Anticipation

Some weekends are hopelessly unproductive. You run repeatedly into a wall, despairingly clutching a list of things you really needed to get done. Other weekends make up for all of that. These are the weekends that you get a whole week’s work done in a day, when the words practically write themselves, leaving you on a satisfyingly twitchy high

This weekend has been the good kind.

And because I’m on a writing high, and because I need to write a post, let me tell you what I’m working towards. Let me tell you why the writing buzz is particularly important to me at the moment.

This Easter, I’m taking myself off on a writing retreat. Not the kind where you get to feel intimidated by all the work other writers are doing, or worried by the advice from visiting speakers. Not the kind where you have your meals cooked for you and share a living room with a group of friendly people who share your goals. No. None of that appeals to me. I’m going on the kind of retreat that will probably give me cabin fever: I’m going to spend two weeks entirely on my own in a studio apartment overlooking the sea.

Why?

Because I want to give myself an opportunity: an opportunity to really concentrate on my writing, to be in a situation where nothing matters but my writing. I want to be somewhere where sales people can’t ring me; where I’m not tempted to clean the windows when I reach a particularly difficult hurdle; where I feel neither the desire nor the pressure to be sociable; where I can keep whatever hours suit my writing…

And this is why I find myself uninspired by the organised kind of retreat. This is about me being alone; living alone; working alone. I have never had the financial opportunity to do this before, and it’s very unlikely that I ever will again. So now, as it presents itself, I take it eagerly.

I await my retreat with fear and excitement. I have a certain amount of work I want to get done before I leave and I know what I want to have achieved by the time I come back. I’m nervous about being so isolated during those two weeks and I’m nervous about not achieving what I want to. But at the same time, I’m enormously excited about becoming entirely A Writer for a fortnight and I'm absolutely determined to finish what I’m working on. I’m looking forward to morning walks by the sea and days spent writing with only the beautiful scenery to distract me.

As the February half term approaches, I feel my retreat creeping closer and the pressure to finish what I need to is growing. This makes me both terrified and ecstatic: a combination that makes me feel thoroughly alive and thoroughly pleased to be me.

Image by Herbythyme