This weekend is a total write-off

... by design. Two and half years ago, I started attending the twice-yearly "Write-Off" weekends hosted by Danita Maslan (aka Danita Maslankowski) for Calgary's Imaginative Fiction Writers' Association (IFWA). A bunch of writers -- 15 or 20 -- hole up for a weekend in the rec center at Danita's townhouse complex, bringing laptops along, and they write, write, write all weekend.

And this long holiday weekend is the first-ever Mississauga Write-Off. Carolyn is off at the airport making the first round of pickups: Hayden Trenholm and Elizabeth Westbrook-Trenholm, who are flying in from Ottawa. Later, Randy McCharles (chair of the 2008 World Fantasy Convention in Calgary) and Val King arrive on another flight; they're coming from Calgary. And later still, Herb Kauderer and Al Katerinsky are showing up from Buffalo, New York, by car. I became involved with IFWA in 1996, when they hired me to facilitate a workshop for them; Hayden, Liz, Val, and Randy were all in that workshop, and Herb (a massively published poet) and Al are frequent guests in our home during SF cons, parties, and so on.

All of them, plus Carolyn and I, will be writing our hearts out over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, plus part of Monday (the Labour Day holiday here in Canada). Carolyn and I have a very large penthouse apartment, with lots of comfy chairs and couches for people to curl up in with their laptops. Our building has a guest suite, which is where Herb and Al will be sleeping, but everybody will be writing in our apartment (or out on the large balcony).

We'll walk out to restaurants for lunch each day, and either order in or go out for dinner. The goal, of course, is to get as much writing done as possible (and Sunday night, we'll all do brief readings of samples of what we've written). We'll see how it goes. I'll keep y'all posted ...