Recently, I had the opportunity to “get away from it all”
and participate in a casual writer’s retreat.
A month or so ago, a few members of my writers group decided it would be
a great idea to pick a weekend to head out of town and into the mountains so we
could write, write, write! Most people
thought that was a fantastic idea and were all in; after all, isn’t that what
we dream of, just some time where we are free from the distractions that are
keeping us from achieving our writing goals? However, by the time we were
signed up and ready to go, only 3 of us made the trip. Those distractions?
Those are called life. I am just
grateful that I was able to rearrange my life in order to go, and I hope the
others in my group will be able to make it another time (because there WILL be
another time), or they will be able to use the lessons I learned from the
retreat in their everyday writing lives.
So, whether you are heading to a cabin in the woods, or
sneaking in a few writing moments in a storage cabinet, here are a few thoughts
about the writing retreat.
Have a retreat, even if you don’t have…
…the time: If you wait for the perfect time to get your
perfect writing done, you are perfectly misguided. Can’t leave the duties of life behind for a
continuous 48 hours? Schedule your
writing time at the same time each day, one hour, for 48 days. Or 6 hours each weekend for eight months. You could net more pages over those few months
than you would have in one weekend, anyway.
