Just A Few Days Away

    Tomorrow morning I am leaving for a two and a half day retreat with two of my writing friends. We are going to Star Valley Wyoming to visit another writing friend who misses the company of other writing type people. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am. And I am grateful to the hubster for agreeing to postpone our night away from home to make it happen. Sometimes you just have to get away from your day to day life and do some evaluations from outside the box. You know what I mean?
     I am hoping to get a lot of writing done and maybe outline my next book. This is much more complicated than you may think because I am an outline writer or what we call a plotter. I like to know where my story and characters are headed before we set out on our journey. Though sometimes they like to change my plans half way through and do their own thing. I drives me crazy.
     If you think I'm crazy for talking about fictional characters like they are real people, well, I am. That's just the way it is. Ask any writer about naughty and side trip taking characters and they will roll their eyes and tell you horror stories of having to rewrite half of a book because the characters weren't playing nice.
     Creative people are a little bit odd, in case you didn't know, but I was odd anyway so deciding to put the stories in my head down on paper was not that big of a jump for me. And now I belong to a small community of odd, creative, wonderful and supportive people who totally understand me. We can talk about the personality traits of nonexistent people all day long and no one bats an eye. I love that.
     When I try to talk to the hubs about this kind of stuff I just get strange looks and I can tell the minute I've lost him. He may be looking straight at me, but his eyes kind of glaze over and he has a "I'm really thing about the Laker's game," look on his face, so I really appreciate all of my writing friends. They understand me and my peculiarities. Thank goodness someone does.