The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#236) -- Group Retreat

Yesterday you wrote about an ideal personal retreat as a writer.

What would be your ideal group retreat for yourself and other writers?

Having attended several writers' conventions, which tend to be more about breakout sessions and group-back-patting dinners, I would truly love to find a place to really relax and strip away the writer costume to the person beneath and shoot straight with a group of like-minded creators and artists.

For me, that group would have to be inclusive for other art styles, not just writers. I'd love to be in a place with painters and artists and writers and _______________, to chew the fat about all kinds of questions that lead to art, not just discussions about the semantics, dynamics, and processes of writing.

Also, in a perfect world, this retreat would be in the mountains. I find the mountains incredibly relaxing and great for removing stress from my thoughts, if not also my body. 

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#235) -- Ideal Writer's Retreat

What would be your ideal place for a writer's retreat?

I assume by the singular you mean a retreat for me alone (not with other writers, because that would be a far different setting).

Here it is, folks, the best place on earth!

For me, that ideal location would be my MeMe's house (MeMe is what my cousins and I called my grandmother). After she died, my mom and dad bought the house and we use it for our visits to South Georgia now.

It's in a town so small that it doesn't  even have it's own phonebook listing (it shares it with the next "large" town nearby. Still, it's where I grew up, the one place what was always home (and always will be) no matter where I have lived or will live.

One day, should my career take me to that fantastic place where I can write full time, I plan to use it for a month or two each year as a "writer's escape", or for periodic "writer weekends" to really hunker down and knock out a bunch of words over a short time.

In a perfect world, I'd be there now, writing.

Maybe when my wife retires.