Showing posts with label writers retreat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writers retreat. Show all posts

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Finally a day at home

Much as I love going away with my friends from the Writers Group, it was such a pleasure to spend the day at home today. It's the first day at home I've had for two weeks. Much needed. And appreciated. I watched The Chronicles of Narnia, Love My Way (why oh why did Foxtel decide to rush through the season by screening double episodes), scanned photos and updated blogs.

But now I have five days of work and then I'm off for ten days straight including the Easter break. The first five days will be spent at home, then a couple of days will be spent with dad over easter, and then another day at home. I'm looking forward to some solid editing time over those five days.n bbbbm bbbbbb (if you're wondering about the sanity of that last sentence - it's a statement from Dorkus the cat as he walked across the keyboard. He doesn't like me going away either so I'll whisper about the plans for Easter.)


I've spent the last week at work throwing out lots of stuff. I can't believe how much I'd managed to accumulate over 7 years. But as of Monday, I'm a virtual person with no permanent desk. All my Egyptian artefacts went home. All my photos, my Nanowrimo winners certificates, the pics of me and Alex from Moving Pictures, the flower calendar from last year which was no longer functional but looked pretty, the magazines I'd been cutting up, all have migrated home. And then I culled all the information, brochures, training material so that I could fit everything into one chest of drawers. It's going to be strange not having my own desk, and moving every week or so as I need to.

On Friday evening I went to a farewell for a work friend who is moving to Brisbane. Sometimes, it feels that my workplace is a transit lounge, there are so many people moving on, sometimes within the organisation and others out of the organisation. I've lost count of the number of people that I've bid farewell to over the years.


Speaking of bidding farewell, we are saying farewell to Motivated Motion and Super Duper Fantastic in the blog-off as they had the lowest points after all the votes were tallied. I found writing my piece easy but ranking every one else's contribution was excrutiating and I'm sure it will get harder as we get more into the competition. Personally, I wouldn't mind if we all kept writing for 16 weeks and had no winner, and just donated the whole lot of the money to Breast Cancer. But that's probably just me. The next topic is 'Police' and I have no idea what I will be writing for that one.
And it seems that I haven't had any visits from people looking for porn sites since my Blog-off post. I'm sure they'll be around some time, they just haven't linked the terms together as yet.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

The Annual Writers Retreat

It's back to the Lighthouse tomorrow for our annual Writers Retreat. (well, at least I hope the fact that this is Number 2 means that it will be an annual event!)
We had such a great time last year! I've been looking forward to this weekend for a long time. The scenery is gorgeous, the company is superb, and I don't have to drive too far to make my escape! (2 hours each way)

Although all these shots from last year were taken with my trusty little Kodak Easyshare digital, I'm taking the film SLR camera as well this time. I'm hoping I can get some more shots like this friendly kookaburra, and some great landscapes. Much as I love the instant gratification of the digital, the shutter takes a long time to activate, and sometimes I miss the bit I wanted to shoot. So the Canon SLR is loaded with film, with a couple of spare rolls and I will try and do some nature walks over the weekend and get some special sunrise and sunset shots.


I expect this year's retreat will have a totally different flavour to last year's because it will be a different mix of people. Last year there was me, Carol, Roby, Lisa, Jen, Markus, Rose, Marilyn, Sue S and Sue M.
This year Jen (below) has moved to Melbourne (we will miss you Jen!), Sue M is climbing Everest for the second time (because the first time wasn't enough) and we won't even have a token male to outnumber in our discussions.

Carol, Roby,Lisa and I will still be there but we will be joind by five NEW members of the writers' group which is very exciting. Lisa is cooking an Indian banquet on Saturday night, and we all have to dress up for the occasion and we will have a series of workshops over the weekend including Writing Fiction from Real Life Stories and Writing Life Stories. I will be giving a workshop on using Astrology to write fictional characters.



I'll be back to report on the weekend on Sunday night!