Perhaps you’ve seen them: the photos shared across social media from a writer friend’s lavish residency at a New England mansion, or an acquaintance’s month living and writing in a Scottish castle. Perhaps you’ve lingered wistfully over the images of chef-prepared meals, the door-delivered lunches, the smiling faces of other artists and writers, all creating in solidarity. And while traditional artist residencies are wonderful places that offer things writers crave—uninterrupted writing time, scenic beauty, community with other writers, freedom from the daily grind—acceptance into them is almost always outside our control. All you can do is send in the application and hope.
From left: Autumn People group members Colin Hinckley, Meagan Masterman, Cassandra de Alba, and GennaRose Nethercott. (Credit: GennaRose Nethercott)
But what if you’re tired of waiting and hoping? What if, say, you have just one week off in early June and are eager to use that time to finish your novel or flesh out a short story? The good news: You don’t have to wait politely until an acceptance finds you. In fact you don’t need to apply to a conventional retreat or conference at all; the ingredients for a magical retreat are readily available to all of us outside the strictures of a space someone else is hosting—and at the place, time, and budget of our choosing. You have the power to harness a trusted magic: writer friends getting away together on a shared creative mission, each channeling the muse respectively, diving deep into their work, and into their friendships. Breakthroughs happen, books get written, and ongoing support networks can be forged and strengthened—no acceptance letter needed!
Of course the flip side to organizing your own retreat, just the way you’d like, is that you have to organize your own retreat. But if the idea appeals, don’t let that lift intimidate you. Here’s what to consider as you begin planning, organizing, and executing your own retreat with writer friends, with added wisdom from a handful of authors who have done just this.
Craft the Cast of Characters
Before inviting anyone to join you, start by getting clear on what you hope to accomplish on the retreat, the kind of vibe (and vision) you’d like the retreat to have and for others to share. How much writing versus socializing do you hope to do? Novelist Blair Hurley, whose most recent book is Minor Prophets (Ig Publishing, 2023), sums it up: “A successful retreat is about finding the right chemistry with writers and friends who are all serious and committed to their projects. You don’t want to go with people who are there for gossip and socializing when you’re seriously wanting to get work done.” Vu Tran, author of the novel Dragonfish (Norton, 2015), agrees. “It seems to work best when you choose friends who are on the same page about what they’re hoping for,” says Tran, adding that when fellow writers arrive with projects that are already in progress and “genuinely need the time to write,” the retreats feel most productive. That said, what “productive” looks like is up to you: Tran mentions one friend-organized retreat where “we did more playing in the water and sightseeing than writing. But it was still worthwhile…. I don’t think there’s only one way to do it.”
Some questions to consider as you begin gathering your group: Who else is eager to make time for a project they’re trying to finish? Who might leap at the chance to co-organize and create this retreat with you? Which writer friends haven’t you seen in a while? Who is in your orbit that you’d like to get to know better? Who inspires you? Who do you simply like being with? You might also form your group around a shared cause, an identity, a genre, or a passion point. Writer Meagan Masterman has participated for the past six years in an annual writer-friend retreat the group has named “the Autumn People,” after a monologue in Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). Organizer GennaRose Nethercott, author of the novel Thistlefoot (Anchor, 2022) and, most recently, the fabulist short story collection Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart (Vintage, 2024), brought the group together around a “shared spooky sensibility,” says Masterman. Every fall the group escapes to somewhere rural and possibly haunted, and they have built some fittingly uncanny traditions into their gatherings.
Once you get at least one person on board, you can brainstorm together about other group members and even pass off that decision to them. Not everyone needs to know one another at first, and a friend retreat is a great way to expand your circle of compatible writer friends.
Lastly, just as juggling a large cast of characters in your work in progress can get chaotic, so too can organizing a retreat. The social rowdiness factor will likely increase as your group size does, whether or not your group is actually rowdy. With any group, the more people who are involved, the harder it may be to create a focused experience. An important goal for most retreats is quiet writing time, and more writers in a house means that there may be people talking or socializing at different hours. Consider how much of that entropy you want in your space.
Outline the Experience
A retreat that’s well organized is ultimately one that’s less stressful and more fun, so the first thing I do when planning a retreat with friends is to create a shared document listing the various categories we’ll be planning. I recommend using the outline view available in Google Docs for added organization and easy navigating (there are quick YouTube tutorials on this if it’s new to you). The shared document is a place where your group can brainstorm things like dates and the length of your stay; where you’ll go; the budget and how you’ll split costs; how you’ll travel; how you’ll handle food and cooking; and how you’ll spend the days. Having this all written down makes the whole process run more smoothly, allows members to chime in with notes and links, and makes sure everyone is in sync about expectations.
Your budget is something you’ll want to discuss with your group, as you’ll need to make sure you’re taking everyone’s financial situation into account. If one member of the group has a more restricted budget, or needs to stay closer to home, the group can plan around that. Also consider the length of your retreat. One week is usually plenty for most writers; it’s long enough to give a needed respite from regular life and allow significant headway on a project, yet not long enough to get too expensive or for the group energy to become stagnant—or for living issues to emerge with your writer friends. If finding a week that works for everyone is difficult, try something shorter. A weekend is easier to schedule and more affordable, and that brevity could provide urgency to get you all writing.
So where to? The possibilities can be dizzying. If you’re feeling that vertigo, you might want to take Blair Hurley’s advice: “It’s great to choose a location that’s as central as possible to the group and to coordinate and communicate about who can give rides to whom.” Vu Tran adds that in the past his group chose places that were “nice and remote but not so nice that we got distracted.” Similarly, GennaRose Nethercott says that her group’s chosen locale—which has changed over the years and has included a ski chalet, a seaside home in California, and a rustic cabin without running water—is usually “somewhere uncanny and beautiful,” and without urban distraction. “There’s a real benefit in trying different environments and seeing how they affect our work,” Meagan Masterman says. “Experience is always fuel for the creative fire.”
So mull it over with your group. Where would you be inspired to write? Does anyone in your group need to go to Alaska to research salmon runs? Or have a connection to the Southwest, or just a hankering to visit coastal Maine in the offseason? And what scenic spots might provide great inspiration with low outside distraction? Airbnb and Vrbo are good places to start looking, with the advantage of being able to easily scout places with the number of bedrooms needed, but local hotels are also an option.
Since the chefs you’ll probably be relying on for meals are yourselves, it’s also important to plan how food will work. “Something that has worked really well for my groups is to set up a shared spreadsheet with a meal plan, so that everyone signs up to cook a lunch or a dinner on a particular day and everyone else can get work done,” Hurley says. “Then you all get groceries the first night and can relax and focus on your work.” Tran’s group shares a similar structure, with everyone writing all morning and afternoon, then coming together for a shared dinner (prepared each evening by a different member) and nightly hangouts. “And if there’s a night that no one feels like cooking, we simply go out to a restaurant together,” Tran adds. Deciding in advance if there will be daily quiet writing hours and what those will be can offer some sense of reassurance to members prone to social anxiety and FOMO. On Hurley’s retreats, writers arrive with a shared expectation of quiet work throughout the day with time to catch up at breaks and mealtimes, plus a set quitting time at the end of the day that makes room for evenings spent together. Remember: Your retreat time is limited, so deciding in advance how you plan to use your time each day and what you’ll be working on and then sharing that with the group can help create some accountability.
While the writing might be the main reason behind the retreat, getting your writer friends together under one roof is likely a rare occurrence, so take advantage of your evenings. Allow your group to unwind, share, take in the falling snow, make a bonfire, or simply sit and drink tea together. Does anyone play an instrument? Bring it along for the evening. Need to move around after sitting for hours? Dance party! Bring board games, or plan a game of sardines—a twist on hide-and-seek—in the house. (I led that once with a group of grown adults at a residency in a particularly large and enchanting space, and let’s just say it was a very big success.) Whatever the interests and moods of your group, there is no wrong way to do this part of the retreat; it can be fun to let your creative, playful muscles stretch here as well as in the writing.
Spark Some Magic for Your Group
What makes all this better than simply carving out time and writing at home, you may wonder? What can you add to your retreat to help it feel special and inspirational? “A writing retreat is, at its core, an attempt to prioritize and protect the space around your writing practice,” says Nethercott. “It’s a reverent act—and must be honored as such, with whatever sweet, strange, silly traditions you can. In other words: Make it sacred.” The Autumn People come together every evening over drinks to share what they’ve written that day, but their traditions also get much quirkier. “We begin every Autumn People [retreat] by reciting our namesake Bradbury passage,” says Nethercott. “Sure, we seem to forget what page it’s on every year and spend an annoying amount of time searching for it—but that’s become a tradition in itself. Next, we place a pair of crossed bones on a tabletop between us while chanting ‘Blessed Be the Bones.’ Why? Why not. We found them in a field our first year, and they’ve been our mascots ever since. We are very attached to them. If you finish a project while on retreat, you become the keeper of the bones until someone else usurps you.”
What traditions might you begin on your retreat? Sharing work every evening or on the final night is a great place to start, perhaps around a bonfire, in a garden, or in whatever spot feels right, but a writer-friend retreat is also the ideal place to invent more creative traditions, perhaps some that reflect the values and intention of the group.
Make It a Regular Event
So what’s next? You’ve done the planning and you have the group—why not follow in the footsteps of the Autumn People and others here and make your retreat an annual event? Masterman extolls the benefits of this: “By going on a retreat with the same group every year, I’ve gained readers who’ve seen my work evolve and know my strengths and weaknesses.”
The writers I spoke with agree: Myriad options exist for how to organize a retreat that’s generative, meaningful, and fun; there’s no one way to do this. Are travel and cost truly prohibitive? Host a virtual retreat with writer friends that includes both generative writing time and a structured sharing of work; build in something ritualistic and intention-setting. Craving time away from your house or writing space but can’t swing anything elaborate right now? Gather your crew and plan a daylong retreat at a writer friend’s house over a potluck. You could even do multiple days in a row, at different houses in your writer-friend circle, or plan the retreat at a library or other local writing spot. The retreat can be as laid-back and easy as you and your group would like. After all, you already have the two elements that matter most here—the writing and the writer friends.
Joy Baglio’s short stories appear in publications such as Ploughshares, the Missouri Review, Tin House, the Iowa Review, and American Short Fiction, among others. She is the founder of the literary arts organization Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop and produces a free craft Substack for writers called Alone in a Room. She is at work on a novel. Find her at joybaglio.com.
