Retreat: Day 7

Spent the day essentially locked in my cabin writing. Fairly productive, getting quite a bit of the preliminary work finished. Tomorrow I will take my data and cut and paste it into appropriate sections of the report to produce a cogent argument. No chance of finishing the whole thing, but enough to meet my goals for next Monday’s meeting. What one refers to as “breaking the back” of the assignment…getting the general structure figured out and just having the fiddly bits of actual writing left to do.

Stepped out of my cabin for lunch and dinner, quick tour of the shops. Excellent food, though that tempts me to eat too much. Nothing to tempt me in either the shops or entertainment offerings, so that’s actually a positive as far as the Retreat goes. Similarly, the cheapest Internet package is $55, so I decide I can forego the distraction of email for four days.

I take a couple of minor breaks reading a novel I am in the process of buying for Five Rivers, part of a three book deal if it goes through. It’s quite wonderful, with just a few minor slips here or there. (Most commonly, switching point of view without realizing it – you know, where a character other than the narrator for that scene thinks something that the narrator couldn’t actually know they were thinking. Simple to fix—the character just has to use their ‘outside’ voice for that thought so the narrator can hear and know it.) But that’s the beauty about being an editor: any part of the novel that bugs me, I get to change!