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Retreat! Retreat!
Last weekend I was on a writers’ retreat for three days with eight other writers of kid lit. We were in cabins in the woods, meeting in the lodge only for meals and fellowship, but working quietly on our own. We were free to walk in the woods, go to the lake, watch the trout in the trout pond. We each had meal and kitchen duty for one meal. There was no TV and no cell service, though the internet was fast and reliable. The campus was quiet. I worked in my tiny cabin with the door open overlooking the pond. With my computer on the table and work spread everywhere, I accomplished more than two weeks of work.
I suppose it seems excessive, just to work, but it isn’t just to work. It’s to work better; to work refreshed; to work rededicated. It’s an opportunity to network with other writers, ask questions at mealtime, no one else would understand, and get a usable perspective from the answer. A retreat is not a conference. It’s shutting out all distractions, focusing only on work. This is what it means to close some windows to get better performance.
In my own generational vernacular, I would have said I was simmering on the back burner. In my kids’ era, they probably would say it was Timeout time. To every generation, it means to remove yourself, step back, move away from normalcy, quiet down, focus. I highly recommend closing your windows to improve performance.