Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Focus, people, focus!

So last week, I was distracted. There were shiny things everywhere. It was hard to get anything done, but then there was the whole looming deadline thing. All that led to some unpleasant chewing on my tongue in my sleep and random bouts of hyperventilation.

Then I took a writing weekend with my BFF and fabulous writer, Spring Warren. We've done this before and we have a great rhythm together. Just enough talk time to not be stir crazy, not so much that we get distracted. Similar tastes in junk food (I could write a love sonnet to the dark chocolate-covered, peanut butter-filled pretzels she brought) and booze. We took off Friday afternoon and were checked into the hotel by a little after three. We wrote until eight, took a dinner break and then hit the computers again.

Saturday was a repeat with a little break to watch part of my kid's soccer game (a heartbreaking 3-0 loss for the Davis Shepherds, but that's the way life is). Then more writing Sunday until the hotel finally kicked us out at one.

I wrote 51 pages, figured out my transition to the next section of my novel and am totally into my story. It's the opposite of last week and I anticipate it lasting until the end of the week when my BFF and fabulous writer Alyssa Day shows up to go wine tasting and talk to my RWA chapter.

I'm still chewing my tongue in my sleep, but when I wake up I usually have something I need to jot down in my bedside notepad.

6 comments:

Molly O'Keefe said...

oh, tell me the part again about the chocolate covered pretezel things. OH! And the part about the booze and the hotel and the sleep...but say it slow.

And the 51 pages thing...whisper it. In an accent...

is it weird that I'm turned on by this? It is...I'm ashamed.

Honestly - that post is the most exciting thing I've read in eons. Nice work Eileen!

Maureen McGowan said...

Great job, Eileen! I really think that combination of isolation, different surroundings, and a tiny bit of peer pressure is awesome. I've tried it with on-line friends. (Let's share word counts in 90 minutes.) and it works to a point... But right now I need a new trick every day.

Eileen said...

And then, Molly, she whispered to me about deep point of view as I fell into a dreamless slumber . . . :-)

Don't be ashamed, chere. It jazzes me, too. Getting away from the usual distractions is fabulous. I couldn't do the laundry or pay bills because I wasn't home. The peer pressure thing is great, too. I could totally have been on Facebook or played even more games of spider solitaire, but Spring would have known! And she wrote like three essays plus did her handout for a talk she was giving and did some research for a new book idea.

Karen W said...

Wah! I wanna be you. I'm with Molly - I need a cigarette after reading that and I don't even smoke! (Just kidding!). Like Maureen said, I need a new trick every day too.

Yesterday I wrote five pages, 1000 words. Today I barely eeked out two pages (and that's exaggeratng!)

Anonymous said...

Yep, Eileen, your post is basically writer porn. A quiet hotel, a friend to chat with when we need breaks, booze and chocolate..

No wonder we're all sitting at our computers, fanning ourselves..

Someday.... But in Vegas..

Eileen said...

I love the idea of writer porn! We're so easy, aren't we? But we're not cheap!

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