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Pennsylvania On My Mind
Tomorrow is the day. We are settling on the purchase of fourteen and a half acres in the Southern Alleghanies of Pennsylvania. While it will be nice to have a place to escape to, the real impetus for this endeavor was the dream of eventually opening a small bed and breakfast with cottages, if you will, hosted in the summer by yours truly, rented for skiing in the winter, and in the fall and spring…
Workshops. In particular, writing workshops.
When I think of the ideal writing retreat, it is quiet, beautiful, but not completely isolated. I love the idea of writing for hours during the day, a basket of breakfast and another of lunch left for me by the elves, then spending the evening with other writers. We would throw together a group dinner, maybe have a guest speaker or teacher with some exercises, then hours of open discussion in front of a roaring fire or under a star-lit sky.
There are a few such retreat programs in the country, but I think it would be fabulous to offer something particularly for mystery and crime writers. Everyone knows they’re the most fun anyway.
So, over the course of the next few years, (or a decade – whatever it takes) that’s what we hope to develop. Naturally, my husband will tell you that some of the workshops we’ll offer will be something of a similar format for programming geeks (think breakfast baskets of No-Dose and Pop Tarts), but that’s his dream, and we’re talking about me now.
Now, the real reason we chose the Southern Alleghanies is because the land is relatively inexpensive. But, there are a plethora of activities, skiing, hiking, biking, and sites of interest, including the tragic site of the United Flight 93 crash.
There is also Seton Hill University, which offers the only masters degree in Writing Popular Fiction in the nation. Consider, a masters degree (which translates into part-time job teaching college while waiting to hit the bestseller list) particularly focused on fine-tuning, not just your writing, but your crime writing.
I looked into it last year and I’m still undecided. The few grads I’ve hunted down have had good things to say about it, though. It worked for a lot of them since it only requires five one-week residencies – the rest of the time you are working remotely, assigned to a published professor/mentor, as well as participating online with others in the program, whom you will work with again during the residencies. And, while I love writing in a more literary (as traditionally defined) style, there is something appealing about a program that is happy to work with you on what you’re working on now.
What do you all think? Is a program like that worth the time and money? And how many of you can I count on when we open our doors for business?