DIY Writing Retreat

I’m still sitting with feeling that I’m not accomplishing enough (check out my prior posts on Chevrons of Doom and What Do You Need Right Now? to catch up) and what has been pushed aside is my creative writing, Since it’s the creative writing that I’m theoretically organizing the rest of my life around, not actually moving forward has been on my mind a lot lately.

So, it’s time for another reset. I need to have days that just focus on writing. That’s when I came up with the idea of a Writing Retreat.

Like everything in my life, I need to do this now so I can’t look up retreats and go somewhere and participate in someone else’s retreat. I’m also not really in a position to spend a bunch of money on a trip because it’s not the time to spend money before evaluating all of the investments that will be needed to set up my business.

So, I’m doing my retreat at home, with my own DIY retreat schedule.

And yes, it’s Friday and I’ve decided this will happen on Saturday and Sunday. Nothing like planning ahead and being fully prepared!

Sometimes you just need to act. We know I’ve been productively procrastinating using planning and learning so even though it will be quickly pulled together, it’s needs to happen now, not when I’ve figured out the perfect way to do it.

Like everything new I embark on, it’s time to see what wisdom Google and the inter-webs have for me.

I have a bit of an idea of what a retreat would entail since I’ve window shopped many retreats over the last few years. Most schedules have elements of mindfulness, exercise/body movement, goal oriented focus and some exploration through journaling or other exercises to connect with the self.

With these initial thoughts and the ideas I got from reviewing a few different articles on DIY Writing Retreats, I jotted down notes of things that I want to include and where I can go for resources.

Lucky for me, I’ve been collecting resources and videos over the last couple of months and have some tucked away on my “check out later” list. The one thing I’m not going to utilize is the LinkedIn courses or other full courses because these aren’t things I haven’t been making time for AND they can create a number of side quests and I need to stay focused this weekend.

The other fortunate coincidence was that after completing the Beginnings and Endings course from Suzy Vadori’s Boot Camp, she suggested a 3 x 30 minute writing block exercise to explore 3 potential beginnings and then the same with their mirrored endings.

Over the two days, I spent two hours each day and got so many words on the page and it really helped me evaluate the different openings. You might be thinking that I wasted the other 2 x 30 minutes each day BUT, I still have lots of material from those that may not be the beginning or ending but may become part of the overall novel. I think it was this exercise that planted the seed for the retreat.

From my list of things to include, I’ve sketched out my goals and a schedule to follow, now I have to find the specific things to do during the different times. I specifically haven’t put a specific time on each block but as a guideline, lunch should be around noon, dinner around 6:00.

My goals are:

• Deadlines for Writers – Story Idea and rough first draft for September prompt
• Short Stories – 2 more short story ideas/starts
• Novel – at least 5,000 words, try to get to the end of the Act 1 scenes
• Find exercises to build the writing mind and habit (learn more about how I write best
• Learning & Development – identify 5 key takeaways or habits that come out of the weekend (can be retreat ideas, areas to pursue further or habits that I can include in a regular routine
• Review and reflect after the weekend to determine success, whether it’s valuable to do again and if so, what would I change?

Now, it’s time for me to figure out what specifically will happen in each block. Wish me luck!

What would you want to include in a DIY retreat? For writing, or any pursuit for you.