Back from Oregon...

All right, I've been back from Oregon since Monday night, but it's taken me a while to recover (because naturally I caught a cold on the plane!), catch up on various bits of work around here, and basically get my brain clear enough to blog again. I've actually been trying to write too, as in stuff I can get published, rather than blog on my (blush) two blogs.

The writers' retreat was an incredible experience. We were sharing a house in Lincoln City, OR with between 4 and 6 other writers. (Two showed up for only part of the week.) For much of the time, all the women gathered in the common area and just wrote away, in companionable silence. (The two men hid in their own rooms, possibly because they feared drowning in estrogen, partly because they'd arrived at the house first and had claimed the two coziest rooms.) Occasionally we'd stop to talk someone through a sticky point, show off pictures of our cats, or generally get silly, but mostly we worked.

And ate chocolate.

And walked on the beach, in awe of the power of the Pacific.

And did NOT play on the Internet, because there was no Internet access in the house. (This was briefly scary, then we adjusted.)

Every night we went out to dinner. Had some yummy seafood, some very good sushi, and several less memorable meals, but it was just a pleasure to be in such great company, to be with people who Get It.

Being able to sit down with Dayle and bounce ideas and crank away on writing was wonderful. We're within a few chapters now of finishing the draft of Out of the Frying Pan. I finished the first draft of Master Right (aka the Never-Ending Novel) and got a paranormal, tentatively called Lion Eyes, plotted and underway. We're hoping to get the proposal for Frying Pan out in the next few days.

And then I need to attack Master Right and try to turn it from a sloppy first draft into something an editor might want to read...

The good news is, the better work habits seem to be sticking now that I'm home. Sure, I have the part-time day job, and I can no longer avoid housework altogether, but I do seem to be doing a much better job not tooling away on the Internet all day long. (Okay, I've done a bit of that yesterday and today, but the cold peaked yesterday and I just couldn't focus on anything. Today, at least, I've managed story submissions, even through the headache.)

Soon, pictures.