SOLA's 2012 Writers' Retreat

This past weekend our local RWA chapter, SOLA, held its annual writers' retreat at a wonderful old plantation house down in Plaquemines Parish. Steve and I volunteered to give a workshop we entitled "Secrets from the Bestseller List," which was basically an examination of certain characteristics all bestselling books (even the most godawfully written ones) have in common, and what writers can learn from them.



This was SOLA's first time at Woodland, built in the 1830s and the only plantation house south of New Orleans still standing on the west bank of the Mississippi. The hotel is advertised as "rustic," which makes it sound considerably rougher than it is. The old house has been plumbed and wired with electricity (it wasn't when the present owners bought it back in 1997!), and while I wouldn't call the accommodation slick, it's more than comfortable. And in terms of ambiance, it is simply unbeatable. The sense of staying in an old home, as opposed to a hotel, is very real. Guests have the run of the entire plantation house, which consists of the central hall...



a large conference room....



and nine original bedrooms.



The house is considerably larger than it looks from the outside, probably because the 14 foot ceilings fool the eye and distort the perspective. The office, kitchen and restaurant are in what was once an old nineteenth century church...



And I am not exaggerating when I say the chef is world class. Steve and I stayed an extra night by ourselves and enjoyed a six course meal so exquisite we've decided it would be worth making the drive down to Woodland some evening simply for the restaurant.

If you think the plantation looks vaguely familiar, that's because a print for the old house is on the label of Southern Comfort bottles. Sunday morning, before we left, Steve and I went for a walk toward the nearby river, and came upon this sign...

Of Writers and Friends

You’re looking at an incredible group of people. We are the men and women of Sola, the Southern Louisiana chapter of the Romance Writers of America, gathered here for our third post-Katrina Christmas Party. Every one of these people has a story to tell, of heartbreak and trauma, of loss and triumph. Some lost family members to the storm, many lost houses or suffered devastating damage. Even those whose homes miraculously escaped nevertheless endured long periods of evacuation, survivor-guilt, and all the craziness that is a part of living in a devastated city still partially patrolled by the National Guard.

We held our first post-Katrina meeting just two months after the storm. We sat around in a circle in a half-gutted room and simply listened as, one after the other, we took our turn telling our stories. Some tales were harrowing, others hilarious. Together, we laughed, we cried, and we forged a bond that is still there and probably always will be.

Jamie, the woman who hosted this year’s party, has almost finished rebuilding. This house is in Lakeviw, about a mile from the levee break. There’s a plaque about six feet up on the entry wall, marking their Katrina water line. Many of her neighbors are gone, their houses now empty lots. But an encouraging number are back, or at least in various stages of rebuilding. As we drank wine and laughed through Sadistic Santa, we could hear the distant whirl of a saw and the steady tapping of hammers. The sounds of our city, coming back.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why we’re holding food packages, it’s because we also collected foodstuffs for the local foodbank.