Account inactive @literorrery@awoo.space

The last round of delivered critiques are done. All of the required writing is finished. I hate to say it, but we're actually... kinda done. There's a movie night tonight, and I have a last review session, but all the _work_ is over.

This has been an incredible experience, and I look forward to coming back and trying to collate all my thoughts. It won't be the first thing I do when I return, but It's on my list.

01h15. The last critiques are done, and the last edits for Last Meal are finished. I think... I think this story is some of my best work, and I think this retreat helped. This has helped me in so many ways, and I'm so glad I did this. I miss @ElectricKeet immensely -- I have from the day i got here -- but this will still have been worth it when I get home.

12h30. Reviews of Last Meal are back. I was less hurt by it than I thought I would be. Several chunks of advice were "you should do X," which I thought I'd already done, so I had to go digging. Thankfully, though, doing so produced results! So, the review session was incredibly fruitful, but also it good to see that my instincts about what were needed to make the story work. I just need to refine them a bit more.

23h30. What reviews of round two I can do are done. Tour through the hot tub. Time for drinks. I cooked alfredo for dinner. I have three reviews left to do tomorrow, and whatever critique on Last Meal to receive and process and include. I think Last Meal will be my June Patreon post, which will go up as soon as I finish the edits.

13h30, and I'm in a weird situation. I've done all my reviews for round one, I've submitted my story for round two, and I haven't gotten anybody else's critiques for round two yet. I could work on editing my existing story, but I've got a review session with Kyell in half an hour and I don't want to be heads-down in the middle of development when he shows up.

I... have free time? This is strange.

... I would not canoodle for a better grade. I would enjoy canoodling in general. There's been a lot of talk about canoodling here. The punch went over really well -- only halfway through the event and it's almost gone. Folks said iked my enchiladas, and tomorrow I'm cooking alfredo!

It's like I turned into a social creature at some point. This is really weird.

About the only real weirdness is that Ryan Campbell is one of the instructors, and he and I had to have a superquick level-set of "we'd love to be friendly but we're teacher/student here." We've been friends for fifteen-plus years, we've got a really lasting friendship, and we've both agreed we have to put that all aside so we can avoid any appearance of favoritism. Great to be on the same page. Sad, no chance of canoodling with the teacher for a better grade.

00h16. Stories read, critiques submitted. Six hours of sleep before Apollo comes knocking. Exhausted but weirdly empowered. I feel like I'm doing really well, personally. The group is gelling well, even in the weird ways in which it isn't. We're all cognizant of the outliers and working around them. I think this is a really good class, and a good group, and I hope we continue to work well as a unit.

This has been really good for me, and I'm glad I came. I miss mai poni.

And for those who'll recognize him, Jules shows up in this one. I finally got to do something with him again. That feels _so_ good.

18h30. Second submission for the retreat is finished at 5585 words. I baked pork-and-zucchini enchiladas as a reward for my efforts, and now I'm relaxing before heading up to my room to critique three stories. Eighteen-thousand words to read and eighteen-hundred more to write. Then I'm done until the next round of stories show up, which... will feel very weird. I'm ahead of schedule.

This hurt in a very good way.

06h30 again. The custard I prepped last night and the stale croissants we all left became French toast this morning with a side of scrambled eggs. Three cups of coffee so far, and my eyes are vibrating. We've had our first round of tearing each others' stories apart. It felt surprisingly refreshing, being able to embrace the critique.

The official critiques haven't happened yet, but they will. First lecture: confidence and creativity.

2323 words tonight. This one fucking hurts. It hurts because it cuts deep and slow. It hurts because the outline uses my kids' names to capture the emotional states I'm trying to reproduce. It hurts because I'm revisiting Irokai after eight years. It hurts because it needs to be written.

Critiques of phase one stories are done. Outline is confirmed Ouch Fuck Why. There's a few things to add to it, but it's ready to go. Time to write. Names must be changed to protect the innocent, but I'm proud of the emotional arc of this one.

Smash capitalism.

What I'm learning, as much as anything, is that I really do know what I think I know, that my knowledge isn't invalid, just untested. Theories are right, but lacking in practice. This will be practice. Lots of it. I can live with that.

Lunch with Kyell and Ryan. That went oddly; topics of conversation got intense in ways nobody was expecting. It's day two. It's going to get tighter before it relaxes. That's the way of it.

The first lesson on critiques was eerily refreshing. Mostly, I keep forgetting to code-switch my knowledge, and I keep forgetting what I know. Easy to do that.

The first stories are up for review. Eighteen-thousand words to read tonight, four-thousand to write by tomorrow.