Unworkshop – Katie L. Carroll

After pushing last fall and winter to get ELIXIR SAVED ready for publication, I was planning on taking a break in the spring to read and fill up my creative well. Then all the pandemic stuff happened, the kids moved to distance learning, and I didn’t get a chance to fill up the well.

I got to a point at the end of the spring when I felt like I would never figure out how to get back into writing and still felt totally burnt out. But I was also itching to get working on this witchy middle grade book I’d started last fall when I did an Unworkshop at the Highlights Foundation (you can read about that amazing experience on my post “Highlights Foundation Unworkshop: A Little Creepy, A Lot Productive”). I’m the type of writer who needs breaks, but when the itch to write comes back, I get antsy. It’s like my body is reacting to my brain’s need to write.

And I really love this witchy middle grade I’ve been working on. It’s about breaking up with toxic friendships, middle school bullying, historical and modern witches, crows, painting and art, mourning the loss of a loved one and how that process never really ends, and a Halloween night corn maze. I even got a crow t-shirt for my birthday to really get into the creative spirit of it.

So I thought about what would help me get back into it and came up with the idea of an accountability buddy. Having someone to check in with where we could be like “Did you get your words in this week?” would make it so I would be letting them down if I didn’t do my work.

A thing you may not know about me is that I’m not very good at asking for help. I hate the idea of putting people out for my benefit…even if it’s not necessarily an inconvenience to them or maybe it’s even something they would enjoy or benefit from. This avoidance of asking for help isn’t something I consciously do; it’s more like it’s in my nature not to bother others. Most of the time I don’t realize I’m doing it (or not doing it as is most often in these situations).

Anyway, I was super nervous when I reached out to one of my writer friends about being accountability buddies. I tried to be totally casual about it, prefacing it with statements like “only if you’re interested and have the time.” I didn’t even suggest the writing together (virtually, of course, because of the pandemic).

It turns out, she was totally on board with it (and I never should have been nervous about reaching out to her in the first place). She had been getting up early in the morning to write before her daughter woke up and asked if I’d be interested in joining her in those early morning session. Which I was super excited about!

Except for one thing…so something else you might now know about me (you’re just all learning so much about me today!) is that I am 100% not a morning person. Before kids, I used to sleep in on weekends until 11:00 and stay up all hours of the night reading or writing. On the other hand, my husband and our two older kids are early risers. I think I’ve had to wake up the kids to get ready for school maybe once. They have a clock in their room, not to wake them up with an alarm, but to let them know when it’s 6:30 a.m. and they’re allowed to get out of bed. They are my alarm clocks!

But, I could see how getting up early would allow me to get back to writing. And if my friend was already doing it, then it wouldn’t be an inconvenience to her at all. That’s why three mornings a week, my phone alarm rings at 5:30 a.m. and I roll out of bed to get my tea ready in time for our 5:45 writing sessions.

I’m not gonna lie and say it’s gotten easy the more I’ve done it…I still hate waking up that early and it feels totally unnatural. (It helps that it’s at least somewhat light this time of year.) But it feels so good to get all those words on the page before breakfast. My word count for the witchy MG is over 35,000 now. I’m past the muddy middle and working my way towards the end. Plus, it’s really fun to write with someone else and to spend at least a few minutes chatting together about our writing projects and life and stuff.

Once school starts back up again, it’s going to be a little trickier to do these early morning sessions (and it’ll be darker in the mornings), but I’m going to try for at least one morning a week. So keep your fingers crossed for me! If I can get this first draft done by the beginning of October, I will have drafted this novel in less than a year…which would be a first for me.

The long weekend I spent earlier this month at the Highlights Foundation for an Unworkshop writing retreat now almost feels like a dream. Time moved differently there. The words flowed during the uninterrupted hours of writing, my fingers moved swiftly on the keyboard, but in the moment, time went slowly. Yet when it was all over and I was back home, it felt like the weekend had flown by.

My personal writing mantra in the word garden.

Did it really happen? (Yup, I got the bill for the tolls in the mail just the other day.) Did time stand still while I was there? (Nope, I had to go grocery shopping the day after I got home because of all the food the kiddos ate while I was gone.) So not a dream, and I really do have over 5,000 words written for my next middle grade book.

Inside the Barn where they serve three delicious meals a day, have 24-hour snacks and beverages, and writing spaces.

If you have the means and time, I would definitely recommend a writing retreat. And I recommend going with a friend (or five). My writing friend Katlyn Duncan and I went together, and it was so nice to have her there. She created a schedule for us and was a fun driving companion. We ate all our meals together (the food is as good as everyone says it is!), kept each other accountable, kept each other company during most of our writing sessions, and even took a nice hike one day.

Katlyn vlogged about her experience, and it’s well worth the watch to get a feel for what it’s like there. We’re working on planning a group retreat for next fall!

The Highlights campus in October was the perfect place to start the draft of my witchy, mean girls story. Maybe too perfect a place. Another writer who was there for an Unworkshop happened to have stayed in my cabin when she was at Highlights last year for a workshop. She told me of a ghostly encounter she had one night, and it promptly freaked me out. I lay in bed that night in the dark and couldn’t fall asleep. It was just so quiet! And, as you can imagine, with three growing boys, quiet is not something I’m used to.

Unfortunately I haven’t cracked that document back open since being at the retreat. I’ve had freelance work, author events, and this never-ending Elixir book to work on in preparation for it releasing next year. All good stuff, but that witchy story is itching at my mind, just waiting for me to scratch it.

Geese are turning out to be important in this witchy WIP, so it was very fitting to have this writing companion next to me one writing session.

I’m hoping to use the excitement of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November to get back into the draft. Katlyn and I have already scheduled a few writing meet-ups for the month. Anyone doing NaNo this year? My username on the website is ktlc1113.