Writing Retreats I've Tried And Why They've Failed
I wish I could be *that* writer but I don't own a cabin
The Hotel
Once, on deadline for my third novel, I booked two nights in a very budget hotel. Left my lovely family, checked in, wrote a ton, went out for cheap food when hunger required it. The experience was not glamorous. Actually, the hotel was kind of sketchy and I was a little scared. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to get my work done at home, where my family and my job take up a good part of my days, and I couldn’t afford anything fancier.
Did I get my pages finished? I did. I also had terrible nightmares. My third novel (Strange Exit, published by Tor Teen) is about teens who escape a nuclear apocalypse only to suffer an even stranger fate inside the VR program that’s meant to prepare them for life after nuclear winter. So I spent my days researching and writing about all things nuclear, and then I spent my nights dreaming the world was collapsing around me in terrifying ways.
Isolation was great for getting work done and terrible for keeping me sane. 1/10
The Seaside Conference Grounds
While trying to finish a recent writing project, I booked a tiny, rustic room overlooking deer-populated grounds and the blue-green water of Monterey Bay. Every time I started to feel like my manuscript was just not working and never would, I walked out to the beach to find tide pools and seals and surfers and rock-castles, at which point it was clear that whether I ever wrote another word mattered less than whether the world was a beautiful place (it is!). And this allowed my thoughts to sift through some sieve in my mind, and somehow onto the page, later, in my cabin room.
I wrote so much during this four-ish day retreat. But when I returned home, I had to jump back into my other job and do so much work to make up for the days I had taken off that I thoroughly exhausted myself. Life as a wrung-out towel made it harder to keep up with my daily writing. So overall, it was a wash.
A beautiful dream is terrible to wake up from. 6/10
The Friend’s House In The Mountains
Some time back, when trying to jump-start a new novel (which, alas, I still have not figure out how to revise and which therefore may never see the printed page), I accepted a very kind invitation to stay with a writer friend who happens to live in a mountain town. We set up our laptops in the living room, and on the balcony, with lovely trees in view, which should have thoroughly inspired me, since the novel I was trying to write was set in the Santa Cruz mountains (where many lovely trees reside).
But I have never been able to write with someone else in the room, so I managed only a few terrible paragraphs, which I scrapped when I got home.
Next time, I’d rather just forgo writing and have fun with my friend. 7/10
The Lengthy, Quiet Retreat With Prepared Meals and Other Amenities
I have never done this. I have a job and a family and a budget. It sounds so nice. I wish this for you. 0/0
The House-Sitting Gig
Twice (that I can remember), I’ve been asked to house-sit and I’ve brought my laptop along. I had a kitchen in which to cook decent food, a quiet place to write, and the option to go to work or not. Nothing beautiful outside the window, but also no one asking me to make a quesadilla or host a pool party.
These actually weren’t fails. I wrote quite a bit. I paid nothing. If I could quit my job and move to a cabin by the sea alone and write all day—well, I wouldn’t, because I like my job and my family. So house-sitting will have to do.
The biggest downside to a practical writing spot is the lack of photo ops. 9/10
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I've never been on a retreat, writing or otherwise; not even the cheap hotel kind. But right around 10 PM-ish on any given day of the week, once the family is in bed, my dog is happily lying next to me, licking the floor where, the day before, the cat had thrown up, and all is quiet and dark outside, that's my magic time. At times it's so magical that my eyes magically close, and in my dreams I magically finish my book (Does that count as a retreat?).
Yes! I go on "retreats" with a writing friend. We book some cheap out of the way airbnb cabin, and head up for 2 or 3 nights. Ignore each other all day and write like mad, and then eat and drink wine and visit at nights. It is fantastic. Separate ROOMS to write in is key though, so you are not sharing energy or tempted to chat. She is writing her dissertation, I am writing romance novels. I can crank out some words on retreat.