This weekend, Tee and I are lucky enough to be heading to Tenesse for the 3rd Smoky Mountains Writing Retreat.
Honestly, it is something I look forward every year, with the craving of a parched man in the desert has for a glass of water.
Alex White organised the first one in 2014, and it was a small group, about eight authors. We all enjoyed it so much that Alex kept organising them, and we keep coming back.
The Smoky Mountains is an odd and appropriate place to have a retreat. The mountains are stunning, long lines of blue mountains. The cabins deeply luxuirous but with the sense of isolation that can certainly help a writer concentrate.
However, there is also Pigeon Forge. If you’ve ever been the Myrtle Beach, it’s like that but in the mountains. There are a wild variety of attractions. The Hatfields and Maccoys Dinner theatre. The Titanic Musuem (in the mountains!?!). The Biblical Dinner Theater. All the moonshine and water parks you can shake a stick at. It’s a popular place in the summer, but when we writers descend on it, there are far less people. Just the way we like it.
In fact last year, we were close to being snowed in.
This year we are going to be there a little later, so hopefully we can get to see one of those attractions at least.
However, this year is all about the writing.
While there I plan on finishing up The Silver Pharoah story, ready for publication in September. I have about 10,000 words left in that. Also I am working with Tee on a three chapter synopsis for our science fiction project, and then naturally—for me—I have another idea. It’s a fierce story set in the Gilded Age of New York City, and the main character has been demanding my attention for some time.
If I manage to knock all those off, I may circle back and finish off the last half of Deadly Hollywood.
That may sound like a lot, but the structure of Smokey Writers really does mean when I am there I can blow my word count out of the water. Not having to worry about anything at all but writing is quite a luxury. At the retreat that is what we get, since our wonderful chefs Renee and Chris provide three meals a day.
Apart from eating, and a day out at the attractions of Pigeon Forge, all the rest is silence and writing.