Writing Retreats?

A nice idea in principle, innit?

Do you dream of getting away to write? Going somewhere calm, somewhere serene, somewhere, dare I say it, a little glamorous?

Yeah, well, tough.

I should stress here, I’m mainly talking to myself.

But I figured this might apply to someone else, too.

One of my writer friends reminded me today that I have a reputation for “writing fast”, within my little book community. That’s lovely, and she’s a fabulous cheerleader when I need one, so I much appreciated that reminder.

However, my obvious counterpoint is this: sure, I’m a fast writer. When I’m actually blummin’ writing. Which is, frankly, less than half the time I could be.

Some of this, to be utterly fair to myself, is not my fault. Like, yes I only work a 4-day week in my day job, but that is, still, 4 days 09:30-17:30 when I cannot write because I am on the clock for someone else and they wouldn’t take too kindly to it. And two of those days involve a commute, which stretches that to 08:30-18:30, and by the time I’ve got home, eaten and washed up it’s already 8pm and I’m no good to anyone except Xena: Warrior Princess.

ALSO, I have a problem with migraines. By which I mean, I get them pretty regularly, and it’s a problem. I’m on Day Four of one as we speak — you’ll notice I can type, and thankfully the pain is basically gone, but my balance is OFF today and I keep stumbling into door frames, walls and other commuters. I will be knackered when I finish work tonight (currently it’s my lunch break, in case my manager is reading this).

Take into account I just had a birthday and visited family, and at other times I do things for fun other than writing (madness, I know), and it’s probably been two weeks since I last sat down, PC switched on, and did any real work on my current project.

I don’t necessarily feel guilty about this.

I’m not on a deadline, and I read a fabulous tweet thread by Isabel Yap yesterday that laid bare all the reasons people might not be able to write as much as they’d like, which just goes to show we are all unique individuals with our own lives and problems. But those tweets also made a crucial point: you have to own the time you do have if you want to write, or else you won’t get any writing done.

Of course, she didn’t quite put it like that, and there was an odd little aside about job quitting which — LOL, my financial anxiety could never — but there is some excellent, practical advice in it about finding what works for you and … making it work for you.

Which got me thinking.

One thing I know works for me is a To Do List. Another thing is knowing I have a Specific Amount of Time to do things in. Another is pomodoro-esque techniques that are about putting pressure on myself for short bursts. Those are essentially all the ingredients required to get me to be productive in… well, any circumstance, really. And it’s also how you run a writing retreat, right? Maybe there’ll be writing prompts and open mic nights too, but generally, a writing retreat is a specific set of time in which your only real focus is to write, either as part of a community or on your own.

We’re currently having a severe Costa Del Living Crisis in this country and elsewhere, which thankfully hasn’t touched me drastically (things are tighter but not desperate), but I definitely can’t afford a weekend away to some gorgeous locale to focus on my writing. If only! Also, that’s not a practical way to write a book, is it? Not entirely sustainable, like those people who can only write with one specific type of pen from one manufacturer who might one day go bust and then you’re shafted, aren’t you, spending the next twenty-five years scouring eBay for boxes of this one true pen when you could, I dunno, use a Biro and still write a bestseller.

Anyway.

I’ve mentioned before how when I went to 4 days I had grand plans of writing like 10k words every weekend. That’s also not sustainable, Jess, you silly sausage. BUT — this weekend coming I have nothing on. No plans. Bliss. So in my next post, I’m going to share what my writing plan is to make the most of it.