Summer camp

I'm thinking there should be summer camp for writers.

Maybe there is, but I'm not on the mailing list. And if there is, I probably wouldn't have time to go anyway. But two of my grandkids are coming this weekend to go to sports camp for a week, and I was thinking how much I'd like to be just playing with writing for a week alongside a bunch of like-minded people.

Okay, so I already played for a week alongside like-minded genealogists . . . and no one should be allowed to have toooo much fun. But I think it might be fun. I know there are conferences. But conferences are about networking and workshops and suchlike.

My granddaughter is taking horseback riding. And golf. Those sound like a lot more fun than networking and workshopping.

Don't you agree?

Maybe we should get a group together and do it next year. Or maybe we should have winter-camp. Like snowboarding. Anyway, I think we should have something just to put the fun back in writing.

Speaking of which, I have been reading a copy of The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, a novel by Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart and Eileen Dreyer. I'm not very far into it yet so I can't offer an opinion of the book. But I can tell you one thing, I'm fairly sure that Jenny, Eileen and Krissie had a fantastic time writing it. I would have. Spending time together writing it, batting ideas around, must have been like their version of summer camp.

Another version was one Anne Gracie and Trish Morey and Bronwyn Jameson and Marion Lennox and some other Aussie authors developed during a beach retreat a few months back. They spent a week together in a house on the beach talking writing, developing ideas, listening to each other, trying things out.

It sounded fantastic to me (and they got a lot of good stuff done, I hear). But while I'd love to go to Australia, it seems like a long way to go to camp from here.

Still, I'm tempted.

I'd love to take Sebastian and Neely and spend a week with them in the company of some other authors. I love working alone, but I also love batting around ideas with other authors, talking about people who don't exist. ( I wonder if this is why I also like genealogical research. These people existED, but they don't exist now. Still, they fascinate me. I'm always busy trying to figure out what motivated them).

Can you tell I don't have a book on the front burner?

I'm busy cleaning and changing the sheets and generally getting ready for the invasion. None of this occupies the brain. So I'm mulling over my own ideas for writers' summer camp.

What do you think?