Writers’ retreats. Where you go off and work on that novel.
The Old Chapel in Llanfrynach is £487 for three nights. Urban Writers’ Retreat has rooms from £415 for three nights. Acorn Writing Retreats’ all-inclusive rates are £525 for three days, £675 for four (the Acorn Access Fund offers discounts for marginalised and low-income writers). Rewrite in East Sussex from £1,700 for five nights. Starcroft Farm cabins £320 for a two-night independent writing break and £750 for a four-night small-group retreat with coaching, massage and other extras (the writer was given one night’s stay for this article)
Ain’t that all sucking money off the deluded. 98% of writers will never make back even one three day stay from their book (I know, this, sorry). And an actual writer’s retreat is turn the phone off and hide in the attic.
Sheesh.
Sounds like the owners of some quiet holiday homes in the off season have learnt the lesson of selling shovels during the gold rush.
These businesses cater for those who want to tell everyone they know that they are going to be away on a retreat for a few days to work on their book.
I heartily support all of the firms providing their services to this group of people. It’s smart business and moreover it lightens the pockets of these people.
You have it exactly. If they’ve booked a stay at a writer’s retreat they must be a …WRITER!
(Need to able to change the font size in the comments. The Sage’s pronouncements deserve at least 72 point, bold, underlined in day-glow)
BiS, you forgot flashing. Nothing like back to the 90s web for impact…
Women love status. Being, not doing. It’s why you get these women complaining about how poor they are doing journalism in London. Both of those decisions are status led. They could probably work on technical manuals for an engineering company in Northampton. Better pay, lower costs, and more useful than another article about visiting Barcelona. But they don’t want to tell their friends they live in Northampton working in engineering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUnvgKhWZdI
Yep. I looked at some of the courses mentioned above; they do not expect (m)any male guests.
how poor they are doing journalism in London
ha ha. I read that in transistive form. 🙂
Fools and their money are oft parted.
Selling bridges has always been the most profitable sector of the construction game…
A bit harsh Tim. These are holidays and I am sure they’re perfectly pleasant holidays. I doubt that the punters expect them to lead to fame and fortune.
Cruel but fair. There’s nothing wrong with having a holiday, and holidaying with people with similar interests. “Writer’s retreat” is somewhat over-dignifying things.
But these holidays are tax deductible.
You need income (from writing) that is enough to be taxed for that to be true.
Writing doesn’t generally pay much.
I know what low income writers are – all of them bar a tiny number – but what are ‘marginalised’ writers?
Wait, sorry. White blokes writing white blokecentric lowbrow thrillers.
Barely-literate wimmin, preferable non-white. We all know that. Put the literary equivalent of Alfred Wallis among them and they’d all hold their noses whilst turning their backs.
See also: “artist’s retreats”. As far as I can see it’s mostly wimmin gassing.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/jan/25/10-best-healthy-retreats-europe-nature-creative-workshop-yoga-meditation
Guardianistas like retreats…wellness retreats, horse-riding retreats, yoga retreats, ceramics retreats, self-discovery retreats…
As for writers retreats, I am reminded of Christopher Hitchens’ quip: “Everyone has a novel inside them, and, in most cases, that is where it should stay.”
Jesus. The price of this stuff.
“There are creative sessions on everything from dance to painting, as well as time to enjoy the farm – feeding the animals, collecting eggs or helping harvest vegetables for farm-fresh meals.”
If I’m spending £700 for 3 nights, it’s because I want someone else to collect the eggs. And cook them. And bring them to the breakfast room.
“With a maximum of six participants on each retreat, it’s hands-on, with about six hours a day exploring clays and techniques in the studio – no experience is necessary.”
£1800 to do some pottery. Or drive to Ikea and buy some. As well as a load of new kitchen units.
“Embercombe’s flagship retreat is the Journey, six days of guided reflection, self-discovery and nature connection designed to help participants identify and act on how they want to live their lives.”
For half of £1400, I’ll come to your house and tell you to grow up, stop blaming your parents, find a bloke to have babies with and embrace Nigel Farage as your saviour.
“A busy summer programme celebrates both eastern and western traditions, including meditation, storytelling, women’s and men’s circles, plus a festival-style “tribal” gathering, all held in Celtic roundhouses, yurts and temples. The signature Enlightenment Intensives, held three times a year, are for those looking to dive into self-inquiry, via exercises, silent walks and lectures.”
Can’t you just stay home and drop acid?
“Quinta Marugo is a wellbeing retreat centre in rural Alentejo, southern Portugal, designed to help people slow down and connect with nature. ”
Drive out to a pub in the country, sit in the garden and drink beer. Get a taxi home.
“Both Sides Retreats are for men only, offering space to escape the stresses of daily life and reconnect with a sense of purpose and the natural world.”
Gay. Totally fucking gay. You want to escape the stresses of daily life go to the pub and get pissed and shag the Mrs.
“Designed to be deeply restorative, this week-long Zen Yoga, Singing and Sound Healing retreat takes place in Dalyan, close to Turkey’s south-west coast. Run by yoga teacher Jane Morgan Jones and singer Sarah Warwick, yoga sessions are complemented by singing, with a focus on uplifting chants, mantras and African and indigenous-inspired songs.”
£1000 instead of joining the church choir.
Silly cunts. It’s all New Age bollocks. They should simply go to Church, whether or not they believe, because their current beliefs are equally religious but considerably less coherent. They can do all their bonding and socialising there, as people always have, and put a few coppers in the bowl.
It’s all bollocks. New age, old age. But if you’re a Sikh woman, you can hang out with other Sikh women at the temple and make some food. Go to church and arrange flowers, have a sing song.
It’s why I’m an atheist, but not an anti-church person. Churches (and temples, synagogues) have always been much more than figuring out the mystery. They were about community, charity, at one time, education. Confession is therapy.
Problem is, it’s not the sort of people they want to bond and socialise with, because the people going on these retreats don’t see sensible old ladies arranging flowers as aspirational.
This is why the ‘Alpha Course’ got people in; never mind who was going to church in general, Alpha gave you your own little coterie of “people like us” who went to church together and socialised together.
For half of £1400, I’ll come to your house and tell you to grow up, stop blaming your parents, find a bloke to have babies with and embrace Nigel Farage as your saviour.
Have to say that one did make me LOL
The French and Italian armies run retreating retreats.
One of my feelings about creativity, is that it really isn’t worth starting until you have a great idea. Like if you’re doing a bit of cosy crime, what original twist, what clever mechanism are you going to employ that Agatha Christie or Dorothy L Sayers didn’t? Or how do you structure a story differently? Until you have that, you might as well stack shelves in Tesco until you figure it out.
Nicer wordsmithing is a good thing, but it’s like putting Agent Provocateur on a fat girl until you get the core idea right.
But I think a lot of “writers retreats” are really just an excuse for birds to go have a holiday.
If you wait until you have a great idea to start writing, you will never write anything. Getting started is half the battle.
And if you start without a great idea, you’ll spend your time producing something worthless. Something derivative competing with a sea of other derivative works.
Concepts/ideas have a massive amplifying effect. You can throw a colossal amount of work at a bad idea and it will fail. Like the recent Star Wars movies. On the other hand, The Usual Suspects cost $6m to make.
You have to learn your craft first and then the inspiration might appear. That applies to the writing of music, novels, software…etc.
I learned to build software by starting with “here’s a thing I want to build”. I didn’t just start randomly bashing in bits of code.
Hmmmm… By your logic every birdhouse built, ashtray/bowl lumped, every cut and burn learning *anything* technical in our Youf is useless.
Unless you have Talent. Which you can only find out by Doing ( and most of the time finding out you’re between half-baked and shyte at it… )
Something, something contradictio in terminis…
It’s funny how *every* major fiction writer who has commented on “Starting Writing” is clear about 4 things:
1) If you don’t Write, you *never* learn the craft.
2) The odds of writing anything remotely saleable is about 1%. For “established” writers this chance is about tenfold.
3) Even established writers have to Flog Their Stuff, and are *never* guaranteed a second Success Story.
4) Every idea you have for a Story is the Greatest Original Idea Ever. Except that it isn’t. And your Editor and Publisher will tell you why… without mercy.
That’s what you have to work with. No more, no less..
Agree. It’s my hobby horse about people who at 18 decide to “do computing” at university. If you haven’t been coding your own projects for the previous half dozen years, it’s not something you “just do”, just as you go into electronic engineering if you’ve spent your teens building your own electronic stuff, you go into vet’nry if you’ve spent your teens mucking out horses, you go into automotive engineering if you’ve spent your teens rebuilding motobikes…… and you go into literature if you’ve spent your teens writing gawdawful poetry and short stories.
Well, no. A birdhouse is a good, useful thing. A book that is just like a load of other books isn’t. The cost of writing a shit book is far more than buying a good one.
Practice isn’t worthless, but you don’t usually try to pass it off as performance.
“Like the recent Star Wars movies.”
Not to mention Starfleet Academy.
(“I told you not to mention that!” – Spike Milligan)
The best “Trek” this century is The Orville. It’s head and shoulders over all other post-DS9. I would pay good money for a 4th season or a spin-off movie.
I read that as ‘half the bottle!’
But I think a lot of “writers retreats” are really just an excuse for birds to go have a holiday.
Or just to get away from the other half for a while.
I suspect most of the attendees are single and the owners of many cats……
Isn’t it more about demonstrating her higher status?
The point for these people isn’t being on the ‘artists’ retreat’, but telling Sarah from HR, and Sophie from Number 27, that you’ve been on one.
“I’m writing a novel.”
“Neither am I.”
So, does calling it a “Writer’s Retreat” make the holiday a tax-deductible expense then?
What about software developers’ retreats? I’ve never heard of such, perhaps because we don’t need them. I do get developer’s block and brain fade but a walk and some sleep usually cures that, with the added bonus of lightbulb moments about intransigent bugs.
They exist. Umbraco does these. It’s a mix of workshops, hackathons out in the Danish countryside somewhere. More about training than doing project work. But open source stuff can sometimes get a bit cultish.
I’m always sceptical of anything about travel where I think “but couldn’t you do that on the internet now?”. I go to a local monthly meetup with software people. Not a lot of travel, cost of a taxi home. Fun to chat to people about the stuff they’re doing. But I presume anyone going to these Microsoft events in Amsterdam got the boss to pay for it and is really there to smoke weed, bang hookers and eat rijsttafel.
Every town has a few writers groups. You can probably post links on Reddit early on and get feedback.
Yes, every six months or so I got to a meetup, usually a weekend at a hotel with a conference room. But, as you say, it’s a meetup, show off to each other current projects, put faces on names, get old disks imaged, see how many computers we can network together, have a big nosh-up. But it’s fundamentally a social.
I’ve a good idea what my wife would think if every six months I went of to a hotel for a weekend to meetup with a “friend”.
Her question would be “what’s her name and how old is she?”
Which is why they’re organised as working conferences with really dull titles, so she doesn’t suspect.
Those are called conferences instead. Generally you don’t learn enough at a conference for it to be worth going, so the rest is chalked up to “networking”.
And those have been clamped down on for expensing in some places (mostly the food and drink associated with same it’s true).
This is why I only go to events in Swindon, Bath. Total spend is a couple of hours and £20 of travel.
Networking rarely pays off. I’ve met a few people, done a little work. But its £500 here and there. Not huge money.
See my comment on the previous thread.
“I’m saving up to buy a computer”
“Oh, why don’t you go on a course instead?”
ie, end up with both no money and no computer
Lightbulb moments always came to me first thing in the morning whilst shaving. It was always as if my brain had been figuring it out while I slept.
Selling the sizzle not the sausage
Good on them, it’s trickle down or sideways or something economics. From the gullible to the spiv.
Trickle down from those with more money than sense to the servants in these “retreats” (with the usual fat slice diverted, en route, to the salespeople)
Is this retreat as in run away & hide?
I remember back when I was 13-ish 14-ish I was saving up to buy a computer. My Mum seriously suggested I should instead spend that money going to a computer holiday camp.
So……. ONE WEEK access to computers vs access to my own computer FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE.
That firmly fixed in my mind the complete inability of the distaff sex to understand numbers.
No, it fixed in your mind the inability of *your mother* to understand numbers. When (long ago) I was a trainee computer programmer my “mentor” was a Girton graduate – she was seriously good at her job.
I’ve no doubt your mentor was a *female* Girton graduate, but it is a sobering reminder of how “long ago” one can remember to reflect that there have been male Girton graduates for four decades now!
Ok, it *started* a recognition that was reconfirmed by many that I met that a large majority of females cannot understand numbers. As an example, my grandmother was an example of the complete opposite, she regularly dispaired at my mother’s inability to deal with basic numbers or planning. Similarly the retired lady who lives next door to me. But a much smaller propertion of femalekind were like my grandmother than of malekind.
Tell you what, let’s have a Worstellites Retreat on the Imberbus this summer. Looks like a laugh and a half to me.
https://imberbus.org
Not for me; it would bring back memories of losing some of my prime late teenage years to working at Larkhill.
A pub in Warminster afterwards, then.
Typical, you wait a year for a bus then fifteen come at once.
The Bath Larkhill? MoD stuff?
I’m up for this. I’ve thought about going a few times.
Then reconnect with nature at the Wadworth Brewery.
Good. Let’s organise it closer to the time. That snap of a dozen double deckers going across the Plain is just too hilarious. Those ex-military who might find the Plain too triggering can go straight to Wadworth and not pass Go.
I always thought they called them retreats because oiks go on holiday and they needed to distinguish their activity holidays. But be that as it may, here’s an alternative view.
Golf, sailing, bridge and art magazines that I have direct experience of all offer activity holidays of varying lengths where you can be with like minded people and maybe take instruction while your on holiday, I don’t think anyone going on those expects to come back and make a fortune. I’ve paid quite a bit of money to go on golf and sailing holidays and had a wonderful time.
I take regular golf lessons, not because I want to get on to the veterans tour and make money but because I want to play the best I can because playing well is enjoyable. I know it’s a similar approach to my wife’s students, they enjoy improving and none of them expect to sell anything.
Of course there’ll be some pretentious twats, but if you enjoy writing what’s wrong with wanting to improve even if it’s for your own satisfaction and being around like minded people when you’re trying to improve?
You have not really got with what this blog’s about have you? It’s not about enjoyment it’s about stopping people enjoying anything that does not conform to neoliberal claptrap.
Eh? Have you quit the meds again? No-one here is stopping anyone; we’re just taking the piiiiiiisssssss….. out of you.
Bit touchy aren’t you Normal?
@ Me
So are you claiming that my going on a walk is to conform with neoliberal claptrap? Or are you just claiming that anything that does not coincide with your personal opinions is claptrap?
The latter just like Timmy.
So you regard as “claptrap” the observation that Tim accepts that people may disagree with him. And the observation that TimWorstall.com does not (and AFAIK never has) stopped people enjoying things. These are observed facts and the facts (sadly for your psychotherapist) fail to coincide with your preconceived opinions.
FYI Neoliberalism favours people enjoying things, hence Tim’s enthusiasm for people buying things that are worth more to the purchaser than the seller
I think there’s another thing, which is this idea of doing a thing as mind-improving, theraputic. I reckon there’s a lot of people with mental health problems looking for ways to fix them.
“Both Sides Retreats are for men only, offering space to escape the stresses of daily life and reconnect with a sense of purpose and the natural world.”
Now someone will go on one of these and come back with stresses lowered. Not going to work, someone else cooking for you, having a swim, will lower your stress levels. But it’s only a fix while you’re out there. And just sitting in a hotel room watching movies and getting room service delivering you wine and chocolate is going to have the same effect.
And it isn’t really going to give you a sense of purpose because it isn’t useful. You had some fun, and everyone needs some downtime, to enjoy themselves, but purpose is about making things, helping others, making money, raising a family.
For a bloke, Being A Man. You’re not going to be content unless you think you’ve done the Man’s Job in your life. For a woman, Being A Woman. You’re not going to be content unless you think you’ve done the Woman’s Job in your life. This has nothing whatsoever to do with division of labour and little to do with traditional roles.
Didn’t Rowling write her novel while living in a cardboard box? Maybe they should try that?
I don’t know where she was living, but she wrote it in a nearby cafe.
There’s quite a lot of writers who just stuck a shed in the garden. I think they liked to have a separate environment. Go to the shed, work. Go home, not work.
I have an office in the garden, it was there when I bought the house so I started to use it. It is a good discipline, if I want a tea break I have to go back to the house, step away from that keyboard.
Seen elsewhere
I can imagine being worried that she would. Once discarded, better they stay discarded.
Are you a fan of the humour of Alan Partridge, BiS? I love him, one of the all time great characters.
Amusingly, irl Steve Coogan has less self awareness than his comedy creation. A-ha!
Thankfully, I’ve never been exposed to it. Belongs in that time I had far better things to do than watch TV. Times that reassuringly have continued. S’pose the last time I watched UK broadcast TV was about ’84. And not much then.
These are sex people, Lynn
Back of the net!
Steve posted a picture of George Cole the other day, in his more famous role. George’s, not Steve’s. There was another role in which George played a struggling writer, or more precisely a successful writer struggling to write. With successful avoidance strategies.
Don’t Forget To Write
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9XwpWrYXd0
(the opening theme is muted to duck copyright strike)
All very writery of course, and of its time (1977) but still good BBC before they were complete twats.
After he retired ,a friend of mine wrote an historical novel set in the 17th century about the Debatable Lands between England and Scotland . It was good enough to be published by a small publishing house and he gave me a copy. I thoroughly enjoyed it and asked him when the next one was being written. He told me ,never again, he had got it out of his system and did not need to repeat the experience.. He said the worst part of the whole thing was having to go with a publishers representative to writers seminars to rehash the whole thing and there was no way he was repeating that.
Been pondering this, overnight. I suspect being ensconced with a bunch of struggling writers is the last thing a struggling writer needs. I can see how conventions of code writers might work. Because even newbies might have discovered tricks others don’t know & would be interested in learning. But writers & writing? They’re the sort of people talk, don’t listen. You’d probably come back less competent.
Coder evenings are not really about doing, but what was done. Showing a thing, explaining what we did to build it. Talking about all the problems on the way. “We thought we could use X but actually, it was shite and Y worked better”.
I must be doing it wrong. I just sat at my desk and wrote.