When retreating means going forwards

Last year I blogged about the kind of writing holiday I would love to go on – one where I'd be left to my own devices and not have to do any tutor-led writing exercises, crit anyone else's work or, heaven forbid, cook for other people.

So, last week I headed off to Retreats for You, a writing retreat run by journalist Deborah Dooley in her own idyllic 18th-century Devon house. Situated in the centre of the village of Sheepwash, the building – which was once a shop – has the happy feel of a place that's been used for living, working, gossiping and laughing for centuries. It feels like home from the moment you step through the door.

A stay at Retreats For You really is a retreat from the demands of the world. All food is provided, the tasteful and simple décor of the rooms is conducive to inner peace, and there's no pressure to do anything. You can write 24 hours a day, or you can doss around, sleep, read, walk and eat – it's up to you.

At the beginning of the retreat, I had a complete first draft of my second novel but had left it festering at that. With a deadline-esque job and a three-year-old son, even making a cup of tea feels like a self-indulgent luxury, let alone writing another book. But the story I'm working on could be pretty good, if it had the chance, so I decided to become the Daily Mail's version of the anti-Christ and abandon my little one to the care of his father for four nights.

When I arrived at Deborah's house, I faced the temptation of just clinging to the crisp lavender-scented bedding and sobbing in gratitude at the thought of sleep and proper food. But I had work to do and only four days in which to do it.

The novel was at the stage where I couldn't measure progress by word count, but neither could my efforts be dignified by the term 'editing'. It was more like trying to chop up a turkey and reassemble it as a diamond.

Retreats For You was the perfect place to get a bit of space, to have the luxury of thinking things through rather than panicking that I have to get words on the page before the next bombardment of noise and demands. I had not spent a full day writing fiction for at least 10 years and it was a real eye-opener to discover how much is possible when you can organise writing as a working day.

The retreat is full board (though Deborah also does B&B if required) and the food was gorgeous – really good, healthy, home-cooked meals that formed the perfect fuel for the writing brain. Though it's fine if you want to eat in your room and carry on working, I enjoyed the opportunity to meet up with the other guests and hear all about their progress. In a perfect example of attention to detail, Deborah even brought a pre-dinner glass of wine to our rooms each evening!

Spending a few days away with the book enabled me to fall in love with it again, and since returning home, I have been able to treat it as if it were a first novel. I don't know whether it will ever get published, but I'm writing it because I want to and because I love the characters – goodies, baddies and all. I think it's in many ways better than anything I've written before, and whatever might ultimately be its fate, it's worth finishing for its own sake. I'm glad to have had the opportunity to go on a retreat, reboot my brain and regain the joy of writing.

To find out more about Retreats For You, visit their website
Deborah Dooley guest blogged for us in July last year.

A guide to writing course dwellers

As a connoisseur of courses, here’s a directory of the type of people you will meet if you sign up for a series of evenings, or an inspirational weekend.


The Bookwife
She writes now the children are at school, or ideally have buggered off to university. She fits writing between school runs, food shopping, house cleaning, cooking, and dutiful love-making. Her one aim is to validate her life by achieving something. She is galled at her husband’s expense account lifestyle and important sounding lunches, and longs for something to show what she’s worth. That means one thing – publication. Bookwife wants to learn as much about the craft of writing as she can, as quickly as possible, and then churn out something publishable.

Output: she’s on her third unpublished novel.

Spends most of the course: frowning, and the breaks phoning in to check that the kids are alright.


The Lit-chick
She’s a girl on the town complete with glossy shoes and glossy hair. Writing is what she always wanted to do; it’s why she read Eng Lit (at Oxford, of course). She’s doing a job that she calls “dullsville” as an assistant to some big knob in advertising. The job's not important, just a way to earn a little pocket money, but somehow that, and keeping up with hundreds of friends, leaves little time to write. The party last weekend was such a hoot, she could hardly miss it. Her output of text messages betters the word count of most authors.

Output: she hasn’t a novel on the go and might never finish one, but if she does it will be an instant best seller.

Spends most of the course: giggling with the other Lit-chick sitting next to her.


The Bookfly
Each day he wears the same pair of scuffed leather jeans and the black tee shirt. To acknowledge his late arrival on the second morning, he grunts in the direction of the course tutor and then explains how he drank a whole bottle of whisky last night in some dodgy club in Brixton. When he learns that you don’t worship Bukowski, he sneers. Whenever one of the other writers reads their work aloud for criticism you can see him scratching his stubble and raising his eyebrows in feedback. His own idea, still in concept form, is for a novel about an altered political state based on a cult of violent sex.

Output: he’s got too much of a hangover to write today.

Spends most of the course: eyeing the Lit-chick.


Gramps
He’s been writing, on and off, for sixty years. Now retired from his job as an Educational Realignment Counsellor and Coordinator with Brent Council, he’s free to do so full time. He generously offers willing advice based on his vast experience to all, including the course tutor. He also shares from his life experience without reserve, in detailed anecdotes for the benefit of the whole class.

Output: Over three hundred “poems”, some published in the Brent libraries annual. Collection upon collection of short stories including a volume he had printed himself in 1967 which he’d love you to take a look at, if it's not too much of an imposition. A novel he’s been working on for five years, set against the background of the Boer wars, now standing at two hundred thousand words.

Spends most of the course: comparing his own narrative style to the great English diarists.


The Exotic
Her parents escaped from some war-torn hell-hole ten years ago. She reads from her work with a bowed head in a voice barely audible. Her words seep onto the walls and are splattered on the ceiling in a way that changes the whole atmosphere in the room. When she finishes, silence grips every throat as we absorb the horrors that have just been related. Finally, the tutor calls for a break. In the break, Gramps and The Bookfly can be heard agreeing that she can’t write.

Output: the book is nearly finished and she has an offer from a publisher.

Spends most of the course: taking feverish notes, staring at the page, avoiding eye contact.


The Gossamer Strand (can be male or female, or some combination of the two).
As thin as a sheet of paper. When Gossamer reads there is silence too: an awed appreciation of the poetic nature of the work. There’s a wispy translucent quality to the prose as she reads in a stumbling voice. In the breaks, when Lit-chick or Bookwife try to befriend him, he shies away, says he'll stay in the room, finish the exercise the tutor set. He doesn’t turn up on the last day of the course.

Output: carries a binder stuffed with manuscript pages, but it’s nothing worth mentioning, ‘Just an early draft’.

Spends most of the course: saying that she’s no good.



All of the above characters are entirely fictional and any resemblance to members of my writing circle is entirely accidental.

Guest post by Deborah Dooley at Retreats For You

Deborah Dooley has been a freelance journalist for over 25 years, covering a huge variety of subjects from health issues to celebrity interviews. In 2008 she started Retreats for You, welcoming writers to her idyllic home in Sheepwash, North Devon.

Deborah blogs at http://retreatsforyou.blogspot.com/

We’ve all heard inspiring stories about women writers who regularly rise at 5am to write for 2 hours before waking their four children, getting them dressed, breakfasted and off to school, and then going off to work, (wearing a neat suit, high heels and full makeup), having first bestowed on their partner a kiss full of sexual promise. They’re marvellous. I’m not. And I suspect that had I not been fortunate enough for the last 25 years or so, to write for a living, I would rarely have found the time or indeed the energy to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

And so I sympathise entirely and profoundly with people whose jobs, children, partners, cats – whatever - sabotage their literary endeavours. And when the last of my three children flew the nest, a suggestion for filling the resulting space wrenched me from my brief and slightly self indulgent period of empty nesting with all the force of a Chambers Thesaurus hurled through the air by a frustrated journalist with writer’s block and a tight deadline. The idea was so obvious, and so right.

A writers retreat. A place for people to write, with no distractions, and discussion and feedback on their writing if needed, in a supportive environment, nurtured by plenty of home cooked food and enough good wine to fuel the muse.

Researching the idea, which was thought up by a dear friend, was simple. I asked every writer I knew, and a great many I didn’t, what they thought. Reactions ranged from ‘it sounds like heaven’ to ‘how soon can I book in?’ The plan was an unqualified success, even before we’d opened. And since Sheepwash, our village, is somewhat off the beaten track, my husband, an affable type, volunteered to run a taxi service for guests, to and from the nearest mainline station in Exeter.

In March last year, following the application of a lot of white paint, and the purchase of some crisp white cotton bedding and several angle poise lamps, we welcomed our first guests to ‘Retreats for you’.

To a lot of people the idea of opening your home to strangers might seem a daunting one. But the simple fact that this is a home and not a hotel, plus the immediate common ground we all share, means that we get to know our guests with astonishing speed. Within hours they are helping themselves to tea in the kitchen of our rambling house, and wandering comfortably in and out of the unlocked front door, to visit the village shop or pub, or wander around the beautiful Devon countryside.

We all eat together around our big wooden table, like a large literary family, (although if someone wants to carry on working, they can take a tray up to their rooms). And in the evenings we sit around the fire in the living room, discussing and sometimes reading work, and sharing ideas and creativity. Our guests have included fiction writers (including one Mills and Boon author), poets, people writing autobiographies, screen and playwrights, and children’s writers. All have been charming in so many different ways, and in almost every case, they achieve much more than they set out to during their time here. For me, witnessing their level of achievement is a pure delight. A bit like giving birth - but much less painful. Retreats For You is now a year old, and I am immensely proud of our many positive testimonials, especially as the recipe for success is so simple.

Take one writer, and add a cosy but xen like room with a desk and kettle. Remove the pressures and chores of everyday life, combine with feedback if needed, and fold in plenty of good homecooked food and a dash of wine. The result? Several thousand good quality words.



www.deborahdooleyjournalist.co.uk/retreats.html