Apologies for the late post, but last night my brain had been squeezed dry of words. Why? Because I spent this weekend on a writer’s retreat, typing my fingers ’til the nails chipped and leaping forward on my wip. 

This is the fourth year in a row Therese and I, and our romance novelist buddy Elena Greene, have rented a cottage and devoted a weekend solely to writing our novels. Every year we get a ton of writing done. Freed from family obligations and distractions, we write in marathon sessions, taking breaks only to walk or eat a meal. In the evening we come together, compare progress, talk about writing and drink plenty of wine. It’s become an oasis of fellowship and writing that we look forward to all year long. (That’s Therese on the left looking lovely and fresh, as usual. And as usual after a long writing session, I look like a hag who needs more coffee.)

[Note from Therese: don't listen to her; she doesn't remotely resemble a hag as you can see for yourself, and she--unlike me--can actually construct full sentences without caffeine.]

Interested in planning a writer’s retreat for yourself? Here are a few tips we’ve learned over the years to maximize writing and fun.

  • Find the right digs for your retreat. We live in upstate New York, so we have an array of Fingerlakes vacation cottages to choose from. It’s important that the cottage is big enough so that each person has an electrical outlet for their laptop and a nook to call their own for the weekend. We’re also careful to make sure we’re able to avail ourselves of good walking areas as we all seem to like to think and walk. However, a hotel room suite could work, too. 
  • Make sure your writing companions are as serious as you are. We’ve never had this problem, but I’ve been in situations where the people I was with just. didn’t. get. it. If you have friends who want to drink and chitchat without putting in the work, rethink who you are asking to go with you.
  • Minimize distractions. We keep the cell phones turned off, don’t watch t.v. and stay offline. The goal is to get as much writing in as possible.
  • Bring Plan B. By that I mean, plan for your laptop to crash or the batteries to run out of juice on your Alphasmart (that happened to me this year and I had to run out and get them–a real bummer).

This year I wrote on my Alphie the whole weekend. Sometimes I find that it’s easier to hack out the first drafts on this device because its smaller screen prevents me from tinkering too much–my bugaboo. I got about two weeks worth of work done over the weekend, and I’m feeling more confident about the direction I’m heading because of the total immersion in my story. One year I had a rough draft totally finished, so all I brought was pencils, a thesaurus, and Post-Its. I was able to edit two-thirds of the entire manuscript over that weekend.

One final note about retreats: go overboard on being considerate to your retreat companions. I’m a natural misanthrope, but I’m super careful not to leave a mess in the kitchen for my friends to clean up; I cheerfully make a meal when it’s my turn, even though I’m a crappy cook; and I bring lots of wine and chocolate to share. They do too, and the result is a fun time for all. (Here’s Therese banging away at her wip. I’ll let her tell you how she did this weekend.)

[Therese note here: Kathleen is SOOO not a crappy cook! She made a mouth-watering, heavenly meal of pulled pork with mango salsa, black beans and jasmine rice... Slurp! And I will tell you how I did...tomorrow! :)]

This morning I had the pleasure of downloading my weekend’s worth of work onto my main computer. I was delighted to see I’d written 25 manuscript pages, and had gotten three scenes finished. I’d also edited about three chapters that I’d brought with me. It really is amazing what can be accomplished with no distractions. 

A writer’s retreat is a luxury some of us can’t afford, but I think an economical way to do it would be for someone in the group to offer up their home for the weekend and let other’s chip in for food and drink. If a weekend is too big a commitment of time away from home, even just a Saturday devoted to marathon writing would work. The objective is to free yourself from distractions and have only one thing to worry about: your writing. 

Have you planned a writer’s retreat? We’d love to hear about it. We are always looking for ways to improve our experience.

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She has written two novels under the pseudonym Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter--both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President's teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins.
Kathleen Bolton
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