A Musical Interlude — Lyrical Writing Retreat

A couple of weeks ago, I packed up and spent a week in Nashville for the Lyrical Writing Retreat hosted by The Writer’s Sanctuary. It was such a wonderful week full of community, story, learning, and writing. I got some excellent feedback on the first page of a new-ish story, made a lot of wonderful new writing friends, and finally got to meet online writing friends in person and spend some good time with them. (As usual, though, I’m terrible at remembering to get pictures. 😅)

The retreat was centered around the similarities between the music industry (and writing songs) and the novel-writing process, which I found entertaining and helpful. Growing up around music while dancing ballet, singing in choir, and listening to dad play guitar, it was a fun and entirely understandable connection for me. Ironically, my planned WIP (work-in-progress) for the retreat heavily features music as a main part of the magic system.

I think one of my absolute favorite parts of the retreat, though, were the teachings—super in-depth looks at character arcs, story arcs, story rhythm, emotional resonance, pacing and tension, and authenticity in marketing. Overall, this was a renewal of confidence for me—in my stories, my writing ability, and why I’m so intent on pursuing publishing. It was an essential refill of the creative well, but even more importantly, what I call the resilience well.

I’ve talked about this before here, but if I’ve learned anything in my 10+ years in this industry, it’s that resilience is the key to success. The publishing industry is a hard one, whether you’re independently publishing (on your own) or working with a publishing house (large or small). There’s so much that goes into it, far more than readers ever really know. And more than that, it’s a long, long process for a book to go from idea to on the book-buying shelves. Even for authors who have existing contracts for a novel, it can take 2 or more years for the entire process to happen (and that’s for the fast writers).

I often feel that when resilience is talked about, it’s this ambiguous thing that’s always hovering around, and all you have to do is hold onto it. But in my experience, resilience isn’t something that’s always there. Yes, you have to fight to hold onto it sometimes, but each time you fight to hold on, you’re pulling from the resilience well, slowly draining it. So I’ve come to view resilience differently.

Being someone who’s actively pursued publishing for so long, I’ve seen just how necessary resilience is, and how much is needed . But the thing is, resilience is like creativity—at any given time, you only have so much to give. There’s only so much of yourself to go around, and when that well becomes depleted . . . that’s when the doubts and criticisms take over. That’s when quitting seems the best option—because you can’t take any more rejections, any more “you’re not quite there yet”s, because it begs the question, “When will I be at this ambiguous ‘there‘?”

As such, I’m a big fan of refilling not only the creative well, but also the resilience well. You need both to pursue publishing with joy while handling rejection after rejection, and to hold onto your confidence in your own writing ability—and your storytelling ability.

My week at the Lyrical Writing Retreat in Nashville did that for me—it refilled my resilience well, making me more confident in my storytelling and writing ability, giving me the courage to begin querying again, and even rekindled my joy for the act of creating new stories.

Although I’ve done little actual writing since the retreat, I’ve focused more on story and the joy of creating than I have over the past several years. I’m taking time to look at my schedule and arrange things so more writing time fits in, more creativity, and more chances for submitting queries. So November, here I come—with renewed spirit, creativity, and resilience for my stories.

What fun retreats or vacations have you had this year?