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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