On Retreat - Arvon - The Clockhouse - Day 6

On the last long afternoon of my retreat we explored the grounds a little more - discovering a large allotment - we fought with the insects for raspberries. The greenhouse was full of wild tomatoes, grapes and wasps. When we realised that tiny spiders were running across our shoes, we happily went back to the writing.

Around lunchtime, I finished planning the second half of my novel after three days. The realisation that I was staring at the bare bones, up on the wall, and I just had to colour in between the lines, was indescribable. I ran to get Sheena, dragged her into my room and said, 'Look, there's my book!'

Thinking that my brain needed a break, I spent the afternoon researching, reading the true story of a woman who's daughter went missing. Three months later they discover that her body was under the bath in her own house, the whole time.

Pretty difficult stuff. But I drank my coffee and spoke to my family and cracked on with a flashback chapter.

I knew that I was feeling strange when I went down for dinner. I guess I'd spent six days trying to imagine what it would be like to lose a child. And for the most part I was able to hold the reality of that horror and my fictional book separately in my head.

After eating, discussing things we'd been good at growing up, we gathered for the final night of reading. I couldn't get through my chapter. I had underestimated the toll of days reading about a little boy eventually found on a mountain ledge, the ones never found, the girl under the bath. It also only hit me during the reading that I had touched upon something painfully personal (though this isn's the place to go into it).

Amazingly (trust me, this is rare), I eventually managed to get it together, make a few jokes and enjoy the rest of the time. This in mostly thanks to how great the other writers were; not making me feel embarrassed. In fact, making me feel like they understood.

In the morning, as I tried to remove the Super Tack (a.k.a chewing gum) from the walls, I felt like a big mess of sad and elated. A week had been cleared to give me the time to get on with being a writer and little else. I'd forgotten I had a job, I'd allocated myself a tiny window at the beginning and end of each day for emails, Facebook and my digital writing group. To an array of requests and tasks and things asking for me to do them I'd said, 'You can wait.'

And it really was wonderful.