I accompanied my partner to Waterloo this week, and while she was busy doing work stuff on Thursday, I stayed back at our hotel room with my laptop. Now, I’m not sure whether it was the power of the Waterloo Comfort Inn or that I had nothing else to do in that characterless room, but I had an amazingly productive writing day. I imagined I would get some good, distraction-free writing time, but never expected the day to pass so quickly, and to pump out two weeks worth of pretty good pages.
I’ve only been to one other writing retreat before. That was a week in December 2006 when I went to Mexico. I committed half my day to completing Stealing Nasreen revisions (and the rest of the day to being a tourist in very lovely Zihuatenejo). The work was fine, but revisions and new writing are two very different processes. So, I never expected to work so fast in one day in Waterloo.
This says something to me about the truth to that old cliche of the writer going into seclusion to complete a project. I always thought it was a rather romantic proposition that would be hard to incorporate into my busy life. But one day in writer’s heaven (even it was in an overpriced, drab hotel with a view of a four lane road in Southern Ontario) has had me thinking otherwise.
Speaking of which, any hotel owners out there who’d like to offer me a free room now and again? B&B operators? Cottage owners? (seriously!)