Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to go on a three-day writing retreat with 3 of the 4 women in my writer's group. This was actually the first time I had ever gone on an official writing retreat, and it was well worth it!
We stayed at "The Sequel", a beautiful, cozy cabin on a lake. It was cold and rainy, then snowy. But, frankly, that was fine with me. I was less inclined to go exploring outside and more inclined to happily write away the afternoon.
Before the retreat we planned out a schedule for each day. Our day looked something like this:
8:00 am - Breakfast
9:00 am - Writing Exercise, then Free Writing Time
Noon - Lunch
1:00 pm - Hike and Write
3:00 pm - Free Writing Time
6:00 pm - Dinner
7:00 pm - Free Writing Time
8:00 pm - Games
We each came prepared to lead one writing exercise. These included exercises on character, setting, plot, and story starters. Writing exercises were kept fairly short so that we could optimize free writing time.
The other, extremely wonderful thing we did that helped optimize our writing time, was that we hired a great chef (and friend) to cook for us on the retreat. We were all so happy to have her with us!
All in all, I got a lot of writing done and had a great time. In fact, all of us had such a good time that we plan to go on a writing retreat twice a year.
If you (alone or with your writing group) can put together some kind of organized writing retreat, I highly recommend it. What a great way to get some concentrated writing accomplished and have fun along the way!
