Jumpstart, aka, Autumn on an Island

This Saturday I'm off to the Isle of Palms in South Carolina. I'm leaving home for a week-long master class on writing, staying in a beachside house with twenty-four other women writers, soaking up business and craft advice from the pros each day during the seminars. I'm thrilled beyond measure.

Preparing for a writing trip is an odd experience. Clothing is nowhere near the top of the list of things to be sorted and gathered and packed, which might mean I end up arriving there with plenty of notebooks and pens and my laptop but only one pair of socks and three t-shirts. I've been making sure my works in progress and completed manuscripts are in my laptop, saved in the proper format, not to mention in good enough shape to SHARE with other writers. That's stressful.

Also, I'm not experienced at critiquing others work and we'll be doing that in groups each evening. That's stressful.

I'm kind of anti-social and I'm going to be sharing a bedroom and bath with two other women, not to mention a whole house with LOTS of other women. That's kind of stressful until I think about the fact that we're all writers, mostly of romance and women's fiction, and seriously, how could that NOT be fun? Chances are good that I'm going to get spoiled to that atmosphere and have to seriously reacclimate upon returning to my man-filled home.

There might have been lots of problems with me taking off like that for a week of me-time, but lucky for me, I have a son who doesn't mind his mother leaving him for a week, a mother who doesn't mind coming down to babysit --ahem-- provide supervision for my son, and a husband who will be working in that direct area of South Carolina for the majority of that same week. Which is cool cause it means we can go on a date or two while I'm there and ride our bikes up and down the beach. Yay!

So while I'll be popping in and out of here all this week and while I WILL have access to the internet all of next week, you may not hear from me a lot while I'm gone. But I'll be gathering material and you can be sure it'll be put to good use when I return.