As a special feature, we welcome the phenomenal author and workshop facilitator Lauren Carter to our blog to talk about something many writers dream about often, and execute less: we’re talking about writer’s retreats—those elusively but oh-so beneficial companions to a healthy writing practice.

Lauren Carter is the award-winning author of five books, with news of the sixth coming soon. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a certificate in teaching and training adult learners and regularly teaches writing. From June 7-9, 2024, she will be co-leading Stillwater: A Trauma-Informed Writing Retreat at a gorgeous historic estate on Ontario’s Lake Simcoe.

You can find out more about Stillwater and other retreats at www.wildgroundwriting.com or by emailing Lauren directly at lauren@wildgroundwriting.com

For now, let’s hand the reigns over to Lauren, and learn more about why and how you should go about planning a writing retreat.

Get Away to Go Home: How To Plan A Writing Retreat

By Lauren Carter

Every morning I get up and have coffee in a cozy recliner in front of the bird-song-filled meadow that my husband likes to play on our T.V.

I crack open my journal or notebook, wait for a first line to bloom in my head.

Hold the pen. Stare at the blank page.

Ignore headache, tinnitus, fatigue, my nearby phone.

Or try to.

Lately the world feels so full of pressures, and anxiety. Maybe this is just me, but I don’t think so. So much terrible news. So much fear for the future. So much straining for perfection, constant engagement, to be seen.

All. The. Time.

This is bad for art because it’s bad for artists. For our ability to grow quiet, calm, immerse ourselves with attention into the quiet place where art grows.

More and more it seems we have to guard these quieter spaces: like George Orwell escaping to the wild island of Jura, or Virginia Woolf’s room of one’s own (“…I must ask you to imagine a room, like many thousands, with a window looking across people's hats and vans and motorcars to other windows, and on the table inside the room a blank sheet of paper..”), or writer Carol Bruneau’s plant-filled space.

That’s why I love getting away, carving out time for creative retreat whether it’s on my own or through Saskatchewan’s Sage Hill Writing Experience or other organized events.

Fuel the Fire

A couple of years ago, I planned my own solo Manitoba writing retreat at a historic Mennonite house in the province’s southern prairies.

Filled with antiques, the cottage had a composting toilet, a wood-fired sauna out back, a couple of rattling baseboard heaters and a central Russian bake oven. As luck would have it (depending on your perspective, of course), we plunged into a prairie deep-freeze. I had to keep that central oven fully fueled to stay alive as the thermometer bottomed out.

I spread my work out on the long table and that’s what I did: stoked the fire, wrote, ate, repeat. The pleasure of it: simple, focused activity, an external task to keep me on track, the space and time to consider nothing but my work and my immediate physical needs.

Heaven.

But, I admit, it got a bit lonely. Plus, the cottage had wi-fi so I had to wrestle with my desire to check on the world every fifteen minutes…

Junot Diaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer says, “The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.”

And he’s right, but this takes intention. We have to do the work to create creative retreats or to find skillfully-built writing retreats that can guide us into the trance of writing, so we can sink deep, either alone or with others who are also yearning, as E.M. Forster wrote, “to only connect.”

Create Your Escape

How do you create the conditions “to only connect the prose and the passion”? Here are some tips from my experience as a retreat attendee, organizer, and facilitator:

1. Book the time.

Setting aside time for yourself can be difficult and scary. It means that you are claiming your work, asserting its importance, setting the intention to go off and write. But, as Pat Schneider says, “Whatever you do, don’t stay in the never-never land of wanting and not doing. It will make your soul sick. If you want to write, claim for yourself what you need in order to learn, grow, practice. There is no other way to be an artist.”

2. Find the space.

What do you need? A lake view, a city apartment close to coffee shops. Wi-fi or not? Dog friendly or does it matter? Take time to scroll Airbnb or VRBO but try not to get lost in the hunt or hung up on needing “the perfect place” and procrastinating. Every place has it’s pros and cons. Or, if you want someone else to do the work—including feeding you!—book a ready-made writing retreat dedicated to offering supportive instruction in inspiring locations.

3. Plan your work.

What are you going to do? Revise the short story you’ve been meaning to get to? Get started on an idea for a novel? If you’re going off on your own, without planned writing workshops and sessions, this is really important. Going off to “just write” can derail you like shopping without a list when you’re hungry: you’ll go home with things you don’t need or, worse, empty bags because you panicked and couldn’t decide.

4. Be kind to yourself.

This is a big thing to do! You are asserting the importance of the most intimate relationship you have: the one with yourself and your stories. Bring the cheesecake selection if that makes you happy, or the ready-made gluten-free pizza you never, ever buy because who spends $20 on a frozen meal? Plus, your coziest clothes, your music, something delicious and inspiring to read.

5. Slow down and get grounded.

When you walk through that door into your cabin, loft apartment, room in the bed and breakfast, you might feel nervous and keyed up. For me an inner pressure rises: I need to have this novel done NOW. Cue panic and the rattling of my tender nervous system. I’ve learned how helpful it is to consciously slow down, sit on my butt, and do a grounding exercise to help me settle into the space and calm my nervous system. Try the 54321 technique or taking a few diaphragmatic breaths.

6. Ditch perfectionism.

Natalie Goldberg offers a bit of advice about creating a writing routine that I love: give yourself a checkmark on the calendar for each day you write but if you skip a day, or even two days, don’t let it derail you. In other words, don’t let your inner perfectionist blow up the whole plan. Same with being on a retreat. You write, you don’t write; you read instead, you spend too much time playing a stupid cell phone game. Don’t go to war with yourself. Learn, grow, and fail again, but fail better.

7. Be proud of yourself.

Regularly I go on a women’s weekend with a couple of writer friends of mine. We talk, we eat, we write, we laugh. We hot tub or sit by the fire. I met E. when she sucked up all her courage and came on our first Wild Writing in the Boreal retreat as an introvert who desperately needing writerly connection. I got to know C. on the same retreat because she’d booked herself a spot as well, in her own cabin, newly prioritizing herself and her creative needs.

Whether you go off on your own or find a retreat to support you, these acts of self-nourishment and support are huge, especially for women. Go home knowing that no matter if you wrote a hundred pages or ten, you’ve done this for yourself. The next time will be easier.