Nan Sampson - Author

Mystery, Magic and Mayhem

Writing

Rules for Writer’s Retreats – or how not to spend $500 at a New Age shop and actually get some writing done

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Traditional Pop Tart Toast
The Traditional Saturday Morning Pop Tart Toast (many thanks to the Mad Hill Hunters of Lake Meep)

I recently spend a lovely three-day weekend on a writer’s retreat with a couple of good friends who are also authors, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts about considerations for a fun and productive writer’s retreat.  As always, these are just my personal considerations.  Your mileage may vary.

Nan’s rules for a successful writer’s retreat:

  1. Location location location. Requirements include comfortable chairs; enough table space for all writers to spread out with laptops, research material, notebooks, etc.; many power strips and places to plug them in; outdoor space, weather permitting; comfortable sleeping arrangements; spaces for privacy and alone time.  It can also be nice to have interesting places to go for quick breaks (local wineries, The Mustard Museum, crystal shops, the International House of Wine and Cheese have all proved to be acceptable diversions for my group).  However, while field trips are great for refilling the creative well, beware that they can also be a time suck.

TIP:  Try NOT spending five hours on Saturday at the local crystal shop, no matter how much fun it is.  Not that I’d know anything about that…

  1. Meal Planning. You’ll need kitchen space and advanced meal suggestions and preparation OR tasty and budget-appropriate eateries nearby.

TIP:  Try NOT to over-plan the food.  With one group of writers I go on retreats with, we always seem to bring enough food between us to get us through a zombie apocalypse, despite the planning – that’s the trouble with getting a bunch of moms together.

  1. It’s always good to go on retreat with people who have similar social needs.  If you need long hours of solitude, with no distractions, then traveling with a group of chatty women who also want to catch up on each other’s lives may not be the right mix for you.

TIP:  Always bring your noise cancelling headphones.  That way if the rest of the group wants to listen to Bohemian Rhapsody fifteen times in a row for inspiration (including head banging at the appropriate part), you can turn your back and remain in a state of silent and productive bliss.

  1. Sacred Separation. Do you best to allow your time at the retreat to be sacred time, time that you devote to ‘being there’ fully.  Do your best to keep contact with home and work at a minimum, as you would at a spiritual retreat.  Allow the mental space of a retreat to do its job, whatever that needs to be.

TIP:  This means that when your teenage daughter texts thirty-seven times to squee about a new season of her favorite anime show, it’s okay to text her a short reply, but DO NOT ENGAGE in a full-scale, hour-long text-athon.  Set expectations and then get off the phone.  It can wait until you get home (by which time, she will have moved on to something else anyway).

  1. Setting Expectations: Speaking of which, make sure you let your friends and family, and your work know that you will be unavailable for phone calls, conference calls, meetings, emails, texts, etc.  If you must make yourself available, make the time periods brief, and work them into your retreat schedule carefully.

TIP:  What I tell my family:  Only call me if the house is on fire, and if you can put it out, then it’s not on fire.  What I tell my staff:  Only call me if someone gets let go, and if it’s me, don’t call me until after the retreat, so you don’t spoil my time off.

There are probably other tips, but these are the ones I rely on these days.  Do you have tips for retreats?  If so, I’d love to hear about them!  Don’t be shy – share below!

Take care and as always,

Illegitimi non carborundum!

How Did They Build the Pyramids? One Brick at a Time.

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So I’m frantic busy trying to finish the first draft on the fourth Ellie Gooden/Coffee & Crime mystery.  It’s due to my editor at the end of July.  The clock is ticking.  I was making steady progress until Wednesday when I was slammed with Stupid Real Life Stuff and I got totally derailed.  I began to wonder if I was ever going to finish this one.

dog and keyboard

Made me wonder how those poor Egyptians felt, staring up at the empty space that would one day be the Great Pyramid, then looking at the seventeen or so stones laid on the ground and wondering how on earth they were ever going to create what Imhotep drew out for them.

pyramidbuidling

But, Sunday I pulled myself up by my boot straps and planted my butt in the chair and managed to put down 2100 or so words.  It felt good, and suddenly that pyramid I’m building didn’t seem quite so daunting.  I might only be halfway to the summit, but I can see the gleaming golden cap over the brilliant white sandstone blocks, shining like a beacon to the heavens… just like this newest Coffee & Crime mystery will outshine all the rest of the cozy paranormals out there for sale on the ‘Zon this fall.

Or…  maybe I’ve just been out in the sun too long and I’m starting to see things.  At any rate, the way those poor, loin-clothed, bare-torso’d wretches built that pyramid is the same way I’m going to write this book.  One lousy brick at a time.  Yes, I’ll probably need some sledges to haul the stones, and some water to quench my thirst and maybe even a foreman or two to crack the whip over my head (hey Nano pals, you hear that?  You get to play with my Indiana Jones whip!).  But I got this.

 

INdy.jpg
Gratuitous Indy Pic!

Anyhoo.  I haven’t been in touch in a while and I just wanted to let you know that I’m still here.  Still dragging the stones up the slanted ramp, all Sisyphus-like.  Still sweating under the hot Egyptian sun for the glory of Ra.  Heh heh.  Or something like that.  Keep on, keeping on, fellow babies.  And as always,

Illegitimi non carborundum!

What Weight Do You Normally Fight At?

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I’m ba-a-a-a-ack!

im-ba-ack

Greetings fellow Earthlings!

As some of you know, I took a rather spectacular fall just before Thanksgiving. Face-planted onto concrete right in front of a bunch of people from the Evil Day Job.  It was spectacular.  Blood everywhere, broken bones, including my hand and nose (and my pride), sprained things, even had to have stitches. I looked like I’d gone a round in the ring with Mike Tyson. Worst part? I spilled my entire large Coca-Cola, my special treat for that week!

I’d include a picture but you might bust something laughing – or try to blackmail me. Anyway, sorry to have been MIA for so long, but I’m back (just when you thought it was safe to go back on the internet!).

On the plus side, I’m once again able to type (and write), and Book Three in the Coffee and Crime Mysteries is due out in early spring, so there’s that to look forward!  I think this is the best Ellie book yet.  THings heat up for her both in town, with Charlie and even in terms of the death of her parents.  Lots of fun!  And the cover!  Oh, the cover.  My cover artist, Raven Blackburn, has knocked it out of the park again.  I’ve shared it on my Facebook page and here’s a sneak peek for all of you as well!

coverrevealbanner

Anyhoo, now that my tippy-tapping fingers are back in action, you can look forward to more idle ramblings, pithy musings and giddy babblings soon.  Oh, and as always, the peasants are revolting.

revolting-peasants

Illegitimi non carborundum!

How Carving a Pumpkin Can Change Your Life

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Yes, it’s true.  Carving a pumpkin can truly change your life.  Especially if you’re using a really sharp knife and it slips…

But seriously.  I spent some rather unproductive time last night attempting to create a pumpkin masterpiece.  Now, we ALL know I have no artistic ability whatsoever.  I can draw neither a straight nor curvy line, cannot paint, cannot sculpt, and am not in any other way artsy or craftsy.  I wasn’t only a pariah in gym class… art class was my second least favorite subject.

And yet, as Halloween is my favorite holiday, each year I desire to create that perfect, most sincere Jack-O-Lantern.  In my mind, I am imagining this:

awesome-jack-o-lantern

And each year, I pretty much end up with something like this.

ugly-jack-o-lantern

This year, I finally figured out how it happens.  It’s all about revision.  Yes, there, I said it.  A dirty little writer word.  See, what happens is that I keep feeling unsatisfied, so I keep trimming and deleting and refining and modifying, until… well, it’s like cutting your own bangs, isn’t it?  You want them to be even, but you’re not a professional stylist, so you keep making tiny adjustments when you find they’re not quite right on that one side and then you look in the mirror and you find you’ve got this:

bad-bangs

Yeah.  Stories, bangs, pumpkins, it’s all the same.  And it doesn’t stop there.  For me, anyway, since nothing is ever perfect, and I’m one of those people who need to fix/manage/control my world, I try to tweak everything.  Constantly.  Like, to death.

So I’m trying to teach an old dog a new trick.  Maybe, just maybe, my crappy pumpkin carving, while still probably crappy, is okay.  Maybe the heart and soul that I put into it will trump my relatively paltry skill at carving.  Maybe, by practicing pumpkin carving every day in the weeks running up to Halloween I’ll improve my skill.  Or maybe, just maybe, I need to learn to let what I create be whatever it is and be satisfied with it, knowing that I am my own worst critic and that it probably isn’t anywhere near as bad as I think it is.  (Although in the case of pumpkins, I might have to accept reality… )

I mean, yes, we always want to improve and that’s not a bad thing.  But if we’ve tried our best, constant cutting and trimming and correcting may just end up destroying what we set out to create.  Not just in art, not just in writing, not just in pumpkin carving, but in everything.

So this year, I’m going to go buy another pumpkin.  And I’m going to carve it the best I am currently able.  I’ll even post pictures.  It might not be a masterpiece, but I guarantee it will be sincere enough to make the Great Pumpkin happy.  And for once, this year, I will be too!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

A Pithy Quote for the Day

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I was reading a blog by Maria Popova, who was quoting Ann Patchett from her memoir.  It rang so true for me, as a writer, I had to share it.  You can read the full blog post here: BrainPickings, and I highly recommend reading Ann Patchett’s book (available at Amazon here: This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage).

“For me it’s like this: I make up a novel in my head (there will be more about this later). This is the happiest time in the arc of my writing process. The book is my invisible friend, omnipresent, evolving, thrilling… This book I have not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book, and my faith in it as I track its lazy flight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.

And so I do. When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing — all the color, the light and movement — is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book.

The journey from the head to hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write — and many of the people who do write — get lost… Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.”  Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Illegitimi non carborundum!

Don’t Think About Writing…

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How Not to Think About Writing
How Not to Think About Writing

After last week’s momentous book launch, I decided I deserved a weekend’s worth of down time. I’d been going 4-40 since January and felt exhausted. All I was looking for was two days of doing nothing. Makes sense, right? Recharge the old batteries, gather steam for the next project. All good.

What was it Bobby Burns said? The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, wasn’t it? Yeah… turns out the old Scot was right.

So I blow off my WW meeting on Saturday morning because of a rum tummy. Tried to sleep in, but His Admiralship wanted breakfast at five freaking thirty. Got up, fed the pushy poodle, then tried to go back to sleep. Kept thinking about scenes I needed to add to Book 2 of the mystery series. Not wanting to lose the ideas, I grabbed my bed side notebook to jot them down — and promptly spilled my water glass into the open drawer of the nightstand. *sigh* Got up, cleaned up the mess (yes, thank you, Nelson, you were very helpful trying to lick up the water), then tried again to go back to sleep. Remembered I hadn’t made notes. Got up again and jotted down my ideas.

At that point, I was wide awake. But I had promised myself I wasn’t going to do anything writerly. So I went downstairs, put the kettle on, made some tea… and started thinking about a scene in my fantasy novel. Nope. Stop it. Not doing any writing today. Stood there for a moment and noticed that the kitchen cabinets needed cleaning. Got out the orange oil and did a spot of cleaning.

Two hours later, the kitchen gleamed. As did the bathrooms and the floors. And as I scrubbed I found myself wondering what my character Charlotte would use for degreasing since oranges weren’t available in medieval times… stop it. Stop thinking writer-type things! Maybe, I thought, as I got up off the floor, knees aching, I should take a little nap.

Oh, wait, not so fast. I needed to take the oriental carpet to this shop my husband found in Lakemoor for cleaning. Lakemoor? Where the devil is Lakemoor? Oh, says he on his way out the door to work, it’s just up 47, take a right on 120. Right around the corner.

Over an HOUR LATER, I finally located the small burb of Lakemoor, but the only thing at the address indicated was an autobody shop. I drove up and down the street for twenty minutes (I’m sure people thought I was either loony or casing the joint), but there is NO cleaners. So I drove back home. But the drive wasn’t completely wasted because I figured out the tricky escape bit for the fantasy novel. Oh damn. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about writing…

So I got home shortly after noon, at which point, it was time to rouse the teenager and get some food down her gullet before she becomes an unholy, crabby mess. That accomplished, I thought, okay, NOW I can sit down and do… um… work on the fantasy novel? No. No writing. Okay, I’ll um… oh I know, I’ll dump book 2 of the mystery series into Scrivener and… oh, yeah, no writing. So… um… er…

I dithered on the couch for about twenty minutes, trying to think of something to do that wasn’t writing related. I even pulled out my Kindle to read something. But I couldn’t settle on what to read. Except that book about how to writer faster… but wait, that was writing related.

Bottom line, I’ve apparently forgotten how to just sit and do nothing. Well, at least anything that doesn’t have something to do with writing. And you know what? I’m pretty okay with that. Turns out, I LOVE writing. Even the icky revision part. I’m actually itching to dive into the editing of Book 2. Maybe this revision won’t take me six months, like the last one, now that I understand the process!

So today, Sunday, I took a breath, allowed myself to think a few writerly thoughts, then did my usual Sunday errands (grocery store, making a few casseroles for dinner during the week, putting my lunch things together for Monday, etc.). And for dinner, the family and I went out to The Claddagh for a good old faux Irish meal. I even treated myself to a pear cider. Yum!

Tomorrow, however, it’s back to work. Both to the evil day job and as a writer. And I can’t wait!

Is there a hobby or avocation you itch to work on when you’re doing other things? Is there a project you can’t wait to get back to or consumes your thoughts at any given idle moment? I’d love to hear about your favorite things. And thanks for dropping by!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

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