Retreat to advance: Strategy for success

A couple days ago, I returned from nearly a week in Albuquerque at the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA) Annual Retreat West. The last time I was able to attend was in 2021. While wonderful opportunities kept me from going in the intervening years, I still missed this retreat. WFWA is an incredible organization that provides events and programs daily to learn from and interact with other writers. As an international organization, though, we engage virtually most of the time. Do not misunderstand me, I take part in these online activities daily because I feel energized, inspired, and supported by our members. That wouldn’t be possible without technology. Still, something extraordinary happens in me when I am with this group of writers in all three dimensions. Throughout the year, I am like a kerosene lantern slowly using up its fuel and burning through its wick. I think more deeply about my writing in that one week in Albuquerque than any other week of the year, I am refueled and refreshed by the experience.

Retreats are magical in that respect. Whether you attend a formal event or rent a house with your writing friends, I highly recommend setting aside a week each year, at least. If you retreat, I guarantee you will advance. There is more to it than a change of scenery or a break from work. You will find you accomplish far more, in fact. Here is my strategy for getting the most out of a retreat:

Remove
Engage
Think
Realize
Elicit
Aspire
Tangle
Scribble

Remove
Set aside the routine distractions of life. Back home, laundry will get done, or it won’t. Your family (four-legged and two) will get fed. Work will survive. Let these go. This is your precious three to seven days to reflect and grow. When the word selfish seeps into your mind, obliterate it. It is not selfish. It is nourishing and revitalizing both personally and creatively. For you to benefit from a retreat, you must be more than physically present. There is no question that this is difficult, but your head, heart and feet must all be in the same place for this to work for you.

Engage 
Generously engage with others. Solitary time is important as well, of course. A retreat often puts you in proximity to people with whom you don’t normally have a chance to connect, though. Often attendees are at different points in the journey. Just as an experienced writer can guide and inspire a novice, the novice can reignite the motivation and passion for this process in others. Four years ago, a veteran author, who I admire, took the time to listen to the pitch for my debut novel. Her words were so powerful back then, that I remember the moment vividly to this day. In the wake of publishing this year, I had the chance to thank her for that. Her gift of five minutes, sage advice, and encouraging words fuel me to this day. No matter where you are on the journey, you can give that gift to someone else. Expect nothing in return. The act alone will fuel you, as well.

Think
Think expansively about your project. In my office at home, I keep a calendar and a priority-ordered list of next steps. Each item on the list has its own spreadsheet or is part of another one. My ability to focus is legendary (ask anyone who attempts to talk to me while I’m working). While creative pursuits require focus, too much is limiting. A retreat is a chance to open the release valve. Allow your mind to meander and veer from the well-worn path. Let all the “what ifs” and “could its” knock you off course. Scribble them down. Scratch them out. Write them again in different words. A retreat lifts the ceiling off your creativity. You can let go of word counts for a week. Write that scene you love but you just know you’re going to have to cut later. Add the character who has been haunting your dreams but has no purpose at all. Let the villain do something shockingly altruistic. Imagine without judgments or boundaries. While you are doing that, invite someone into your head. I was fortunate to connect with several writers who helped me think through my plot. Unencumbered by familiarity with the existing outline, they were free to ask questions and make suggestions. They kicked off an avalanche of epiphanies that ultimately strengthened my novel.

Realize  
Realize connections. During the retreat, we had a daily workshop on aspects of emotional wounds in characters with Angela Ackerman, co-founder of Writers Helping Writers and co-author of the Descriptive Thesaurus series. Through these powerful workshops and the conversations following them, connections between the concepts and my characters’ behaviors snapped into place. My mind took a giant leap backward revealing a larger picture I was not able to see while focusing in the confines of my office. It was as if I had been looking only at my final destination on an online map. When I zoomed out, I could see all the turns I had to take to get there. Each one connected to the next.

Elicit
Elicit feedback fearlessly. A retreat is a goldmine for feedback. You are surrounded by people with essentially the same goal, but a tremendous variation in experience, education, and interests. As such, you have the potential for input on a broad range of craft topics. Most won’t know your work well enough to comment without first asking questions. Those questions alone invite self-critique. I know there is someone reading who is thinking, the last thing I need is more feedback. Remember that you do not have to act on feedback. It’s information. Take it or leave it. Or, better yet, take what you want and ask yourself why you don’t want the rest. Maybe you’ll discover that it confirms your fears, but maybe you will discover that it cements your conviction. Either way, it’s useful information.

Aspire
Give yourself permission to aspire boldly. Look at those around you and what they have accomplished. Look inwardly and acknowledge how far you’ve come. This is your journey, and the right path is the one you are on. A retreat is an opportunity to boldly, unapologetically state your aspirations. There is a very good chance someone standing within an arm’s length of you shares those same aspirations. You may give them the courage to share their dreams. There is an even better chance someone will walk across the room just to cheer you on. So, what is it you want to be or accomplish? Say it loud and proud. Finish writing my novel. Publish. Be a bestselling author. Whatever it is, so long as you do not limit your dream through fear, it’s right. While it can be scary to express your dreams, remember that failure is only a certainty if you don’t try at all. Give your dreams a voice. Do it surrounded by people who understand the hard work you’re already doing to realize it.

Tangle
Allow yourself to become tangled in discomfort and ambiguity. As a science major turned research director, I am all about untangling and clarifying the world. I want everything to make sense. Creativity is messy, though. The knowing in artistic realms cannot be quantified in a spreadsheet or graphed to identify patterns. Sitting with confusion, fear, and dissonance will yield great insights. The longer you can hold onto not knowing, the deeper your discoveries will be. Angela Ackerman talked about getting to the root of a character’s emotional wounds to understand their actions and ensure the coherence of old wounds and present behavior. As I listened, I was plagued by the thought that half of my new novel might not track logically. I took a deep breath. I sat with the terror of impending hours replotting. In my gut, I knew the plan was solid, but I could not reconcile this one action with the character’s wound. I put it to the side and listened. Out of nowhere, all the pieces of the puzzle snapped together. Suddenly, it all made sense. I had to restrain myself from leaping out of my chair and running to my room to capture it all. The longer I sat with doubt and wonder, the clearer the picture became.

Scribble then synthesize
Scribble it down and synthesize later. I cheated a little here by adding the letter S— twice (scribble and synthesize). This is completely justified though, as I need constant reminders on this point. When I am inspired, in the moment, I attempt to capture nascent thoughts as fully baked (and grammatically correct) ideas. The problem with this method is that, while I am writing a dissertation on the last brilliant idea, an equally meaningful one crosses my consciousness unimpeded by processing. My solution is to scribble notes in a retreat journal during the day and then synthesize when I have a break or get back to my room at night. At first, I worried that I would forget key points. The truth is that I was already missing many with my ineffective strategy. At the end of the day, important concepts stuck. Allowing them to marinate and incorporating comments from others only deepened my understanding. At the retreat last week, this point was hammered home when my internet connection failed, and I was forced to abandon notetaking for photographing the presentation screen. When I went back to finish my notes, the pictures were enough to spark my memory of the speaker’s points and other attendee’s comments about them.

Retreat to Advance
According to the Oxford Languages Dictionary online, the word retreat originates from the Latin word retrahere, meaning pull back, the French word retret, meaning withdraw, and the English word retract, meaning draw back.  This makes perfect sense to me in the context of a writer’s retreat. Think of a bow and arrow. When you pull or draw back a bow, it stores kinetic energy that, once released, will propel the arrow forward with greater speed and force than by simply tossing it. That is what this retreat did for me. I may not have spent much time directly drafting my novel, but I was drawn backward to my limit and now I have been released. This week I’ve sailed much farther than I would have had I not attended. I can feel the propulsive, creative energy from last week’s learning, interactions, and experiences. By retreating, I have advanced.

Copyright 2024 Catherine Matthews