I'm in heaven

48 hours in a writing retreat, 6 writing buddies, 14 bottles of wine and 1 manuscript = a perfect weekend. No I didn’t drink all the wine myself I shared it with my fabulous YonBeyond writing group. This weekend we shared our second bi-annual weekend together in the secluded Tambourine Mountain Aaronlee retreat. 

For me, this weekend was a great opportunity to polish my Treasured Love manuscript. I recently came to a halt with this story. I knew there were problems with it but couldn’t quite pinpoint exactly what they were. I was too close to see what was wrong. Treasured Love had been through three rounds of edits and it wasn’t quite right. I knew I had a riveting plot but my characters simply didn’t jump from the page with the passion and authenticity I was after and I didn’t know why. So with the weekend retreat approaching and my manuscript at a frustrating standstill, I sought out specialist expertise in the form of a manuscript assessment by Word Witchery. I’m so glad I did. Anna Cleary not only pointed out the deficiencies in my characters, she also made very valuable suggestions on how I could fix them. With her honesty and insightfulness and a weekend dedicated to this manuscript it now has a new lease of life. I can finally see  Treasured Love reaching its full potential. It was a wonderful, fulfilling, leisurely weekend. We all set our own personal writing retreat goals. Whether it was writing, plotting or editing, all six of us succeeded and some of us exceeded our weekend goals.

Not only was it special to share the weekend with likeminded people who understand my crazy writing brain, we also shared lots of yummy wine, ate delicious cheese and other fabulous foods and celebrated my RUBY nomination with Moet champagne. So here’s cheers to my writing buddies. YonBeyond you are all fabulous talented authors and great fun.

I couldn’t have asked for a more productive writing retreat. L - R. Anthea, Matt, Tania, Me, Isabella