Alone Again

So here I am writing from my very first solitary retreat since 2005.
I was going to make this a Vlog post, but I've been hanging out here in my
pajamas all day and am not really interested in sharing my current state
through video. This day has been really great. I have realized something really
important about my writing. That even though I get exhausted after an hour or
two of writing, if I take a short break, I am able to go back to it. I'll have
to keep this in mind in case I ever have a chance to do this again.

This writing time has brought to mind the last retreat I took. It
took place shortly before I became pregnant with my son. I think it was late
December 2005—right about the time the tsunami hit South Asia. So anyway, at
that point I was almost through writing the first draft of Girl in Shades (yes, I said 2005). In fact, I had only one major
scene left to write and it was the scene that concluded the story. It was also
a scene that just happened to take place in a cabin in the woods.

So bright idea, I decide that I will myself rent a cabin in the woods
and escape there for a few days to write this final chapter (method writing?).
My husband thought I was crazy (did I mention it was December), but I insisted,
so he put up with me as I rented a car to go and booked a cabin on a little
river near Algonquin Park. I packed some food and my laptop, kissed my husband
good-bye and I was off to spend four days in this cabin alone, writing, and not
speaking.

So when I got there, I quickly realized that this would be less a
writing exercise and more an exercise in survival. I was the only one there who
had rented a cabin in winter. The cabin had no indoor plumbing, and no heat
except a wood burning stove. No worries, I thought. I got the fire roaring,
zipped up my winter jacket and hide my face under my wool scarf. I started
writing right away. The words fell out quickly and before I knew it, the scene
was complete. That was easy, I thought. And it's actually a lot shorter of a
chapter than I was expecting. Then, I realized, I still had four days to spend
in a freezing cold cabin.

I realized something else during that trip—that I am absolutely terrible
at keeping a wood-burning fireplace going. Several times I awakened to a dead
fire and a freezing body, which resulted in me coming back from the owner's
cabin with a flaming log in a bucket that I was supposed to put into the
fireplace to start it up again. It never worked very well, and after three
days, I took my completed chapter and went home early, unwilling to spend one
more night in my sleeping bag, or struggle through the snow drift to reach the
outhouse in the middle of the night.

So this time has been much better for a few reasons. I have much more
work I want to do so I know I will not run out of chapters to write, and it's
warm here where I am, and there's a 3 piece bath, a full sized fridge and a TV.
Turns out in the past six years I have gotten wiser, as well as older.