The cold days and long nights are here! I love this time of year as the chill sweeps in. It’s when we start reflecting on the year just passed and think about the year to come. I also always feel a renewed call to spend my creative energy on personal writing projects. But just as our desire to make progress on our books rises, somehow the time we each week have to write it somehow goes up in smoke. Planning a writing retreat, either during the holidays or sometime in in early 2026, can be an amazing chance to make headway on your book and be energized for the coming year. It’s easier than you may think to set up your own. In the video and blog below, we talk about how we planned and set up our recent writing retreat.
Reading is essential to improving your writing skills, and reading like a writer means seeing past the glossy end-result into a book’s structure and the author’s choices about how the story is told. Learning to read like a writer doesn’t mean learning how to merely imitate but learning the craft by example. We’re excited to announce the launch of our Memoir Method Book Club! Your first session is free, so sign up to save your seat here.<Bumper>
The right time for a retreat
Writing retreats don’t have to be connected to any kind of holiday or vacation time. They also don’t have to be very long, even a long weekend can give you an amazing boost. The best time to take a writing retreat is when you’re 1) really in need of that boost and 2) ready to make real use of it.
Generally, we recommend taking a retreat sometime during the drafting phase of the process. Development and revision are often processes that involve a lot of decisions, and it usually helps to have plenty of time to walk away and consider those stages gradually. If you have are ready for drafting or well into your draft, it’s a great opportunity to take full advantage of the power sessions planning a retreat can give you. Regardless of where you are in your draft, or whether you want to take a weekend to really power through editing or revisions, it’s important to plan for when you know all you need is some dedicated time.
In the months prior to our retreat, Amanda and I were very in different stages of drafting our own personal projects. Amanda wanted to start something new, a memoir focusing on her decisions to leave the academy and the lessons learned along the way. I was stalled in writing novel. When we started planning our retreat, we were sure to give ourselves plenty of build-up time. A writing retreat on a whim is a lot less likely to be productive.
It doesn’t take much to plan a retreat, but when you have these three things in place, it can be satisfying, energizing, productive, and most importantly—fun.
Logistics
Personally, I’m never one to enjoy a jump in the car and go kind of road trip, but for a writing retreat especially, some planning is necessary. While you are not likely to spend literally every minute of a retreat writing, you don’t want to end up spending lots of time on figuring out your placement and provisions. In terms of choosing a location, it really depends on you and your needs. It really doesn’t need to be fancy—in fact, too picturesque can be a drawback. The most beautiful place I’ve ever used for a writing retreat, of mountain cabin with fantastic views and a hot tub, was a pleasant vacation, but I got way less writing done then when I picked somewhere pleasant, comfortable, and close to quick amenities. You will also want to consider your physical needs as you write. Amanda makes sure there’s a bed with a back support, and I try to be sure there’s a few good tables with upright chairs, ideally next to a window or on a patio.
Writing retreats can be all on your own, with one or more writerly or artistic friends, or in a large group. There are planned and organized writing retreats in various places across the country, as well, if you want to expand your writing network as well as polish off a nice chunk of writing. It’s really up to want you think will support you—having no pressure or distractions of a solitary retreat or having some accountability from others around you who know your goals and are excited to support you.
This might seem obvious—but you also want to make a solid plan for food and other provisions. Planning out meals in advance, whether you’re going to cook and pre-shop for groceries, order in, or rely on a particular restaurant on location, makes sure that you’re going to be well supported for the energy you’ll need for the work and that you can save all that decision-making brainpower on the writing. We opted for a mix of both. I enjoy cooking—it can even feel like a welcome break from writing for me—so I planned most dinners, save for right on arrival and right before we left to leave room for ordering in. The last thing you want to do is arrive and your retreat and find the first thing you have to write is a grocery list. So plan your provisions.
Also—opt for wi-fi. It might seem proper to cut yourself off from temptation, but most of us have come to rely on the ability to quickly look something up. Plan other ways to remove temptation.
Itinerary
It doesn’t take a week to make a successful retreat. In fact, we recommend aiming for between 2-4 actual writing days, with buffer travel days on either side. After three days of writing, you’ll probably be quite tired. Even when you write professionally and spend your regular working week at a computer, a writing retreat is a different kind of beast. That intense outpouring of creative focus on a singular project takes a lot out of you, and you don’t want to go home feeling so burnt out that you can’t ever imagine going back to that project again. You want to feel energized to go back to steady progress, knowing that you have a nice chunk under your belt.
If you’re retreating with others, it’s helpful to have some conversations about itinerary so you’re on the same page about writing, discussion, and relaxed social times. There’s no need to be rigid about it, but if you’re on the same page before you get there, it will be a much better time.
Plan a celebration! Retreats are a treat, and you want to associate really good feelings with the satisfaction of having made writing progress. Celebrate in whatever way is meaningful to you. Amanda and I like a dinner out (somewhere with good cocktails), but what’s important is that it should mark a fun and exciting end to your retreat. It will make it memorable and carry that good feeling back home!
Set your goals
As you might suspect, setting goals for yourself is important, but it’s less important to be hugely ambitious than it is to be honest and flexible. If you’ve never done a writing retreat before, you probably don’t have any clear idea how many words you can produce in a marathon attempt, so while you want enough goals and a plan to know exactly what you’re going to work on and what you hope to accomplish, you’re sure to be able to check some things off before you go home.
A set of goals you should not neglect is what you want to have accomplished before you leave for the retreat. In our case, Amanda wanted to create her outline and get feedback, and I wanted to make some key decisions about some structure changes I needed to make. Your pre-retreat goals might be getting all your research in order, finishing an outline, getting to a stopping point in your draft, or reading your draft so far so it’s all fresh in your mind. Having these pre-retreat goals is crucial, because it means you know you have everything in place to hit the ground running on that first retreat morning.
You also want to set up a way to track your progress. Breaking down your goals into a specific list of scenes or sections of words so you can have the satisfaction of checking things off.
Don’t make your goals competitive. It’s not a race and it’s highly unlikely you and another writer will be in the exact same place in writing and function at the same pace. I also don’t recommend making your goal to finish your book unless you really are quite close to the end. You want to go home feeling good, even if you didn’t quite meet your most ambitious goal. If you expect yourself to write faster than you ever have before and finish it all before you go home, failing might set you back more than not going at all.
Celebrate!
Again, make sure you plan to celebrate the work you achieve. It doesn’t need to be contingent on a certain set of goals. You set aside time and spent it dedicating yourself to your craft and your writing. That by itself is work celebrating.
PS. Searching the internet for writing, publishing, and book marketing advice can be exhausting to say the least! If you’re ready for hands on, one-on-one support for your memoir, check out The Memoir Method. We’d love to welcome you into this nine-month group program specially designed for women writing their first memoirs. And don’t forget, if you’d like to chat with Amanda about the program (or any other services we offer), you can book a free consult any time!
