My First Writers' Retreat Experience

Last night, I got back from Weymouth, the writers hide-away in Southern Pines, NC.

I am A NEW CONVERT to this approach to writing. And I'm surprised. I've always thought I would hate going off somewhere with a laptop and a lot of silence, when my formative writing experience is a newsroom.

The way I worked it, though, it wasn't so silent. It was more like taking my toothbrush and moving into a newsroom, day and night. And I loved it.

The way I got my noise quota, was to have an adjoining room with Billie, the friend I went with. We kept the door open and could toss comments back and forth occasionally.

Also, the gorgeous grounds of the place are used for weddings and such, which are visible from the upstairs writer rooms, and were very entertaining. At one point, Billie, who had a better view of those events than I did, reported, "THE FLOWERGIRL IS NOW BITING PEOPLE." (This is possibly one of those had-to-be-there items, but it was wildly funny and companionable at the time.)

At the same time, I got A HUGE OF AMOUNT OF WRITING DONE. I wrote the first, second and third drafts of the first chapter of my new book, a biography of a painter, Elisabeth Chant. And I spent 18 hours on work for a client. We were there Wednesday afternoon through Sunday afternoon, and walked into charming downtown Southern Pines for most every meal. I got that much work done and still it FELT LIKE A VACATION.

I highly recommend it. And if you're not a rowdy sort of writer, you can arrange to be as quiet and solitary there as you want.

NOW ABOUT THE GHOSTS: in planning my trip to Weymouth, I was very interested in tales I'd heard from other writers-in-residence there of ghostly encounters. Bottom line: I didn't see any ghosts. But still, there were a number of peculiar things going on.

GHOSTLY CLUES:
*A closet door opened by itself
*A chair twice appeared to be slightly moved
*Two nights in a row there was a sound like cardboard boxes being pushed around overhead
*A latch of a room down the hall made some clicking noises with no one around
*And others

I thought of perfectly ordinary explanations for all these things. But I HOPE I'M WRONG about those. If you're a ghost hunter (or skeptic), please feel free to weigh in on this.