Oh, When Will This Ever End?

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Yesterday was my day long writing “retreat.”

It was good to get a big chunk of writing time in, but somehow I had built it up in my head too much. I had this idea that I was going to be able to rewrite the entire ending of my story, all in one sitting.

Badabing, badabang.

Well, it didn’t quite work out that way. I’m really struggling with the end. I think I made some serious headway yesterday, but I’m left with this anxious feeling. It’s not done.

I want it to be done.

I guess I just have to keep plugging away at it. What else can I do?

I still think I can have it done in two weeks. Well, I can have the story done in two weeks. I will need longer to do the word-for-word polish. In fact, I have no idea how long that will take. I really want to make every page, every sentence, perfect. And there are a lot of sentences.

To keep focused, I have written myself a new mantra: I will not call it done just because I’m tired of working on it.

I guess I just need to let go of having it done at any particular time. It’s just stressing me out. It will get done when it gets done.

Rock Lake Writers Day-Long Retreat

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Doesn’t that sound official?

As it turns out, most applications for writing grants or residencies ask you what writing organizations you belong to. Well, my writing group has been meeting for two and a half years now. We go to readings, we talk publishing – we do everything any writing organization does – so we decided to give ourselves a name: The Rock Lake Writers. And now we can list it on our resumes. Sweet.

The name is inspired by geography. Two of our members live in Eagle Rock. The other three in Silver Lake. (Silver Eagle just sounded to militaristic.) I’m thinking of building us a website (with all my spare time).

In all the many months that the Rock Lake Writers have been coming together, we have each moved closer toward our goals, but we’re all very busy, and it can be hard to find quality time for our writing. So a few months ago, as we were sitting with our calendars and mapping out our meeting schedule (aren’t we official?) we decided to set aside a day for a mini writing retreat.

It’s this Sunday – and I’m so excited. From 10 to 5 the dads will watch the kids and we will lock ourselves in the home of one of our members and just write, write, write. It’s good timing for me. I’ve reached a point with the novel rewrite that I need a big chunk of time to really dive deep. It’s the ending. It needs to be completely rewritten. It’s so much work that I’m not sure I can do it all in one day of writing, but I’m sure as hell going to give it my best shot. I’m thinking about going old school and just writing long hand to let the new version of the end just flow. Then I can edit as I translate it to my computer. I don’t often work that way, but I do find that writing things out long hand helps me be more creative. It’s as if I’m less afraid of being judged when it’s written out long hand. Once it’s in the computer it’s official and must be edited.

I’m getting so close to being done with this project. Here’s hoping the first-ever Rock Lake Writers Day-Long Retreat is highly productive.