What a writing retreat can do for you.

A few years ago a friend of mine, Giselle Green - an incredibly talented writer - invited me to a writing retreat with her and a couple of friends. I was sceptical. How on earth would I cope somewhere which had no connection to the internet, no telephones and no TV. Did such places still exist on earth? Well, they do and they can be fabulous for a writer. It's an opportunity to get away completely. Most retreats are either in the country or by the sea. Our retreat is in amongst wonderful gardens and here they are.

Tucked away from the real world they are an opportunity to concentrate on your writing in a way you simply don't get at home. I wrote most of my book, The Sanctuary at this retreat. If you're sitting in front of a PC people never feel you're working and writing time can be so easily curtailed by a phone call or other work and pressures. We each have our own little self-catering room so that tea and coffee is on tap whenever you want. It also means that one of us cooks and invites the other over in the evening. So, after an isolated day writing, reading and making notes we can get together for a gossip and a laugh. I'm a very early riser and do my best writing between 5 and 10am but by then I'm pretty pooped. When I'm on retreat I can have a nap and then be ready to write again in the afternoon. I simply can't follow that pattern when all the demands of house, children etc crowd in on me at home. I had a truly wonderful time. I managed to iron out a lot of the difficult areas of the crime story I'm writing and now have only 10,000 words to go till the end. What's more I made a new best friend while I was there. That's his picture above. He's a red siberian pedigree cat with an amazing yowl of a miaow, and the skinniest cat I've ever seen. Anyhow, I should be off writing those 10,000 words now so, goodbye and if you get a chance to go on retreat, grab it!