The Space to Write

What a gift… to myself!

A Writers' Retreat has been on my bucket list for years - to stay in picturesque surrounds, eat beautiful food and have no responsibilities other than to work on my writing projects.

Meg Dunley, a Creativity Coach and writer, holds several retreats, Retreat with Meg during the year for creatives. So, it was armed with a suitcase full of comfortable clothes and everything I needed to write, that I took a plane to Melbourne to join Meg and other creatives at Karma Kinglake in Victoria.

I had a pre-retreat coaching session with Meg and I’d attended a few of her group coaching sessions so it was lovely to meet her in person.

I settled into my cottage named Arglye Apple and set up my laptop, and the monitor Meg kindly brought for me to use. The cottage had a log fire and most importantly, gave me the head space and physical space to work on my writing.

We started with an intention setting workshop and Meg also asked us to write down how we wanted to feel on the last day of the retreat.

I wanted to feel like I’d had an amazing break and taken full advantage, writing wise and creatively, of this time away from home. With this in mind, I wrote on a huge bright yellow post-it four writing goals and I stuck the post-it on my cottage wall, within sight of my screens.

Karen's Retreat Writing Goals:

The Cottage - Edit 2 to 3 chapters

While I set myself the giddy goal of editing 30 chapters by 25 December, my retreat coaching session with Meg had me admitting the goal was far from realistic. This edit is more structural in nature then any of the drafts I've done before. I've changed a few subplots due to beta reader feedback, so it'll involve quite a bit of rewriting and shuffling scenes around.

Goal achieved. I edited chapters 5 to 7 (which included new material written)

The Farm - dictate a little every day

This draft was written during NaNoWriMo in 2019. My handwriting fills an entire foolscap book, so now I’m dictating it into Word - fixing up when Word can’t understand me - and cut/pasting into Scrivener.

Goal achieved. I dictated every day to a total of 3,346 words.

Jellybeans - work on Draft 2

I’d written a first draft for the upcoming RWA Sweet Treats short story competition. My first drafts are always very rough, and I haven’t looked at it for over a month. I printed it out prior to the retreat with the intention of reading, editing and readying for Beta Readers.

Goal halfway achieved. I read it, edited and it’s not working so I plan to delve deeper using an exercise we did with Meg in one of her daily optional workshops.

Draft October blog

Here we are!

Goal achieved - I wrote a draft on the second day and then revised it on the last day.

Some other intentions I included along with these goals were:

• No pressure

• Enjoy

• Small steps forward

• Regular fresh air breaks

Reflecting on my time at the retreat

The retreat concluded with a workshop where we wrote down what went well for us and what didn't. For me - the retreat was everything I wanted and needed to fully immerse myself in my writing. The meals were plentiful and delicious. I still battled with headaches and migraines but without other responsibilities tearing me in all directions, I was able to manage them well enough to write.

We also set intentions going forward. I know that I won't be able to maintain the volume of work I got through at the retreat but it's important for me to continue the momentum. I came away with greater clarity on new practices to put in place to motivate and continue writing regularly and I'm looking forward to my post-retreat coaching session with Meg in a few weeks.