peek inside my mini peer-led writing retreat
Last week, I went on a peer-led writing retreat.
If we’re friends on Instagram, you wouldn’t have seen a play-by-play. I kept this pretty quiet for a few reasons — privacy, safety (like hey internet, come find me when I’m away from home!), and to let myself focus on what I was writing more than looking for a few good opportunities to share
So, I kept some highlights about the week to share with you here first — instead of on the ‘gram. When I shared that I was going away on a writing retreat, I got lots of questions. I’ll answer them all — and more, in here.
Why a writing retreat?
Just like you, getting my writing done is a challenge. For my 1:1 copywriting clients, I got as much of our work done in advance of my retreat, so I could focus, but I still had some client work to do while I was away.
For me, escaping the familiarity and duties that come with a household — kids, husband, dog, school, cooking, tidying, sports, shopping. There’s much to be said for changing up your scenery, putting up your out of office signature, and putting your head down to work.
As a business owner, there aren’t really that many retreats (that I’m aware of) for us, so… I made my own.
Where did you go?
Philly! It was within driving distance of two of us, and the third was willing to fly in. This made it easy. We rented a spacious Airbnb with enough bedrooms (and bathrooms) for each of us, plus a great writing table — this, and walking distance to restaurants being the top two retreat factors.
Doing a working retreat in a city is great for a few reasons — no one needs to rent a car; you can walk plenty of places (fresh air helps too!) great spots nearby to eat, so no cooking required. And you get to explore a city!
Who’d you go with?
Two business friends. We were discussing a format of writing sales copy and unprompted, on a random day a month earlier, one of them thought up the idea — it would be fun do to all this writing together, maybe in person.
That’s how it started.
How did you prepare?
We had some materials to review in advance, and we had 2 calls around 90 minutes each to discuss our writing plans, outlines, and even some of the language. Meeting in advance was key to getting organized and keeping everyone on track.
A week before our retreat, I was worried that I wouldn’t be far enough along, as one of us had a pretty great draft already. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to catch up. All I had was a 2-page super rough bulleted outline. I hoped that getting into retreat mode would help with motivation and inspiration.
How’d you structure your time?
We were together from Tuesday afternoon to Friday afternoon. Tuesday was mainly our travel day — meaning we were all pretty tired and not all that sharp (speaking for myself), time for a nice dinner, catching up, and making our plan for the rest of the week.
Tuesday afternoon, we gathered at a cafe while waiting for our Airbnb check-in. During this time, we did some work that would have distracted us from writing the next few days.
We all had a slightly different experience with a few meetings sprinkled in due to our short planning time.
The writing table.
The rest of the days mostly looked like this (with some variations for each of us):
5 am - wake up and work out — no alarm, my body was oddly just ready
6 am - shower and get dressed. I shower and put make-up on every day to prepare for work at home, so this was no different. I was getting ready for my work day.
7 am - coffee, respond to emails, check-in on projects
8 am - 11 am - writing. We wrote in 25 minutes (Pomodoro) increments with a 5-minute break in between. Normally, I work for 50-60 minute sprints, so I was worried that 25 minutes wouldn’t be enough. There were times when I wanted to keep going and others when I heard the timer ding and bolted out of my chair, grateful that 25 minutes was done! Breaks were times to pee, snack, do some stretching, squats, and reset for the next sprint. Hearing the timer go off letting me know it was time to jump back in again helped me get back to work — even if I was lost in an email or procrastinating with something else.
11 am - 12pm - lunch. As in, actually leaving the condo, getting fresh air, and eating vegetables. And also, in my case, a few macarons.
12-12:30 pm - discussing where we were stuck, gut checking ideas, confirming our flow.
1 - 4 pm - writing. The afternoon writing sessions were the toughest for me. Normally, during the week, I schedule meetings for the afternoon, so I’m not used to doing any actual creative work. Having two others there with me who were at the computer, with Pomodoro clicking, dinging, and buzzing made it easier. Thinking of my writing time broken into 25-minute chunks makes it feel doable. I can do anything for 25 minutes! Well, except a plank, but you know what I mean.
5-7 pm - happy hour and refilling the creative well. Whether that was with art, walking around looking at old buildings, churches, and sculptures — it was a brain break.
7-8:30 pm - dinner — naturally, we’d end up talking about our work, which led to life, family, and all the things business friends talk about.
9-10 pm - relax, maybe another glass of wine, then bed.
There were a few commitments on my calendar for the week that I maintained. Depending on the event in the future, and with enough notice, I might rearrange some of them. In this case, the commitments were all for the Unfussy Writing Community, so it made perfect sense to keep them. I got to be on my writing retreat with these writers virtually!
Look at the only book that was on our coffee table at the Airbnb!
What did you write?
I can’t tell you yet ;) What I will say is that it all has to do with the Unfussy Writing Community. If you think writing is hard, you feel like you’ve tried everything, and you can’t seem to make the time to make writing a priority, I think you’ll like it :)
How much did you write?
I didn’t have a word count goal, but I had about 6 ideas that I needed to flesh out. I guessed that each of the 6 ideas would be roughly the length of a blog post. Turns out I was right.
I only had some bullets prepared and some ideas going into the writing. It was an absolute shitty-first-draft fest.
After day 1, hour 1, I had written 3,557 words. My most productive session!
By the end of day 1, I had 4,700 words.
By 10 am on day 2, I had 5,680 words. And I spend much of the second day revisiting what I wrote on day 1, which meant tweaking and adding stuff.
By 11 am (lunchtime), I had 6,231 words.
On day 3, I had a big writing marathon in the middle of the day for my community (which meant they were writing and I was coaching) and had to scoot out early to get to a playoff hockey game, so I didn’t write as much as I thought I would.
I also wrote the SFD of this article over 1.5 sprints or 40 minutes.
Total 3-day writing time for my business: 11 hours
Total words for my business: 8,200 words
When I see the total word count and time spent for 3 days, I admit, I feel a little crappy about it — I should have written more, I should have pushed harder, I should have been better prepared.
But, I stopped that mind chatter. I did enough. We had some great conversations, and I had to think through some business decisions as these came up in my writing.
How much did it cost?
Here’s a breakdown of my total (estimated) costs:
Airbnb for 3 nights (my portion): $260
Gas: $30
Parking (because it’s a city): $100
Snacks and meals I brought with me (not counting these because I would have eaten them at home): $0
Lunches, dinners, and happy hours: $400 (this was the highest because I like food)
Total cost: $790
You could do it for much more or much less. Travel costs were low and food costs relatively higher.
Apres writing prosecco.
Were you worried that you wouldn’t want to write?
Hell yeah, I was. I worried that I’d have too much client work to do or that I wouldn’t feel inspired, or clear enough, or even to have the stamina to write anything good.
One of us didn’t write for the specific project we were working on at all on day one — and that’s okay.
After sprint 2, as I was pouring a third cup of coffee (the cups were small), she looked up and said, “I’m not writing what I’m supposed to.”
Without missing a beat, I replied, “That’s okay.” Because it IS okay. She was writing something — that’s the important part. She was journaling, emailing, doing other writing.
It was so powerful to see living proof that my belief, “writer’s block is BS” was real — because it is. She had some stuff to sort out in her mind (and heart) before she could get to this project.
And by the afternoon, she was ready to work on her project, and by day 2, she wrote like a MOFO.
Every time you hit writer’s block — swipe this on your lips.
So, how was it?
So good!
And... how was it really?
Like, really, really good. I will absolutely do this again. Even though I feel a little crappy about my total word count and writing hours, I would call this a success.
What would you do differently next time?
Plan it a little more in advance — like a few months in advance. This peer-led writing retreat was a little last minute, so there were some other obligations that I had to tend to. Between the writing marathon that I was hosting on Friday and knowing that I was jumping right back into family life on Friday afternoon, I was super distracted and hardly wrote a thing.
I hope this story inspires you to create a little writing retreat of your own — to start (or finish) your website, a book, a screenplay, blog content for a few months, a bunch of poems … or whatever it is you want to write.
If you enjoyed this article, you might like these too:
