Plan a Great Writer’s Retreat
May 7th, 2007 by Kathleen Bolton
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.
Don’t listen to Kathleen when she says she’s a bad cook. That pulled pork was yummy and as for the mango salsa, it was pure edible happiness.
I netted a little more than 10,000 words for the weekend. It’s sloppy stuff but I’m only in the second draft stage. Lots of good ideas to refine in the next draft.
Hey, you guys are ruining my reputation as a curmudgeon!
My romance writing group does a writing retreat every year at a hotel in this little town about twenty miles away. We had the entire hotel to ourselves - lots of room to stretch out, eat good food, gab, and have fun. But now that I don’t belong to them anymore, I am in sore need of a good writing retreat!
You can come hang out with us next year, Melissa.
That would be fun, actually: a WU writing retreat.
Dreaming, dreaming…
This sounds like such an incredible idea!! Now I just need to cultivate the right like-minded writer friends!
Thanks for this post. This sounds like a lot of fun. There is certainly a kind of buzz, albeit quiet and focused in writers bring their private writing space into a public privacy of equals.
I have often wondered what it would be like to bring a group of writers into a situation like that for an extended period of time, I suspect writers, unlike some social gatherers, if they are sufficiency strong in their relationship with their work can have a mutual sense of not trying to attract attention to themselves while still being together and being stronger for it.
Have you ever found youerself in a situation where you wanted to work, and someone you know or love was around, and somehow, not really understanding the space you need, while the company you love, somehow do something to break the engagement with the work?
“Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wanted to work, and someone you know or love was around, and somehow, not really understanding the space you need?”
All the time, Kev. My 10-year old daughter. But she’s a kid, so what can you do other than try to train them? Even then, it doesn’t work all the time.
That’s why the retreat is a godsend–a whole weekend of selfish, time-hogging writing.
There’s nothing like uninterrupted blocks of writing time away from the distractions of home. Congrats on getting so much work done, wish I’d been there. I’m currently spending two days per week writing at the local Writers’ Centre, where I’m getting a quiet, congenial work space in exchange for mentoring an aspiring writer. Even though I have a perfectly good study at home and no other humans around during the day, I get a heap more done on the days I work away.
That sounds absolutely fabulous. I’m envious. What a great idea. You’ve got me thinking. Although I am currently in the research stage of my latest work. But dedicating time to the work instead of fitting it into spare time is a more productive way to go.
Sounds like you had a great time. Our chapter had its annual writer’s retreat last weekend too and it was a blast! I came away with one novel fixed and a new one roughly plotted. No sooner did I get home than inspiration hit and I grabbed my Alphie (best contest win EVER and definitely getting a workout) and wrote a brand new scene that worked so perfectly I nearly wept with joy. Probably would have if I hadn’t been so busy dancing around the living room pumping my arm in victory…
Kelly, we’re thrilled you love your Alphie and are creating masterful works of writely wonder on it. We’d be lost without ours as well. And that’s AMAZING progress at your retreat, plotting out a novel and doing rep work on another. Good going!