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My Five Personal Writing Retreat Examples
I am a type A+ personality and over-achiever so most of my life I’ve burned the candle at both ends and sometimes added a second candle. There reaches a point when my body just periodically tells me to stop and gives me the choice of collapsing or losing my mind. It’s at this extreme when I have taken the time for a personal writing retreat.
I’ve always wanted to write but I’m not the writer who can scribble for ten minutes here and there on a coffee break or while I’m sitting in the car waiting for my kids to get out of school. I need peace and quiet to write and I need uninterrupted time.
Cabin in the mountains retreat.
So once upon a time when I was stretching beyond the point of further expansion, I rented a cabin in the mountains on a lake in April for four days. Leaving my family behind, I looked forward to some alone time and writing in the peace and quiet.
The cabin was rustic and I had to build a fire to stave off the cold but it was so worth it. I woke up to snow which is a rare event in my life. There is something about snow that seems to make the world more peaceful and quiet.
I spent the next few days next to the fireplace writing and editing a book I was working on.
It was heaven!
After four days of bliss, I drove home and dove back into my crazy life. That was the end of writing for awhile.
Motel on the beach retreat.
About three years later I reached that crazy-feeling point and this time I drove to the coast and rented a cheap motel on the beach for a few days. It was peaceful and the sound of the waves was soothing.
When I checked in I told the owner I was writing a book and later in the week I stopped in the office for something and he introduced me to someone as “that author I told you about.”
I was thrilled. Never in my life had I been called an author! It was exhilarating.
Again, I had to go back to my other life.
House-sitting in Hawaii retreat.
My third personal writing retreat happened by accident. This time I was grieving the loss of my marriage, my life as I knew it and I was homeless. When I tell…
