Writing Retreat: 2022

This year for our annual retreat, Silbrith and I met virtually again rather than traveling. Here are some of the highlights:

Online classes! 

In the mornings, we discussed what we had learned from attending recent online classes, and how to apply what we learned to our own writing. 

In the weeks leading up to our retreat, we watched videos on writing by Neil Gaiman and N.K. Jemisin. For me, the highlight of the Gaiman videos was the concept of a writing compost heap. Essentially it's a set of things we read, write, watch, hear (including TV shows and music and random conversations) that we keep in our subconscious and eventually combine into inspiration for our stories. Jemisin related her psychology background to how we build characters and worlds. I took soooo many notes!

A couple of months earlier, I'd signed up for the Diverse Narratives Structures class offered by Writing the Other. Then I'd gotten wrapped up with my decision to look for a new job, and forgot about the class until I got the reminder that it was about to start. During the retreat, I was about one week through the three-week course, and we discussed what I'd learned so far. In particular, we applied the concept of a four-act story structure, also known as kishōtenketsu, to the first stories in the Caffrey Conversation. It definitely felt like that structure applied to those original stories better than the traditional three-act structure.

Bunnyball! 

In the afternoons, we discussed our ideas and struggles for the stories that we're currently writing or want to write. Silbrith has some fun things planned, and as always I came away from our sessions with fresh inspiration. I hope you'll enjoy the stories we post in the coming year!

We even gazed into the crystal ball, considering how the Caffrey Conversation series might eventually end. That's still a ways in the future, but it's good to be on the same page about where we're going with the series, so that it has a satisfying conclusion when the time comes.