This past weekend was our annual OKRWA writer's retreat. I was
responsible for the planning and then conducting/MC’ing it, and while it was a
bit overwhelming, I did have help, and it turned out to be an amazing weekend!
We invited non-members for a fee and I believe we had 6 who attended. I think 4
of them might join our group. We played some games, did some writing exercises,
watched 'The Wedding Date' and broke it down using Blake Snyder's Save the Cat,
we had lot of good food and lots of laughs. And, the highlight of the weekend
was our own OKRWA member, Sharon Sala/Dinah McCall who gave a presentation on
plotting and character. She was magnificent!!
Some anecdotes from the weekend...
1) We had a hospitality suite
to hang out in and watch the movie, in addition to our meeting room. We were
gathering for pizza that night and I wanted to ice down some beverages. I had
little time, but I grabbed our ice bucket and trucked down to the vending area,
which was at the opposite corner from our room. The ice machine was out of
order! I trucked back to the elevator, went to the third floor and to that ice
machine, filled up the bucket and the bag, so I would have double the ice. I
took them both back down to my floor, and trucked them to our room. My friends,
Kathy and Krysta were helping. Kathy said she'd get her ice bucket and fill it.
She did, and we managed to truck and haul and accumulate enough ice. We watched
the movie, hung out, laughed, had a great time. The hospitality suite was
connected to our room. After everyone left, we were cleaning up. In the corner
was a big poly cart looking thing, next to our trash can. The trash can was
full, so I opened the poly cart to see if we could add more trash there, and
you'll never believe what it was filled with....go on, guess....
2) One of our members, we'll
call her Kitty, is an adorable, precious, mild-mannered Inspirational author.
She and Krysta and I were going outside for some air. On the way, Kitty said,
"You know what word I heard for the first time? And I love it?
Asshat." We all laughed (I'd heard it several times, and I kind of like it
too). In a matter of moments, an exceedingly inebriated man stumbled out of the
pool area and followed us outside. He said, "C-can I h-h-hang out with
y'all?"
Kitty said,
"No."
He said, "Whhhhaaattt??
No?"
She said, "That's right,
no. We want to visit and we don't know you. We don't want you here."
He said, "A-are you
sssserious?"
She said, "Yes, I'm
serious. No means no. Go away."
He shook his head. "Huh,
you're serious."
She said, "If you don't go
away right now, I'll go tell someone and they can make you leave."
He staggered away and said,
"Tattletale."
Kitty turned around and said,
"Asshat!"
He stopped and said,
"AssWHUT?"
Then, we all just started
laughing. I said, "Wow, this was kind of prophetic, you JUST told us you'd
heard the word 'Asshat' and we immediately met one!" We'd just done an exercise
using writing prompt/sentence starters. One of them was, "I've been stuck in
an elevator before, but never...." And one of our writers said,
"Never with a half-drunk woman holding a baby." Not long after
Stagger McStaggerson staggered off, a man and woman came out the door and
Stagger began talking to them. I heard him say, "I was banned." :D -
Anyway...the woman was, I swear, drunk. AND, she had a baby on her hip. We were
like, wow, another prophecy manifested!!!
We retold the story over the
weekend and had lots of laughs. We also did some writing stuff, promise! :D
There is nothing quite like
spending time with other writers, learning and feeding off one another. I think
we all came away renewed and inspired. Do you guys often attend writer retreats? I
would still love for us to plan a Roses of Prose one!
