Sunday, April 14, 2013

Writing Tour of Houston

For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook or on Twitter yesterday was a pretty busy day for me.

My original plan was to  go to Lake Livingston by myself on a writing retreat. It seemed like a very good idea at first. Here is a picture of the cabana where I was going to stay.


Then I realized that instead of having an afternoon lacrosse game on Sunday my daughter would have a morning game. I had to be there at 9:15 a.m, of course. Murphy's Law. The only weekend I actually decide to go do something like this and she has a morning game. So therefore it didn't make sense for me to actually spend the night on Saturday if I had to get up that early to drive back. I decided I would drive out in the morning on Saturday and I'd stay for the day and drive home when it started getting dark. I decided all of this on Thursday.

On Friday I started second guessing myself when one of the owners of the camping grounds called to ask me if I was willing on switching over to a kitchenette because the couple who was staying here on Friday wanted to stay on Saturday too. By now I was thinking it was too far to drive there and back in one day so I quickly told her No, to go ahead and to give them the cabana. I wasn't spending the night on Saturday anyway so it didn't seem fair if they wanted it.

After making that decision I sat there and doubted my decision. I kept searching for cabins or cabanas nearby but couldn't find anything. I thought that maybe I could just go to Lake Conroe.

Finally I got the brilliant idea of doing a writing retreat here in Houston. I started it downtown. At first I wanted to go to the old library but I remembered I hate the parking around there. I parked at work for free and wandered around the Rice Lofts when I saw that Shay McElroy's Irish Pub was open and that they were serving lunch. As soon as I walked in and saw this beautiful little room I knew this was where I wanted to write.


I fell in love with this little side room inside the pub and I definitely want to go back there. I got most of my writing done here. My second stop was the lobby of the Rice Lofts and my final stop was the new area in Washington Heights. In the end I wrote more than 2,000 words.

I still want to go back to the old library and the reading room at Discovery Green. I'll save those for my second Houston tour. I can think of other places in Houston where I can write. The Black Lab is one of the places where I thought of going too.

But in May I want to go to the little cabana on the lake for a weekend to myself. This time I'll plan ahead, drive out on a Friday, and I'll stay until Saturday evening.

Apparently writing retreats are good for me. As it turns out, I picked the best day for my writing retreat. April 13 was also a Nanowrimo Write-a-thon Day.