Writing Vacations

Goodnow Flow in Newcomb, NY. Picture taken by
my cellphone.

It's been almost a year since I posted about getting away from your writing, and I thought I'd revisit it. I just spent a weekend in the Adirondacks, away from cell towers and internet access. I spent most of it reading or talking to the friends I'd gone with.


For me, part of the appeal was in reminding myself of how little I need the internet. I spend a collective couple of hours a week just refreshing my usual sites, when I could be spending that time writing. Going off to do something else, where I'm away from the internet and Twitter updates on my phone, shows me how much more fulfilling my life can be when I'm not sitting around online.

I may well have gotten some writing material this weekend. I'm writing my haunted house story, and there were a number of strange noises in the cabin on the lake. Just the call of a loon late at night is enough to get the imagination going, and there were strange noises all night to keep my adrenaline up. (I did sleep, and rather well, once I distracted myself from generating story ideas for my current project.)

There were a lot of experiences I'd never had before. The little country store had hummingbird feeders, and hummingbirds were swarming. I'd never seen one so close up. During a walk, one of my companions nearly stepped on a little snake who was making its way across the dirt road. I'd never been to the Adirondacks, and I'd never been on a trip for just women. I learned a lot about my friends.

I also had a lot of time to read, which is conducive to improvement in my writing. The more I have to draw on, the more good examples I have to emulate, the more bad examples I have of things to avoid, the more I level up.

If I'd wanted it to be, such an escape could've been an excellent place to get lots of writing done, free from distraction. Instead, I used it to charge up my creative batteries.

I hope your summers bring with them a break, and a chance to experience something new. It might sound contradictory for me to write about time off when I also post about prioritizing your time, but I think what you do in the time you're not writing is just as important as setting aside time in your busy day to write.