For the second time this month, I’m back! This time from my in-person critique group’s fourth annual writing retreat. 🙂

The five of us who were able to make it convened at a cottage just east of Parry Sound, which turned out to be even more ideal than it sounded online. All the trees made it totally private, there was a big living room and kitchen for us to hang out it, lots of big windows for excellent views, and three of the four bedrooms had a little balcony!

(The view from my balcony)

I very quickly set up a writing spot down by the lake, where the was a bunkie with a deck, and a handy electrical outlet on the outside wall! It also came with handy log seats to act as water bottle/notebook holder and foot rest:

One of the special features of this spot was that, because the cottage was on quite a high hill, I had to go down a whole lot of steps to get to it, which meant if I had any thoughts about heading back to the cottage for any sort of non-writing activity, I had this view to discourage me:

(About half the the stairs you’d have to climb up to get to the cottage)

Not that I ended up needing a great deal of encouragement to keep writing. This is the first time I was finishing a book at the retreat instead of starting one, and having all that plot and character development already in place created a lot of momentum. My goal was to finish the book by the end of the retreat, and I have returned victorious! I typed “The End” at 9:20pm on the last night we were there. I got down about 29,000 words in four days, bringing the total for the book to just over 73K.

I think it can be said that a most fun and productive time was had by all.

(All of us on the dock–sorry, this was the best lighting we could get!)