A week ago Silbrith and I wrapped up our annual writing retreat, and I've been reading my post on last year's retreat to refresh my memory of what I said about the 2019 retreat. So much has changed...
Last year we met in Texas, went sightseeing and brought DVDs to watch together. At the start of this year, we optimistically thought all would be normal by May, and made reservations to travel to an adorable little Pacific Northwest island town, which also happens to be the setting of one of our upcoming Caffrey Conversation stories. I was going to show Silbrith where I envisioned events happening for that story, while introducing her to some of my favorite places and restaurants.
It wasn't easy to make peace with the fact that my vacation was not going to happen the way I'd envisioned for more than a year. We decided to make the best of things, still taking vacation time and setting up FaceTime sessions to discuss plot bunnies.
As much as I missed seeing Silbrith in person, I have to say I'm thrilled at how well our virtual retreat went. We had many productive conversations, making oodles of notes on the stories we plan to write over the next year or more. We discussed Caffrey Conversation, fanfiction in general, and our original works.
In lieu of our usual site seeing, we gave each other tours of our own spaces. I now have a better idea how to tell Silbrith's cats apart, and she has seen my neighborhood. Fortunately the microphone for my headset fit and worked well inside of a mask, and I was able to detach that mic long enough for the phone to pick up the sounds of the birds who congregated at a nearby river. There were many ducks hanging out, ostensibly in honor of the duck who became one of my favorite characters in my novel.
At the end of our virtual retreat, I felt energized and excited about what I'm going to be writing. As much as I hope we can meet in person again next year, I'm also pleased that Silbrith suggested continuing our virtual conversations on a recurring basis this year.
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