Getting Away From It All
Daily tasks get in the way. Your day job gets in the way. Pets get in the way. Your partner gets in the way. Chores get in the way. Commuting gets in the way.
It’s amazing I end up writing any words at all.
If this is your story, I heartily recommend getting away from it all if that’s an option for you. My hypothesis is that writers who have any modicum of success and thereby know other writers and other literary people like editors, agents, publishers and the like, gain access to second homes nestled into pastoral settings. I can easily imagine my future, linen-draped editor insisting that I spend a few days in her Aspen cabin just to get in the “right headspace” to finish my latest draft.
But when you’re writing your earlier works, just hoping that someday you’ll be able to flip your title card from writer to author, you are kind of on your own to create the time and the space to write.
It can feel very silly, believe me, to spend time and money on a glorified hobby at this stage. But people take yoga retreats and meditation retreats, and are not expected to be professional yogis or meditators, so why not give yourself the space of a writing retreat?
I’ve done the solo DIY retreat before and really enjoyed it. A few years ago, while I was working on my first book. I went to a little New England town and wrote for two days straight on the wide porch overlooking the sea. The day I left, I was eating breakfast in the dining room and a woman introduced herself to me.
“My husband and I have been feeling so sorry for you!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve just been working this whole time!”
I explained that I was writing a book but it didn’t wipe the pity off their faces. Writers are a strange breed. If spending several days glued to your laptop seems like a treat rather than work--sweetie, you probably need it.
This time, I was feeling pretty good about my WIP, but I had been writing it, per usual, in fits and starts. I hadn’t read the whole thing through from beginning to end yet and I knew that that was necessary to know what was missing. I’m not exactly Jack Keroac over here, writing my book freehand on a single scroll. I hop around. I move chapters in big dramatic cut-and-paste moves that always makes my heart race for fear I’ve just deleted a bunch of my WIP. I get shower ideas and stick them into the place that I think makes sense, but it’s entirely possible that I’ve just created a plot hole or a timeline inconsistency.
Rather than going to a lovely place and spending the whole time on the deck of the hotel, I thought that I’d try to find a place dedicated to writing.
I just googled “Personal Writing Retreat”
My requirements seemed simple to me :
Wi-fi (My WIP is on Google Docs so that I can work on it cross platforms and it saves as I write)
Privacy (The best way to do really deep edit is by speaking your prose out loud and hearing what’s wrong with it)
Food (The less time you have to think about meals or other bodily needs, the more time you have to concentrate on writing)
Accessible by Train (I really don’t like cars)
Sociability Options (36 hours is about as long as I can go without talking to other people)
I think there used to be more writer retreat spaces pre-pandemic. They can’t be very profitable, compared to just renting the space out as an airbnb. But I found a place in rural Pennsylvania that more than met my needs.
Here I spent three beautiful nights attacking my WIP line by line. Delicious farm to table spread was available at predictable times. There were hiking trails that I explored a few times but could never get more than half a mile before I had to rush back to my cabin to hammer out a new idea. I printed off the WIP before my retreat and brought an army of pens, highlighters, and index cards. It took me two days just to read every line aloud and edit by hand. I found numerous issues that I needed to fix and several scene gaps to fill. The third day (and for a week or so after I got back), I put those edits into my draft.
Since I’m back to trying to fit writing back into everything else, I’m not at 100% second draft stage yet, but I’m so close. Four to five days would have been ideal. I met a couple writers there who go for weeks at a time.
