Winter Writers’ Retreat Run-down

This weekend I have been on my annual writers’ retreat with The Melbourne Romance Writers’ Guild (MRWG). We went to the Whitehall Guesthouse in Queenscliff, a three-storey weatherboard venue with plenty of bedrooms and lots of space (and if you believe some of the attendees a ghost, but I didn’t encounter it). We had twenty writers attend, all members of the MRWG who write romance, or related genres.

Here are some photos from the weekend:

Our workshops on Saturday and Sunday morning focussed on Clifton Strengths, and how they can be applied to writing to improve productivity and reduce angst. The main reason we were working on these strengths was to work on the principle that tapping into what you do naturally, and honing those skills and approaches is likely to result in more improvement that trying to hone skills or approaches that are counter to the way your mind operates or sees the world.

My strengths were somewhat unusual, especially looking around the room at the other writers there. I guess that makes sense, I’m a bit of a weirdo in many ways. I’ve started to go down some YouTube rabbit holes following up on getting to know my strengths and what I can to do maximise the way I work to build on these, instead of working against them.

I remember reading a book a while back, The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, which talked about going with the flow of the river instead of trying to redirect it, or move against the tide. The principles of tapping into these strength themes and move with them are the same idea-use what you already know and do and get better at that.

One of my top five strengths, which was a bit of a surprise to me, was Focus. It’s a goal-oriented strength and apparently doesn’t allow distractions, which doesn’t seem like me to be honest. I feel like I’m quite easily distracted when doing a task, but at the same time, distracting me from a goal is very difficult. I think training myself to tap into this focus strength might have some great outcomes for my productivity.

I got some words down during the non-workshop periods, the trainer, a former MRWG member and coach, had individual sessions with people and I used some of that time as writing time. I’m working on a branching narrative cosy crime novel so hopefully that will be coming to you in the next year or so.

I would like to say a big thank you to Mel, for her work organising the retreat, the other members of the MRWG committee (which I have recently joined), and Samara our presenter/coach for the weekend. I am excited to learn how to work better with myself, and probably by extension with others, by knowing my strengths and tapping into them. I’m looking forward to next year already!