“What I really want,” I said to a writer friend, “what I was going to request for my birthday this year, is to go on a writers’ retreat.”
“Why don’t you?” she replied. She told me about her recent solo retreat, a 5-day Airbnb rental 45 minutes from home.
I thought about this every day for a week, and then found a little apartment to rent for myself.
I brought a cozy blanket, fluffy socks, an assortment of herbal tea with my favorite mug; a sketchbook with colored pens and watercolor markers; a physical notebook with an assortment of Le Pens (Les Pens?); a small stack of books, both fiction and craft; and enough food for light meals and snacks. And my laptop, phone, e-reader, and chargers.
Arriving with a writing plan would have been a good idea, but I couldn’t manage to do it. With paid work and family and home obligations all competing for my attention in the weeks leading up to my retreat, I had trouble focusing. Every time I thought about my book, my mind slid away to some uncompleted task.
Other than packing, the only pre-work I did was to export my Scrivener manuscript to a Word doc and email it to my Kindle.
On Day 1 of my retreat, I sat on a park bench overlooking the sea with a cup of coffee and my Kindle, and read my book. And I liked it! Reading it like a novel, instead of as a jumble of editable documents on the screen, helped me both enjoy it less critically, and see exactly where the problems were — where my interest started to flag, or my meaning didn’t come across, or the jerk on page 53 transformed into a saint on page 54. It also helped me see where I got off track. I had been writing and revising chapter by chapter, through Chapter 24 of my planned 31-chapter book, until I got stuck and couldn’t move forward. Reading it over again, I could see that in my last few chapters, I had written myself into a corner. I needed to start over from Chapter 22, rewrite in a different direction, and then I’d be able to keep going.
As I read, I typed in notes on the Kindle. I had planned to export my notes as a separate document and add them to the punchlist for my next draft. This is possible in the iOS/Android Kindle apps, but it’s a pain. So instead I just added to my punchlist “Review Kindle notes from Nov 2020 retreat.”
Day 2, I slept in, went for a long walk before the rain started, picked up lunch and ice cream from a local cafe, and then wrapped myself in a blanket, poured a cup of tea, and settled in to write. I wrote down the ideas I came up with on my walk, including adding a new character and restructuring my ending to eliminate two chapters that didn’t have much going on. The rest of the day, I rewrote the problem chapters and outlined through the end of my book, sketching in some scenes along the way.
Day 3, before I had to pack up and leave, I wrote a new final chapter. I also made a writing plan for after I returned home: using the outline I had created the day before, keep writing chapter-by-chapter to the end; then go back and revise the entire last third of the book, which needs some extra attention because it’s the newest writing; then do any minor cleanup revisions needed before saving the entire manuscript as my official second draft. In 2021, start the third draft.
My only regret about the writing retreat is that I wish I had more time! While I hope to one day do a writing retreat with other humans, it was lovely to be on my own for a few days, and to be able to concentrate for hours on end with no interruptions.