My birthday is this month (this Sunday, in fact, if you’re reading this the week this post goes live) and I want to celebrate with you!
Something that’s been on my mind a lot lately is writing retreats. It’s not practical for most people to head to a cabin in the woods for two weeks, so I’ve been thinking of ways to create DIY writing retreats at home (or close to home).
My MFA program was low-residency, which means I’d spend a week in Cambridge, MA twice a year learning, writing, and workshopping. I loved residencies so much.
While it wasn’t exactly the same thing as a writing retreat, it did give me the desire to dedicate focused time to my writing. And now, eight years after my MFA program, I’m still thinking that way.
Maybe you get the itch sometimes too and want to figure out a way to have a writing retreat without putting your whole life on pause.
So I created a free ebook for you because I know I’m not the only writer out there with an urge to hide away and get creative!
Click here to get your hands on a free copy today.
And please, share with your friends! If you find this ebook helpful, I’d love it if you spread the word.
As a special bonus, I’m also offering $33 off any of my writing coaching packages from now until my birthday on Sunday, March 10th. If you’ve been thinking about getting extra support and accountability for your writing journey, now is the time to sign up!
I hope this resource inspires you to try building your own DIY writing retreat. Let me know if it does!
By the time I realized I was writing a novel, it was too late to turn back.
I’d already been writing for a month or so on an image that came to me while doing a writing exercise. The image was of two people standing together in a patch of wild fennel.
Initially, I was just writing whatever came up. I didn’t judge, assess, or expect what I was writing to become anything in particular.
I was just freewriting about something that made me curious and enjoying the process.
Soon, I started writing feverishly, like I was downloading information from somewhere and transcribing a story that already existed.
I wrote thousands of words and dozens of scenes when I realized there was actually quite a bit of story to tell.
My initial reaction was to figure out a way to shorten the story so it wouldn’t be too long, yet I also didn’t want to force it into the space of a shorter piece when it clearly was a novel.
But at the same time, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when it came to writing a novel.
I hadn’t planned ahead, I hadn’t done any research, I hadn’t plotted out the story at all or developed any of the characters or given a single second of thought to the magnitude of writing a whole entire novel.
You have to understand, I’m a planner! I like to be prepared. But this story came out of left field, and before I could really grasp what was happening, I was writing a novel.
So… I rolled with it and wrote a novel. And honestly, that was the best thing that could’ve happened.
Here are my key takeaways from accidentally learning to write a novel so you can implement them, too.
There’s A Time And Place For Planning
And I happen to think it comes after your first draft is complete.
I know some people disagree with this and won’t start a project unless it’s thoroughly researched and outlined first. If that’s your jam, you do you, boo.
I’m not here to tell you to fix what isn’t broken.
But if you’re working on your first book and planning ahead is stifling your creativity, remember that your first draft is where you’re learning the story and figuring everything out.
If you want to throw your outline in the trash and wing it for draft #1, DO IT.
Planning ahead is not always the best way to write a book. Sometimes you have to let your writer instincts run the show, especially with a new story.
You Can Revise EVERYTHING Later
This is now one of my writing mantras, but I didn’t come to fully understand it until I was writing a novel and had no idea if I was doing anything right.
Not only is this true, but it’s also a way to let go of perfectionism and just write.
So many people get caught up worrying if they’re doing it right (hello!) or just making a mess. You know what? You can’t really assess that until you’re done writing.
And then once you have a completed draft in front of you, you can revise everything.
I love reminding myself that I can fix anything in revision, too. Plot holes will get patched up later, characters will be fleshed out more thoroughly, typos will be corrected.
There’s no reason to get hung up on getting it “right” on your first pass of a story. Just get it written and deal with the piece as a whole later when you revise.
Don’t Think Big Picture Too Much
When you think big picture while writing a novel (or any large project), you’re bound to get overwhelmed by how much goes into it.
I only think “big picture” with my projects in terms of story arc and hitting certain emotional markers.
Otherwise, my focus is always on writing one scene at a time.
A novel is just a series of scenes tacked together, after all.
So focus on one at a time and make it as strong as possible while you’re focusing on it. Then, move on to the next scene. And the next.
You can worry later about the order of your scenes or if each one works. But when you’re writing, think as small-scale as possible.
Stay on the ground, rooted in the action of each scene rather than going aerial and trying to make sense of the whole landscape before the story is complete.
You’ll know when it’s time to take a step back and look at your story from a wider perspective. Until then, don’t worry about it. Just focus on the individual pieces that will form the larger story.
It’s OK To Not Know What You’re Doing
I own a lot of books on writing. I have an MFA and I’ve taken a good amount of writing courses separate from my academic experience.
And you know what? I still don’t know what I’m doing. I have a feeling you don’t, either.
There’s nothing wrong with that because honestly? That’s just pretty much how writing goes.
You can study the craft and read obsessively and dedicate yourself to becoming as good a writer as possible, and still have no idea what you’re doing.
So when you undertake writing a novel, know that it’s ok if you feel completely lost most of the time.
You can learn anything craft-wise that you need to learn while you’re writing, but you can’t fully know your project until it’s done.
So keep writing even when you feel overwhelmed by uncertainty. If you think you don’t know what you’re doing, that means you’re doing just fine.
Have you ever written a book? Do you hope to write one? Tell me about it in the comments!
You open your notebook and uncap your pen. This is the time you’ve set aside to write. You’re ready.
Your hand hovers over the blank page as you scan your mind for the right way to begin.
You wait… but nothing good shows up. All your ideas sound too cliche or dumb to write down.
You’re frozen, waiting, thinking, panicking, hoping something brilliant surfaces through the muck.
Finally, frustrated and dejected, you close the notebook and tuck it away in a drawer.
Or perhaps you pull up a blank Word document and stare at the blinking cursor until you can’t stand it anymore.
You write a few paragraphs or sentences, then delete it all until you have a big white space and that tiny, blinking line staring at you.
The frustration of hating every idea you have is overwhelming.
You don’t feel smart enough, good enough, funny enough to write anything decent, so you close the document and walk away.
It’s moments like these that make writing feel hard. Coming up with a good idea can feel painfully difficult, almost impossible.
The thing is, writing itself is actually not hard. The act of writing, of holding a pen or typing into a blank document, is simple.
There’s almost nothing to it.
The hard part is the mental resistance that convinces you your ideas are garbage and nothing you write will ever be worth reading.
That is what feels hard about writing. Not the writing itself, but the mental barriers we have to scale in order to write the things we want to write.
Practice Nonjudgmental Writing
Writing feels especially difficult when we get caught up in judging our work. The harsher you judge yourself, the harder the writing will feel because your bar is set too high.
What if you wrote without expecting the words to be anything in particular? Could you let the words just be whatever they are without examining them for their worth?
Could you write with a sense of detachment? As if someone else had written those words and they weren’t directly tied to your own value as a writer or human being?
Nonjudgmental writing means you allow yourself to write the things that naturally come up without assigning a value to them. You detach from the need to say if it’s good or bad or whatever.
It’s a practice in writing without expectations. You let the words exist without expecting them to become a polished, perfect short story or novel or essay on the first go. You give your writing radical acceptance.
Try this with some low-stakes exercises or prompts first, then apply it to your writing sessions. It’s a continual habit, writing without judgment or expectation, but once you start doing it often enough, you’ll see that the writing itself feels easier.
Recognize The Ways You Feel Resistance
Resistance is sneaky. It doesn’t always look or feel one way.
The top thing resistance does is convince us that writing is too hard. It accomplishes this by being clever and disguising itself.
Your resistance might come in the form of you feeling like 15 minutes isn’t enough time to write, so why bother? Or it might come through as self-judgment (who are you to write this, anyway?).
Maybe it shows up as a desire to do literally anything else but write. Laundry never seems as appealing as when you’re planning to sit down and write, after all!
Pay close attention to the ways resistance shows up in your life. As you start to see where resistance exists for you, you can be deliberate about working around it.
Maybe 15 minutes isn’t much, but you can write at least a page in that time. And maybe you’re not an expert at fiction, but you wouldn’t feel right not trying to tell this story. And yes, laundry and dishes need attention, but not right now. They can wait.
Resistance makes writing feel hard when it really isn’t. Be aware of it and write anyway and see how that starts to shift things for you.
Remind Yourself That It’s Ok If Something Is Difficult!
There’s a huge difference between feeling like writing itself is hard and feeling like a specific aspect of the writing process is hard.
And even if there are parts of writing that you find tough… that is TOTALLY OK.
Truly! It’s not going to kill you if revision is tricky or if you can never choose the right point of view or if the querying process is a lot to wrap your brain around.
There’s nothing fatal about writing.
If it feels hard sometimes, that’s ok. Accept it, try writing without judgment or expectation, and be conscious of resistance.
The truth is, if you truly want to write, you’ll do it even if it seems hard. You’ll figure out how to incorporate it into your life if it’s important enough to you.
What do you think is the hardest part of writing? How does resistance manifest for you? Tell me in the comments!
When you write something good, you know it’s good.
It feels like a big YES on the page. It’s unique, it’s smart, it’s totally different from anything else you’ve written. You love it for how good it is but also for the fact that your brain came up with it.
The thing you wrote is so brilliant. YOU are so brilliant.
Darlings are parts of your writing that you feel are especially well-written or clever or special. Your affection for them is more profound than what you feel for the rest of your writing in general.
They reflect your own writing skills back at you. Darlings might take you by surprise, proving that you do in fact have what it takes to be a great writer.
We cling to them because of how they make us feel. We want to keep them because they remind us of what we can do.
William Faulkner famously said, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
I’d venture to say almost every writer has heard this bit of advice before. Maybe you’ve tried it but found it too difficult to slash all the things you love most about your writing. I don’t blame you.
So how exactly are you supposed to kill your darlings without breaking your own heart?
Practice Not Being Precious About Your Work
One of my biggest takeaways from writing consistently in my 20s and doing an MFA program when I was still a fairly new writer was that I simply could not be precious about my work.
I had to learn not to put too much importance on any single story or sentence or idea that I came up with.
In the beginning, I spent a lot of time clinging to the parts of my writing that I thought were especially good.
I don’t think this is a bad thing, though. It’s wise to recognize what you like about your own writing. It’s also nice to feel like you’ve got a handle on this writing thing once in a while, too. Give yourself props where props are due!
With that said, just know that when you treat your writing with too much preciousness, it becomes harder to do the necessary work in revision that often requires us to cut things we really love.
The best way I’ve found to feel less attached to the work I produce is to make a lot of it! Keep writing. Keep producing. You’ll naturally improve over time and you’ll definitely find new things to love about your work.
Trust That You’ll Come Up With Something Else Brilliant
Part of the reason it hurts so much to kill our darlings is we fear we’ll never write something that great again.
This is why it’s crucial to keep creating.
Write… then revise, cut, rework the things you love that just aren’t working anymore, and keep writing. That’s honestly the best formula I’ve found for doing this in a way that hurts as little as possible.
Because if you don’t keep writing, if you pour everything you’ve got into one piece of work for so long that it’s the only thing you have, you’ll feel too attached to see it clearly and revise it well. You won’t feel capable of killing your darlings. It’ll just be too painful.
Trust that you’ll always be able to come up with more brilliance in your work. It might take a lot of effort or trial and error to get there, but you’ll be able to do it again.
If you wrote a line that you really, really love in a story, but it doesn’t work anymore or it’s distracting for the reader or it doesn’t lend any clarity to the text, for example, appreciate it for what it gave you (confidence) and cut it knowing full well you can write something as good or better if you keep trying.
Don’t Cut It Just Because You Like It
When I teach writing, I tell my students over and over again to trust their instincts.
You absolutely must trust your instincts when it comes to killing your darlings.
Only you know if you love something you’ve written because it makes you feel good about yourself, or if it actually works in the story.
If it’s only on the page because it makes you feel like a competent writer, you’ll want to examine it in the bigger scheme of your story.
Does it advance the story? Does it clarify something for the reader? Does it pull its weight on a character or plot level, or is it just there to make you look smart?
BUT… don’t cut something simply because you love it. If you love it and it works, it had better stay on the page!
You don’t have to read through your writing and slash everything you like. You just have to think critically about whether the things you like actually belong in the story.
This means trusting your instincts, taking a good look at your story overall, and making decisions that separate your feelings of worth as a writer from the work on the page.
Tell me in the comments if you struggle with killing your darlings. Have you ever cut something in your writing that you really loved?
It was mid-August in 2014. I was sitting on my back deck with a notebook, freewriting scenes of what I hoped would be my first short story in a very long time.
I hadn’t written creatively in ages, and I missed it.
I’d spent the previous five months very sick with ulcerative colitis. My autoimmune disease had flared in the spring, rendering it almost impossible for me to leave my house, eat, or function normally.
An “arthritic reaction” to a medication left me almost unable to walk for about four weeks in the midst of the flare. The joints in my hips and knees and my entire lower back screamed every time I tried to go up or down the stairs, walk the dog, or sit on the couch.
Thankfully, I worked from home full time. I did my best to power through the workday, but by the time I logged off, my body would give out and I’d be asleep on the couch before dark.
When the flare started to ease up by the end of summer, my husband and I went on a trip to Bermuda for our anniversary. When we got home, I had the feeling I wanted to write about the island, but I was so out of practice from having no energy to write that I didn’t know where to begin.
I opened my notebook and wrote a few pages of a potential story. It was horrible. Too forced, too stiff.
I needed to write a short story and I needed it to be decent, and I needed my brain to work again, but everything I wrote felt like cardboard.
I settled back in my chair and exhaled. The sky was going a goldeny pink color. The air was warm and humid and smelled like low tide. My neighborhood was quiet except for the distant sound of a lawnmower and the occasional car driving by.
I felt, momentarily, like I was back in Bermuda. Warm and content and so at ease.
Here’s what you’re doing to do, I told myself after a minute, once the frustration of writing passed. You’re going to write for 100 days. Every single day. But there are rules.
You have to write at least one sentence, and it has to be creative. Work emails don’t count as writing. You can write in this notebook or on your phone or computer.
And the biggest rule is that you can’t have any expectations for any of it. You’ll write for the day, as little as a single sentence but hopefully more, and then you’ll leave it there and not worry about if it’s good or bad, what it might turn into, or if it’s worth revising. Just write and leave it on the page.
I made the decision swiftly and without second guessing it. I started that evening. Day one was thrilling. Day two had me questioning my sanity.
The first fourteen days were difficult. I resisted the practice as if doing it would physically harm me somehow.
But then something clicked one day.
Instead of feeling resistance, I started to feel that I didn’t want to miss my writing session. It began to feel as crucial to my routine as brushing my teeth.
It went from being something I had to consciously do, to something that suddenly felt like a non-negotiable part of my day.
Once I was past that hump, the writing came easier, too. I was doing prompts and exercises every day, and even revisited my favorite online writing program, The Story Course.
I would write for a few minutes or an hour, depending on the day and how into the writing I was feeling.
And then when I was done, I’d leave it on the page and not worry about it.
One day, a few weeks into the 100 days, I worked on an exercise in The Story Course (under my favorite lesson, Plot & Drift) that had me make a connection between two seemingly unrelated words.
The words were denim and fennel. I wrote about two people standing in a patch of wild fennel. The air around them glowed. It was dusk. They were of another time period, but I couldn’t tell much more than that.
The image was so clear and specific and made me curious to the point I kept thinking about it and wrote about it again the next day.
And the next and the next until I realized I had a story on my hands that wanted to be told.
The rest of my 100 days were spent freewriting about this one image. I wrote many pages that never saw the light of day again, but it hardly mattered.
Within those pages were the seeds of what became my first novel, a project I’d work on exclusively for the next four years.
I fully credit those 100 days for helping me write a book. I fully believe you too can harness the power of this process as a way to enhance your creative process.
Why It Works
The formula is simple: consistency + a challenge = success.
One hundred days sounds like a lot, but it goes very quickly. For me, it’s just the right amount of time to feel slightly daunted yet energized by the prospect of accomplishment.
Once you push through the muck of resistance, you’ll start to feel ease around the whole process. That ease comes from consistency. Consistency creates a habit.
And habit is the magic sauce that will help you write come hell or high water.
When you turn writing into a reliable habit rather than something you feel obligated to do or something you actively resist or something you can only do under special circumstances, you’re so much more productive and happy.
There’s no drama when your writing is a habit. It’s just easy. The stuff you write might be hard in its own way, but the act of writing will be easy.
Sitting down and getting started will be second nature instead of a hostage negotiation. That alone makes it worth writing for 100 days!
How To Get Started
Just… get started.
Ok, I know that sounds too easy and too hard at the same time, but that’s all it is! It’s a choice.
You don’t need any special tools or equipment. It costs nothing. You don’t need more than a couple of minutes a day. You just need to decide you’re doing it and agree to the rules, especially the rule about having no expectations.
If you go into this expecting to come out with a novel, you’ll struggle. But if you go in with no expectation except that you’ll write something each day, I promise you’ll surprise yourself.
Don’t plan ahead. There’s no way you can predict the incredible things that’ll show up on the page when you’re committed to writing consistently.
If this is something you want to try, make it as simple as humanly possible for yourself.
Keep a notebook and pen handy (bedside table, kitchen counter, in your bag).
Set a reminder on your phone. Ask someone you trust to keep you accountable.
And remember you don’t have to write more than one sentence. You can write a single sentence, can’t you? It doesn’t have to amount to anything once it’s written. You just have to write it. And once you write it, you’re done for the day.
Unless you feel a spark and keep writing, which is ok too.
At the end of 100 days, you might have one or a dozen new stories to work on. You might be in the middle of your novel. Or you might simply have the sheer satisfaction of sticking with your writing for 100 days.
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