moon, so we may have been slightly distracted by that too!  All in all, a full day and nice kick-off to the retreat.

Day One Writing
Blog posts written: 2
Pages of Guardian III revised: 21