It’s always strange coming back from a retreat, and remembering that oh yes, things like e-mail and day jobs and other non-writing things do after all still exist.

The retreat itself went quite spectacularly. It was our largest yet, with eight of us gathering together in what turned out to be quite a spacious cottage, on 13 acres of land all for us. And thanks to our photojournalist member, I have much visual documentation!

We explored the rather interesting grounds…

Roasted marshmallows…

And of course did much writing out in glorious nature…

My goal was to get the first 25,000 words of the japan book done; I managed to make it to just over 30K, so I am a happy writer. First draft half-done in five days! We all agreed we need to do this retreat thing more often. 🙂

The obligatory group picture: