5 on Friday -- Set 288

Spinning Friday tunes since 2010...

For anyone who wants to join in, simply choose five pieces of music and post them for other bloggers to enjoy. Then check out the set posted by the other 5 on Friday blogger -- you can sign in over at Golch Central's Rambling Stuff.

Here we are, back at the cottage for our annual writing retreat. Shawna Romkey, Kelly Boyce and I travelled together with the keys to open the cottages, so we were up with the dawn. A gorgeous drive down, and now we've already got over half the retreaters here and it's still an hour to go till lunchtime.

Can you say, 'Bliss, thy name is writing retreat'?

1 - The Rain, The Park and Other Things - The Cowsills

2 - Happy Together - Turtles

3 - Just My Imagination - The Temptations

4 - #9 Dream - John Lennon

5 - Dreamweaver - Gary Wright

I'm blogging at The Popculturedivas today

Join me at The Popculturedivas for The Power of Brainstorming.

5 on Friday -- Set 245 -- Writers' Retreat Edition

Spinning Friday tunes since 2010...

For anyone who wants to join in, simply choose five pieces of music and post them for other bloggers to enjoy. Then check out the set posted by the other 5 on Friday blogger -- you can sign in over at Golch Central's Rambling Stuff.

Just arrived at the cottage with Kelly Boyce for our annual writing retreat on Nova Scotia's gloriously red-orange-gold-brown-green South Shore. We made it here just as the hurricane started acting up a bit -- now that we're safely off the highway and our bottles of wine and prosecco are all lined up on the bar, it's showtime, folks. 

Here's to Retreat Number 10!

1 - Red, Red Wine -- UB40

2 - Food, Glorious Food -- Oliver! -- 1994 cast

3 - We're Here For a Good Time (Not a Long Time)  -- Trooper

4 - By the Sea, By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea  -- Billy Murray and the Heidelberg Quintet

5 - Kodachrome  -- Paul Simon

A to Z Blog Challenge -- Z is for Zany

Welcome to Day 26 of this year's A to Z Blog Challenge where --
   

  

Z is for Zany

My attraction to all things silly goes wa-a-a-y-y back, to when I used to sit in my playpen with a bucket on my head making sounds just to hear them reverberate. At a basic level, even as a toddler, I knew it was silly to sit with a bucket on my head.

I do have to say that I come from a long line of silly people. No doubt my penchant for zaniness is genetic.

That's my cousin Charlie on Christmas Eve, 2009 -- an early photobomber.

I remember filling out a questionnaire in my bridal planning book where I had to list the top three things I couldn't live without in a mate.

One guess as to where 'sense of humor' ranked for me.

Even our dog was kooky. That's Xena crammed between the couch cushion and me in the purple shirt.

My sister gets eaten by the rhododendron during the Sisters Christmas Lights Decorating Party, 2012. We don't even try to be serious during lights decorating time.

My cousin-in-law Stephen, at right, can't even be serious at his own film premiere (at last fall's Atlantic Film Festival.)

Sure -- a mutant oversize zucchini is cause for silliness at our house. Why wouldn't it be?

My husband Brad deals with The Damage after a restaurant meal during our Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island vacation last summer.

I will confess to prompting other people to join me in my zaniness. Strangely, my writing group peeps have always been more than ready to flaunt their inner jesters. That's Nikki McIntosh and Kelly Boyce working it before a walk at the 2010 fall retreat.

Hey -- Nikki again at center, still working it at the 2011 retreat. At left, Annette Gallant, at right, Lori Robitaille.

Nikki...you are on a rampage of working it. Fall Retreat, 2013.

Maybe if I sit with my writing group's president Taryn Blackthorne, perhaps I'll settle down...

...nope...

And there you have it, folks! It's a wrap on 2014's A to Z Blog Challenge.

I'll be making my way to all of my commenters in the coming weeks. Thanks Everyone for dropping by A Piece of My Mind. It's been a pleasure to meet you!

A to Z Blog Challenge -- K is for Kelly Boyce

Welcome to Day 11 of this year's A to Z Blog Challenge.
   
My life-is-good moments usually contain a combination of feelings. There is the excitement of reaching a moment in time that I've been dreaming about, running parallel to the feeling of returning to a happiness I've cherished before.

A perfect example of this is The Pinot Grigio Moment, repeated most often with today's challenge feature --
  
  

K is for historical romance author Kelly Boyce

Kelly Boyce and I both joined our writers' group Romance Writers of Atlantic Canada within a few months of each other in 2003.

For many years, we have enjoyed a pinot grigio toast of one kind or another, most traditionally at the yearly writing retreat.

Here's a toast to Kelly with a look back at some of those life-is-good moments. Here's to many future *clinks* together.

Thursday Thirteen - 4 - 13 Wonderful Reasons To Go To a Writer's Retreat

I'm heading for the Romance Writers of Atlantic Canada chapter's annual retreat on Friday, so what better time to reflect on all that's sublime about this coming weekend?

1 - Removing myself from all the things that compete for my time and attention. That could be considered a mere vacation, but this is a retreat for writers. We're actually going to focus on our craft, minus the routines of life that require our participation. No laundry pestering me from over there. No dog wondering if we might go for a walk. No spouse jockeying for computer time. Just the writers, writing.

2 - Enjoying the hour and a half drive to the retreat and back. A bit of wind down time, shooting the breeze, looking at the scenery. It's a symbolic threshhold between the normal world and the world of transformation we're about to enter. And on our way back, we have a buffer zone where we can digest everything we've thought about during the retreat.

3 - Recharging my batteries every time I look out at the trees and at the ocean. Even if you happened to have a house surrounded by trees or near the ocean, this is a different view. Different perspectives follow.

4 - Spending a nice interlude with my writer friends. A lunch together once a month, the writers' meeting, sometimes a movie night, sometimes dinner at someone's home - these are all treasured hours in the company of people who share my passion. A weekend retreat is pure luxury, with so much opportunity to get to know my friends on a different level.

5 - Presenting a workshop that I'm excited about. I've got fun exercises to do and it should lead to some sparkling dialogue.

6 - Doing the writing exercises. They really get the synapses firing. I'm especially looking forward to the workshop on Goal Motivation Conflict. I need to get a handle on that.

7 - Welcoming the unexpected breakthroughs. In three previous retreats, I've had ideas pop to life like a lottery jackpot. Mama needs a new pair of shoes!

8 - Refueling from all that creative activity with delectable food. Mmm. Can't wait. Even if it means that I'm one of the cooks on the rotating schedule. The retreat makes even cooking seem like fun.

9 - Laughing. Uproariously.

10 - Drinking wine. Actually this year I'm taking along my Christmas bottle of Glenlivet single malt whisky. I've taken wine out of my diet while I test out migraine reactions to food. Distilled spirits are allowed, so whisky it is. Actually, I really love the aroma of the whisky before it even crosses my lips. Don't know why. There weren't any whisky drinkers in my family.

11 - Getting some sleep. Especially after this week, when I'm burning the candle at both ends in order to get everything done before I go away for the weekend.

12 - Walking past the gorgeous beach heading for the Saturday evening dinner at the nearby resort. Okay, part of the delight is the walk, part of it is the dinner.

13 - Heading home, having needed time away to immerse myself in writing and creative thinking, but now missing my honey and my dog, my mom and my gram.