What do the majority of writers have in common?
Spot the writers
We’re self-indulgent, miserable fuckers half the time and single-minded obsessed sociopaths the other half. To hang out with us is like walking on hot coals. If you don’t look down, you won’t get burnt but the moment you do is the moment you realise the soles of your feet have turned a nice shade of charcoal grey and you’re not even wearing socks.
I’m writing this post following a writer’s retreat I attended in East London. It was recommended to me by a writer friend a month ago shortly after I’d broken my wrist. I was complaining about not being able to type properly, but really I was just using that as an excuse not to write anything. And yes before you ask I did try voice recognition software but all that happened there was I ended up spending 4 hours trying to install the damn thing on my laptop before realising my system didn’t like it after it had shut itself down for the 56th time.
Anyway, back to the retreat.
I remember going to retreats with school when I was a kid. I went to Catholic school so they tended to try and beat Christianity into us with a very large metaphorical crucifix wielded by a priest named Father Dangerfield (first name George). The retreats involved us visiting a local church and learning more about Christianity and Jesus’ role in our everyday lives. In retrospect I think it was just an excuse to give the teachers at school a break and make the school chaplains and priests actually do some work instead of preaching about God all the time.
Thankfully a writer’s retreat is nothing like that.
The writer’s retreat I went on involved about 20 people sitting about in a room with their notepads and laptops and actually doing some writing. It sounds really unexciting, but the one thing most writers will tell you is that they will do anything…literally anything…to avoid sitting down and writing. I once drove all the way to Milton Keynes to drop off a bag a friend had left at mine despite knowing I would see them during the week, just to avoid writing some articles that were due the next day. Who the hell would want to go to Milton Keynes voluntarily? A writer would if it meant them avoiding work they had to do.
So I couldn’t very well leave when I was in a room filled with other writers all trying desperately to scribble type and dribble anything that makes sense onto their notepads and computers. I would have looked pretty shit if I’d said ‘sorry guys, got to go to Milton Keynes to…er…check out the roundabouts’. Not only would that have been a lie, it also would’ve meant another unnecessary trip to Milton Keynes. And it’s many roundabouts.
So I stayed.
And guess what happened? I actually wrote something.
I mean, it’s not going to win the Man Booker Prize or anything (not sure I’d want to anyway as all the books that ever win that thing I rarely like and the judges list often reads like a ‘who’s who’ of pretentious twats who wouldn’t know what a good book was if it came up and slammed itself shut on their faces. Give me the Hugo Awards any day of the week thank you.) But it’s something.
I’m trying to clear up the loose ends in the first draft of ‘The Spy Who Didn’t Love Me’. Lately it’s become more a case of avoiding ‘The Spy Who Didn’t Love Me’ because she really hasn’t loved me since Christmas. But the writer’s retreat forced me to begin the process of going back to address the issues and make the draft the best it can be before I move onto my next book and coming back to edit this one.
The retreat is run by Charlie (a woman not a bloke) who has quite successfully monetised something hundreds of writers groups and bodies offer for free a lot of the time. For £45 you get a whole day of uninterrupted space to write and interact with other borderline psychopaths…I mean writers. Lunch is catered for and you’re supplied with endless cups of tea and cake (if that’s your thing). The best bit is; mobiles are banned. I can think of worse things to spend money on. What Charlie has done that other groups have not, is to attach real value to something.
The atmosphere is nice and because you’ve invested money to come along, it gives you added incentive to achieve something. There is also the benefit of being unable to avoid writing. After all when you’ve spent hard earned cash on something you want to make sure you get your money’s worth.
And I think I did.
Everyone was really nice. I met some great people including a journalist who’s been struggling to find the time to finish her first book and an advertising exec who’s trying to find more time to do creative writing. Time was the common element amongst all of us. We seem to struggle to find enough of it in order to do the writing that we actually want to do. The one thing the retreat gave me was the time to write what I wanted to write without any interruptions, and the opportunity to interact with people who struggle with the same things I do. Unlike a café, an office or a home where there are always hundreds of distractions all vying for your attention, a writer’s retreat gives you the silence you so often fail to find in a world of smart phones, laptops, tablets and 24 hour news. I would go again and I probably will.
This never happens to me because I’m an awesome liar.
At the end of the day though, how you use the retreat is entirely up to you. As I watched a lady across from me come back with her 17th cup of tea in two hours I can safely say that no matter the level of silence, the lack of mobile phones, tablets…no matter the decrease in distractions…a writer will always find something to avoid doing some actual writing.
Tea anyone?
If you’d like to know more about the urban writer’s retreat just follow the link below. You can follow Charlie on Twitter as well.
http://www.urbanwritersretreat.co.uk/
