Social support at writing retreats

Post pandemic, the world has most definitely changed. Writers who have been attending our retreats are doing more work remotely and time ‘on site’ is usually spent attending meetings. Whilst this certainly has benefits and may be preferable for those who are more introverted, for people like me (most definitely extroverted) then this can be a bit of a struggle. One might even start a whole writing retreat business to counteract the ‘working from home’ effect (cough).

But this remote working can also make writing very difficult, as it was already a pretty lonely experience. An in-person writing retreat for me has never felt so valuable for my writing. Whilst the aim of a writing retreat is not to be a social occasion per say, generous breaks offer time to talk, and being with other writers is really nice. This environment also offers opportunities to use some helpful strategies (or Behaviour Change Techniques - BCTs) which can support you with your writing (also see blog on writing as a behaviour).

Unlike traditional creative writing retreats, our structured writing retreats are focussed more on productivity, linked to an established format originally developed by Rowena Murray who is an expert and author on academic writing and writing retreats.

No-one reviews your writing – all your writing is done on your own – but if you want to tell us about it in the breaks then we’re more than happy to listen! I personally am super nebby (or nosy) about what people are writing, purely because I love learning about what people are doing.

The aim of the retreat is to create a non-surveillance but supportive environment. As facilitators, we’re not there to tell you what or how to write, we simply create the environment to optimise your writing productivity (or your writing behaviour). Social support is a recognised strategy (or BCT) to help facilitate behaviour change. By providing this within the retreat, this can help you write more productively. We help to keep writers to time in our retreat structure and provide tips and advice on how to optimise writing performance. We prompt you to start (and stop!) writing and weirdly enough, so far, people do exactly that! We also offer encouragement, congratulations on doing the work, some advice or things to think about, and a little something to reward your hard work at the end of the day.

We as facilitators also write with you. There’s nothing more off-putting than someone watching you write! And of course, we have our own writing to do(!) and this encourages everyone to write together. From a behavioural science perspective, there’s a few things going on. First of all, everyone is ‘demonstrating’ the behaviour of writing. If you pop your head up, that’s what you see. And if everyone else can do it, why not you too?

Eventually we would love to see our retreats turn into a community where regular writers come together, because there’s nothing nicer than writing with friends, but friends who also have writing to do! If you’d like to join us, check out our upcoming retreats here.