Right after I clicked “publish” on my last post, the winds in Southern California changed and a raging wildfire turned to head directly toward the little cabin in Idyllwild where my writing group had planned to have our mini-writing retreat this weekend.
Now, I know that complaining about a canceled writing retreat when people are losing their homes is probably a little selfish, but forgive me – I was really, really looking forward to this. It was supposed to be this nice, simple thing I could look forward to after weeks of craziness.
As soon as we got the news we scrambled online to see if we could find a last minute vacation rental. Even my guy got in on the hunt (isn’t he the best?). There were plenty of mansions available (and man, some day, we’re doing our retreat in the 30,000 square foot Spanish-style estate with the tennis courts and pool), but not so many options within the budget of four not-quite-yet-famous writers.
We ended up renting a small cabin in Sugarloaf. It’s a no frills two-bedroom, but it’s up in the woods, quite, and hopefully far enough away from the fire that we won’t be breathing the smoke all weekend.
I’ll take it.
In fact, I’m heading up as soon as I finish this post. My hope is to stake my claim to a secluded corner (if I can find one) to lay out all my index cards. I’m considering reorganizing the story a bit. In fact, I’ve been losing sleep over it. I really don’t want to spend 10 years on this project, so I don’t want to write any more without knowing where I’m going, but I’m having trouble figuring that out.
Here’s hoping that two and a half days of solid work gets me over the hump.
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