The End

Having looked forward to my writing retreat for the best part of a year, it seems strange now that it’s over. It was such an amazing opportunity and I would jump at the chance to do it again.

The first couple of days were a bit overwhelming. Here I was in voluntary isolation with grand plans to write the whole first draft of a full-length novel. I was in a beautiful place with no one to share it with, and I wasn’t going to have any phone reception for two weeks. Oh dear, I thought. Why have you done this to yourself?

And then, after a couple of long days of arduous writing and feeling sorry for myself, the sun came out and I went for a spectacular walk along the cliff side. I’d made a good dent in the first section of my novel by this stage, and it didn’t seem quite so hopeless. I stopped thinking of my trip as some kind of lonely holiday and started enjoying it in the spirit I'd intended: as a taste of a different way of life. And once I got that sorted, I was fine.

I spent my days writing and walking along the coast. I absolutely fell in love with the place. It was achingly beautiful, and I loved falling asleep to the sound of the waves and waking up to the squabbling seagulls. I would eat breakfast in the garden, watching the waves lap against the wall, and in the evening I would walk to the top of the hill to watch the sun set over the sea. Everything became beautifully timeless, and the structure of my days began to be guided by daylight and tides instead of the hands on my watch. If I could live like that forever, I would be very happy.

I hit my writing target, not quite in word count, but certainly in terms of content. I have come back with a first draft, and (as you might expect from a first draft) it’s hideously rough and has an awfully long way to go before it will be readable. But it’s there. It’s written. And around my ordinary life, that would have been impossible in two weeks.

Now I’m back in the real world where I have to think about other things than my characters and go back to work in the mornings. Which is a hard adjustment after two weeks that, simultaneously somehow, seemed both to fly by and last forever, as though I’d never lived any other kind of life.

Since I’ve been back, my computer seems to have collapsed with exhaustion and is currently refusing to turn on. So my plans of catching up online have been thwarted and I may be lying low for a little while longer yet.