Making the Most of a Writing Retreat: Two Writing Tips

Last week, I attended a writers retreat. This retreat comes as a gift from the university where I teach. It is offered to faculty and administration every year, and I’ve been participating in it just about every year I’ve taught there.

For the retreat, I was given three and a half days to be alone with my writing, except for meals, which were served by the retreat center and allowed for conversation with the others from my university who were also there to write, meditate, and think.

I loved my time at the retreat and got more done than I could have just writing at home. It didn’t all come at once, but I was eventually able to focus fully on my work.

I do know, however, that for many people, this opportunity only leads to struggle, and they spend most of their time trying to get started and finally do not write much. Instead, they wish they were home where they could do other things and not have to sit with the fact that they can’t work there. Like many colleagues I’ve known over the years who have attended once, they find it unhelpful and never return.

Then again I’ve developed real friendships with colleagues who have been attending the retreat as long as I have and look forward to it every year. As soon as the announcement for the retreat is given in early February, all of us have put in our request by noon on the day of the announcement.

This year, as always, I wrote over 6,000 words. I was in the later stages of writing a second draft of my grief memoir, and I completed this. But I also rethought something about the project and was able to add something new to it. The last afternoon of the retreat I wrote five bad poems, as I call them, and one of them I was able to rewrite into something I might send out soon.

For me, the retreat was a huge blessing. First, it is a beautiful place where one can rest, pray, and meditate. I look forward to more time there in the future. 

There are a few reasons, I think, why I continue to enjoy this retreat year after year, and why some people don’t. I’d like to just speak to that for a moment and make a few suggestions for how to approach a writing retreat if you are ever offered one.

Successful Retreats are Managed by Clear Goals and One Insight: I could speak to the need for a positive attitude, but I admit that I’m something of a pessimist, so I am the last person to tell anyone else to perk up. But thankfully, even that is not necessary. I want to suggest just two things: set clear writing goals for yourself that can be accomplished in the time you are retreating; and second, recognize that writing is not a mystical but a physical behavior, and act accordingly. 

Goals: This is important. You need to know where you are with your writing project. Are you still in the incubating stage, still planning? Still inventing? Or have you started a draft and are getting stuck? Or perhaps you have finished a rough draft and want to get started with a rewrite or addressing comments that readers have given you for improvements? These are questions that speak to the processes involved in writing, and it helps to know that a book is not written beginning to end, all in one sweep. Making progress on just one aspect of a writing project should be considered success at retreat. 

Each of these stages listed here will require different tools and approaches. If you are still incubating, you might find yourself bringing along reading material that you still need to get through before you fully develop your ideas. One of my retreat friends comes every year with a heavy suitcase full of books because he knows that will add to his productivity and even get him started in thinking about his ideas. Reading often leads, for him, to writing. 

To this suggestion, I would add keeping notebooks and pens nearby so that you can outline or bullet point material and even shape ideas as you read. To be honest, I consider this note taking and journal writing to be actual writing toward the goal. For every published page, most writers will admit that there are at least five pages of notes and rough draft writing that went into the production. 

For those of us still in the initial drafting stage, this may be a time to jot down some outlines or rough bullet points as well. But I would plan this ahead of time, if possible. Have a sense for the next scenes that you plan to develop. Or perhaps the plan will be to develop one or two of the characters more fully.

You might also reread what you’ve written to this point. Another suggestion that I’ve found that works quite well is to move to the ideas and chapters that you know you will write that seem especially alive and write those out. Any writing at this time will probably compound itself. 

For rewriting, I often find that reading the first draft is a form of rewriting. It leads me to new ideas. 

Rewriting was my main goal at my retreat this year, and to facilitate this, I mapped out what the final chapters I was rewriting were about, what I actually wanted to accomplish in each, and how I wanted to organize them. Doing this, I simply went forward following my notes and ideas, shaping them and developing them. My writing compounded in interest as I wrote more each day. 

The Physical Nature of Writing: The last idea under goals is a nice segue to the second part of this. I like to think of writing as being similar to a savings account with interest rates that have been shot with steroids. That is, the more I put into the writing, the more it compounds itself exponentially. 

I had a successful retreat because I planned for it, certainly, and thought realistically about my goals and what I needed to accomplish. But my success also came because of my writing behavior. It came because of something I’ve noticed about this.

Many years ago, when I was given a writing sabbatical to develop my textbook on writing, I got up every day, and after my family went to school and work, I sat at the same desk and began writing or noting things down. The more I wrote in the same place every day, the more my writing just began to pour out of me. I went from writing a few pages to writing many pages every day. 

Later, after I finished my sabbatical, I also noticed that when I would sit down at that same desk, ideas would simply come to me, and I would find myself writing about them. This seems mystical, but it really isn’t. The same principle is suggested for people who have trouble sleeping. Reserve the bed only for sleeping and sex. Do not read there or watch TV or surf the Internet, because you should have built up the bodily expectation that bed is for rest and nothing else. The mind works with the body, but not so well against it.

Triggered that writing happens at that one desk where I spent my sabbatical, ideas would come to me. 

This happens at the retreat center also, I’ve noticed, because year after year I go to that same setting, and as I begin to work, I seem to set in motion a behavior of writing. 

When I’m teaching, I do this for my students as well. For every class period we meet, the first act they do is to write for five minutes. This means that by mid-semester, they have gotten used to the behavior. And the writing interest rates often compound themselves for them. What starts as a few disjointed sentences often becomes later in the semester the opening of a vein and the writing of paragraphs. 

These are just two tips for writers going to retreats. Of course, another aspect of a retreat is to rest, and there is plenty of time for that. 

This leads to another behavior I’ve noticed. There is a chair in the living room where I sit and one of our cats will sit in my lap and fall asleep. I’ve noticed myself also dozing off. This happens only with that chair, though. If I sit on the sofa, I don’t fall asleep. But if I sit in the easy chair with a book, I will find myself putting the book down after four pages and closing my eyes. 

It seems to be behavior. It seems to work. 

What tips do you have for when you attend a writers retreat? I’d love to hear about it. 

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