Summary:

Great second half to my retreat, followed by a relaxing weekend off.

 

Monday:

I had a late start today, but that’s okay – I was kind of on holiday after all! And sleeping is so important, Baldrick.

Once I got settled, I put together the formatting framework for Meditations, then drafted the Introduction and the Foreword, as well as planning out the order of the illustrations and the wording of the captions to go with each of them.

Then, I went back to the questions I’d composed for Darkness the day before, and brainstormed some more details to flesh out the world and the characters. This went better than I’d expected – I came up with at least some kind of answer to every question, and had inspiration for quite a few new ideas for the plot.

After lunch, I went on a trek to a nearby village (both down and up hill), wandered about for a bit, found a few geocaches, had tea and cake in a cafe, then trudged (mostly uphill) back to the house.

After a bit of a rest, I went back to Meditations and wrote the main section for the first chapter.

Later, I wrote most of the first chapter of Meditations, which flowed really well.

 

Tuesday:

I wasn’t feeling particularly enthused this morning.

But I got permission from one of my teachers to reference a particular technique in Meditations, and the first couple of illustrations came through (and were amazing!), so I finished Chapter One.

Then I decided to take a break from the book projects for a bit and edit the latest episode of the podcast, since we’d be recording the next one earlier than usual.

I wrote out a list of main characters for Darkness but couldn’t face trying to come up with names today,

I didn’t feel like I’d made a lot of progress on anything today – but that was okay. I’d done a lot the rest of the week and still had one full day left on the retreat.

I also finished an audiobook and wrote my review.

 

Wednesday:

I woke up really early, but then failed to actually get up until nearly 8am – which was fine, but I then felt as if I’d wasted an opportunity to get things done!

Instead of getting straight to work, though, I went on a two-hour geocaching expedition and got very wet again. But I found several caches I hadn’t been able to locate earlier in the week!

It was 11am before I settled down to writing projects. I typed up the chapter outline for Meditations, so I’d be able to work on it on the train the next day, without having to carry my big notebook in my shoulder bag.

Then I started Chapter Two.

After that, I went back to Darkness and worked on character backgrounds for a bit. I named all twelve featured characters and put together more information about one of the protagonists.

After a very long walk, I did the same for the other protagonist.

Later, I finished Chapter Two of Meditations.

 

Thursday:

Last morning at Stickwick – I wasn’t keen on doing yet more character background work on Darkness, but I worked through some more questions for both protagonists and came up with some useful stuff – as well as quite a few things that still needed work.

Then I wrote the whole of Chapter Three of Meditations.

I was very unproductive on the train home – I think my brain was rebelling against all the work I’d made it do over the course of the retreat week!

 

Friday:

One of my friends sent through their contribution for Meditations, so I gave it a once-over and made a few editorial tweaks here and there.

 

Saturday/Sunday:

I took the whole weekend off, since I’d been working so hard on my own projects all week, and didn’t have to restart paid editing work until next week – apart from a short book review.