Retreats and Mentoring in Writing

Can a mentor change your life? Can a writing retreat change your professional life?

I’m almost at a point where I am getting the idea that life changers are a positive force for change no matter what the situation, it is how you take it that matters. It goes for my writing as well. It’s strange how a day away from frustration benefits a person greatly. Finished the first draft, finished the second draft, and began to revamp that draft. Then… bang! Frustration. Every writer knows the type, the one where no matter how hard you try; the work just doesn’t seem to get any closer to being finished. Word count remains the same, but you’ve worked on the thing for hours. You’ve cut moved around added pasted… redone that.

Nothing seems to be going correct, well, great, perfectly, wonderful, right.  You name it, it isn’t there.

You’ve tried to write your way out of this writer’s block. You’ve tried to write on another, any other manuscript, but keep going back to that now much detested manuscript. Still nothing, and the more frustrated you are the harder it becomes.  We all have these sorts of writer’s blocks, and sometimes talking it over to others helps. I had one of those days yesterday. I did what a mentor, and a writing peer suggested, go out and walk.  I retreated for a while to get the frustration out, and be away from anything to do with writing.  I would have tried other methods, but they wouldn’t have helped me as much as they could have.

I didn’t think of my writing at home, nor was I remorseful, I just had fun. Then I took the kids outdoors and enjoyed the sun with them. All in all a great day. Now a return to writing that non-fiction. I woke up this morning at 5 am, and with no one to bother me, a bit of coffee and aah, the computer and me.

I wrote and I wrote, the newest version seems a lot better, and so am I. I can focus with a sort of hunger that came with a first draft. This focus is a good thing and the results will be an improved manuscript.  That only came with writing, and more to the point with the conversation I had with a writing mentor. I’m very lucky to have found this person, and they are willing to tell me like it is.  I had a challenge with my writing, which was a lack of willingness to work out my areas which needed help.

On one of my writing class retreats I was able to meet with a person who had an influence as to how I saw my writing, and more to the point what and how I saw the idea of being a professional writer.  The critiques hurt, they were strongly worded, and I had to focus on them because there wasn’t a way I could go back and be better.  I didn’t have the influence I wanted as a writer and a blogger and I was losing some confidence.  I wanted to be the next Chris Rock or Jack Black, the funny guy who makes everyone laugh, and I wasn’t that. My sense of humour might be okay for one person, but in terms of building a blog with some sort of professional appeal, and writing a book which is a non-fiction and not humour this was not going to work.

In the lack of the fun part, this forced me to look at where I was an where I wanted to be.  Was my writing good? It was for the most part, but as the peers and mentors I had in this retreat say funny, and points of view are two very different things.  I was not a sensation, and mentoring is one thing which is needed.  The best mentors say some of the harshest things in the most kind way possible, it’s not to make your life horrible, but rather to allow you to grow.  What I needed in one case was to go out for a walk, move my body around, in another it meant a complete overhaul of how I see myself as a writer and as someone who will have something to offer my reader in the future.