Marydale Musings
Welcome to the weekend, people. :)
I was out of town for two weekends (and the week sandwiched between them) at the Marydale Retreat Center in Erlanger, Kentucky. I was part participant, part staff at the Writers Retreat Workshop, originally created by a beloved man named Gary Provost. I didn't know Gary, but his legacy lives on in the form of a wonderful retreat where writers get boot-camp style immersion into the writing craft and obtain more personal feedback on their work than can be imagined.
My first ever writing conference was this one and coming back with a soon to be released book on my laptop was great fun. I was reunited with some of my close friends and writing mentors and could not have had a better time. Maybe the ten days should be extended to thirty or thirty times thirty or... forever. ;)
See you in the comments!
P.S. Nancy's blog re-opens June 15th.
Comments
I'd love to participate in something like that one day.
I'm spending the weekend resting and relaxing, because the day job is insane with the long hours. Of the good: I have been promoted to Director. Of the crazy? We're down a couple of people on my team, so I'm currently doing the work of 3. This, too, shall pass, but in the meantime, yikes!
Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!
Good to see you. Congratulations on the promotion, but sorry that the job's so crazy. I hope things get better VERY soon.
I'm knee-deep in paperwork in my office looking for a login. There are just too many logins and passwords to remember now. It's ridiculous. I try to keep them all in one box, but somehow I didn't put this one with the others. Ugh!
I can't say that I've taken much benefit from the few writers conferences I've attended. I think I'm just too much of a solitary person for all of that socializing and hobknobbing.
Busy yesterday, this afternoon doesn't look much better. Eh.
It's definitely a writing conference focused on craft, so you don't have to be into networking to benefit. There's morning class, one-on-one meetings with staff to talk about your story (and they read pages), diagnostic groups (where members critique each others' pages), shop talks where agents/pros talk about the business of writing, etc.
It's an intimate setting with less than 40 student participants so you would not get lost in the shuffle. It's definitely not a setting with huge crowds where networking involves becoming a barfly and having to work to strike up conversations. Some of my best times early on were sitting on the back porch listening to the agents and published authors answer questions from other students. I was just there to soak it up.
Would love to see you at a writing conference. This year, Beth was there when I walked in and I was so glad to meet her face-to-face.
Nancy arrived shortly after and we got to spend some quality time. Then Andi and her husband came to visit. It was great.
Would love to see more blog friends in person. :)
(waving) The workshops sound fun. Maybe someday ....