Last week, I locked myself away for a five day writing retreat. It proved an extremely successful Burst Writing event. I define Burst Writing as an extremely focused period of time to produce significantly higher word counts than normal. It’s like a sprint to drive through a large section of a novel. Last week, I wrote just over 50,000 words in less than five full work days.
You can read the blog I posted on the Fictorians today that describes the event at a high level, along with daily stats, some things I did to prepare for the event, and some lessons learned.
Here, I will discuss in more detail the events of each day, as well as more specifics of the project. I am hoping it will prove useful.
The goal of 50,000 words was a stretch goal, and I knew chances were high I would not achieve it. Still, it motivated me to work all the harder to see how close I could get. The novel, titled Flood Tide, is a sequel to The Sentinel’s Call, the epic fantasy novel I am currently working with my agent, John Richard Parker of ZENO , to find a publishing home for. I’ve been anxious to begin writing the actual scenes so I couldn’t wait to lock myself away and start typing.
To prepare for the Burst Writing event, I spent several weeks creating a detailed outline of Flood Tide. The outline ended up at over 23,000 words, along with probably another 15,000 words of supporting documentation, including character sketches and a scene beat sheet. I expect the novel to end up between 125,000 and 150,000 words.
I then found the perfect location for the writing retreat. Colonyhouse, owned by the Oregon Writers Colony, located in Rockaway Beach, on the Northern Oregon coast. It was within driving distance, remote enough that I would not be disturbed, and yet sat within 100 yards of the Pacific. Perfect.
With everything in place, I began the journey.
The first thing I learned was that it takes a lot longer to reach Colonyhouse than I had optimistically estimated, plus I stopped on the way to purchase all the food I would need for the week. Coupled with a later-than-planned exodus of my house in the morning, I did not arrive in Colonyhouse until almost 5 PM.
I used the long drive to explore options for chapter 1. I had hoped to write the first several chapters prior to starting the retreat so as to have the opening of the novel firmly locked down. The first chapter or two are difficult, and I’m sure I’ll re-write them several times before I get them just right. I did not want to spend tons of less-productive time working on those opening chapters when the goal of the retreat was to produce a lot of new words.
So, while I drove I tested out various ideas and attempted to dictate them into my voice recorder. This was my first attempt to dictate full scenes, and it failed miserably. I am glad no one was there to hear it. I have a lot of practicing to do. But, by the time I arrived at the house, I had the first chapter pretty well planned out in my head.
I still found the first chapter awkward and slow. I eventually completed it and managed to finish 2700 new words before bed.
Not a glorious beginning, but I was there with a viable opening chapter. Everything was set for a successful second day.
Here are a couple of photos of the interior of Colonyhouse, as well as the beach just outside.
