Reporting on My Writing Sabbatical

For those of you who read and commented on last week’s article “A Writing Sabbatical” I offer you my undying thanks and gratitude. During some of my breaks from novel constructing, I took the chance to absorb your encouraging and constructive feedback. 

First off, I’m sure you’re wondering if I was able to get the entire skeletal first draft complete during my seclusion week. To answer your question, No. But don’t sigh and moan at my failure just yet.

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Keeping real, I knew I was setting up quite a high and lofty goal for myself in hopes of reemerging into daily life with a completed manuscript. If I had actually come out of this last week with the goal accomplished, I would have even surprised myself considering that most writers take years to complete a novel.

However, the week was not a total failure. No, far from it. Let me break it down in a list what I was able to accomplish:

• My characters have names. (This was the first thing I set out to do. While I had an outline of the type of characters who were to appear in my novel, they were nameless until last Monday. I simply cannot move forward in my creative writing until I have this key aspect of my characters. They had physical features and personality traits, but no names.)
• Prologue complete. (While not every novel requires this introductory section, I felt mine does, so to get this part complete was a success for me.)
• My characters are linked. (This is an important aspect of working fiction. You can have great characters separately, but if they don’t interact with each other, it’s hard to think that your readers will interact with them either. It was amazing for me during those moments of realization when I discovered how each person fit into another one’s life. I’m sure if anyone walked past my hotel door during these moments, they probably thought I was not alone in the room because I had a tendency to burst out my thoughts of “Wow! That’s how they know each other!” a little louder than I intended.)
• My first chapter includes character introductions. (Prior to last week, I had a weak first chapter since I was unaware of both the characters’ names and their connections. Working my way back to this first chapter, I was able to lay hints to each person’s individual story later on in the novel. It took me to almost Thursday afternoon to accomplish this feat, but oh, the elation I felt when I did was almost as powerful as all the caffeine I had consumed up to that point.)
• I was able to complete and partially edit six chapters. (My goal is to have twelve chapters total, so to have this many done in a week is awesome, I think!)

Now, I wasn’t able to have total seclusion for the entire week. Since my parents were so graciously taking care of my two wonderful children during this time, there were compromises to my weekly schedule I had to make for the sake of family peace. I had to make sure to call and talk to my kids each night. (There were the daily phone hugs and kisses, of course.) I also had to allow them to pick me up for dinner one night. I’m sure this part of the deal was multi-layered in its design. (1) Make sure i had at least one decent meal that week. (2) See just how sleep deprived I was at the time. (3) Time to get me out of my insane writing isolation and back into reality for a brief time.
All in all, though, I thought I made excellent progress. 
I don’t have to report back to my publisher until April so I feel I’m well ahead of the game in respect to where I was only a week ago. I have a few more weekends coming my way until then which allow me writing time away from both parents and kids. (Not that I don’t love my family, but I still need my time alone to write. During this past week , I finally discovered what’s the best environment for me to concentrate, and well, let’s just say that my writing attire would not pass for writing in public places.) These shortened times of solitude will have to suffice, but last week away was well worth it too.