Let's Talk Books and Writer's Retreats with Robin Van Auken

Let's Talk Books with Robin Van Auken

Spring is supposed to be here, but I live in northcentral Pennsylvania, and it's slow coming. We've had several snow storms in the past few weeks, but the ground is too warm for it to stick around. Then we endured rain and high winds. I believe the temperatures are rising next week to the 60s, so I'm itching for a writer's retreat. I like to go on solo writing retreats, isolating myself from the Internet and phone, and the various tasks that get heaped on my shoulders. My husband is heading out of town in a couple of days, traveling to Florida to visit with family, so I could technically set up a retreat here at the house. But that still leaves the Internet and phone and the classes I'm wrapping up at Lyco. We have three weeks left in the semester, so I can't run away. Yet. I enjoy writing retreats. During sessions of solitude, periods of silence, or "Time Retreats," we shun life's chattering distractions and simply notice what is left: ourselves. - Helen Cordes Last year, I took a solo camping trip and had a great time. I mentioned this on a previous podcast, but it bears repeating. I took my camper and my dog to Bald Eagle State Park, about an hour's drive west of here. No Internet except for the data on my phone. X Writers don’t always feel inspired to be creative. It’s happened to me. I’d been on a hiatus from my fiction writing career for too long. It wasn’t intentional. I let other tasks and chores get in the way. I wanted to wrap up a book series and move onto the next one, but I needed to get back into the groove. I wrote quite a bit on a novel I'm working on, and I read several books. It was a week of peace, hiking the trails with my dog, taking photographs, relaxing around the campfire, cooking whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to, going to bed late and sleeping in. It's not the first writing retreat I've taken. I journeyed to Virginia with my friend Janice Ogurcak one year, when she had a timeshare vacation to use and her husband wasn't available. We drove to a cabin in the woods in January, and spent sleepless nights listening to the constant honking of migrating Canada geese. We also drove into D.C. to have lunch with her son and my daughter, at Old Ebbit's Grille. Then we toured the National Archives. I wrapped up my first novel on that retreat, wrapped in blankets and downing kegs of coffee. Come to think of it, that's probably why I could sleep. Not the geese. Jan slept fine. Writing retreats are great outlets for creativity, and they inspire me to kickstart new writing routines. What helps even more than retreats are writing sprints. I look at these as mini retreats. My infatuation with writing sprints blossomed after I attended a workshop taught by Dr. Rachael Hungerford, on “Journal to the Self.” At the short workshop, she armed attendees with tools to journal efficiently. I used her 5-minute and 10-minute writing sprints to break through a stubborn mindset, and was delighted with the feedback. This is the kind of positive reinforcement you can only get with a challenge. Challenges force us to prioritize, and I needed a reason to quit shuffling between email and social media and my manuscript. I was able to combat this by accepting a simple, short challenge. It had a beginning and an end, and positive results. It's a win-win situation. So how about you? Can you take a writing retreat? If not, consider writing sprints. Better yet, create a mini writing retreat wherever you are. Aren't writing retreats a time of solitude and quiet, when you go away to a secluded location to focus on your writing project? Yes, but also no. According to Judy Reeves, author of "The Writer's Retreat Kit: A Guide for Creative Exploration and Personal Expression," a writing retreat is time you take out of your ordinary day-in and day-out routine, when you set aside everything else and give yourself over to your writing.