Retreat!

I just had the most wonderful weekend at a yoga retreat. After 11 days of rain it was touch and go whether we were going to be able to get through the low lying areas but the rain stopped and the levels went down in the nick of time.

The whole area was lush and green, the mountains bluest eucalyptus blue.

Is there anything better than a weekend away? Yep! A life so beautiful we don’t want to escape it! But yeah, a weekend away is the next best thing! On the Sunday afternoon I was trying to work out how I can live at a yoga retreat. Or at least make my life like one. Then I came home to reality and as lovely as my real life is there’s work and meals to prepare.

I managed to edit more than 60 pages of my current work in progress, now called Alia Henry and the Ghostwriter but now haven’t written a word since Sunday because- Life! I’m getting ready to go on vacay so a full work week is scrunched into 3 days.

Sunrise over Mount Warning

On the retreat, I came up with a way to write a story I’ve had banging about in first draft for more than two years. I opened my eyes after meditation on Sunday and saw the woman in front of me. Her name is Mae, a name she shares with one of the minor characters in this story. I realised in a flash that Mae would be the narrator! She’ll be an unreliable narrator because she’s using journals to write the story. Suddenly a simple love-gone-wrong story is a lot more intriguing. Plus I have yet another couple of strong female characters, even if one of them is a sociopath.