Podcast: All About Writing Retreats with Laura Davis
hosted by rachelle ramirez
What makes writing retreats so powerful? Bestselling author Laura Davis (The Courage to Heal) joins the Write Anyway podcast to explore the transformative world of writing retreats. From meditation monasteries to the back roads of Bali, discover how stepping away from daily life can deepen your writing practice and change your life.
Key Topics
Different types of writing retreats and their unique benefits
How to choose the right retreat for your needs
The value of stepping away from daily routines
Combining writing with travel and other creative pursuits
Creating safe spaces for deep personal work
Building lasting writing communities
guest bio
Laura Davis is the author of six groundbreaking nonfiction books, including the bestseller The Courage to Heal and her recent mother-daughter memoir The Burning Light of Two Stars. She specializes in building writing communities where people can find their voice and develop their craft.
Learn More
Visit lauradavis.net to explore upcoming retreats with Laura Davis
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transcript
Anne Hawley: Hello and welcome to the Write Anyway Podcast from Pages & Platforms and the Happily Ever Author Club. In today's episode, Rachelle talks with noted memoirist and teacher Laura Davis about the value of the writing retreat. Laura is the author of six groundbreaking nonfiction books, including mega-bestseller The Courage to Heal: for women survivors of child sexual abuse, and her recent mother-daughter memoir, The Burning Light of Two Stars. Her passion, aside from writing, is building writing communities where people can find their voice and hone their craft.
Rachelle Ramirez: Hello, Laura. How are you?
Laura Davis: I'm good. It's so good to see you.
Rachelle Ramirez: Good to see you too. Off camera, we were just saying really quickly, I just do not like being on camera, so
Laura Davis: Well it's not my favorite thing, you know?
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah, it's not mine. So thank you so much for being here and being willing to come on and talk. Today we're gonna talk about the value of writing retreats or what one can expect from writing retreats. Should you go on a writing retreat, wherever this conversation leads,
That would be awesome because I feel like you are the expert on writing retreats. I've been to one of your retreats and it, I have to say, probably changed my life. It was really profound and I know that other people in the retreat said very similar things. So I'd love to get your take what's the value of going to a retreat?
Laura Davis: Well, it's, I mean, it's a big question, but I think that the first value of any retreat, whether it's a writing retreat, a meditation retreat, a yoga retreat, is that it is a retreat , it's stepping out of your routine. It's stepping out of your daily life, your daily obligations, your daily habits and retreats are often in a beautiful place. So you're, at least the retreats I lead, I like to have them often in a beautiful place, although I've done them online as well. But the idea is that you get to step out of your life and deeply immerse yourself in something else. So, for me it's writing, 'cause I'm a writing teacher, so you deeply immerse yourself in writing.
And because you are not dealing with all the contingencies of your daily life, you get to sink in at a very deep level and become immersed. And when you're immersed a lot of other things that trip you up, get out of the way, and you're able to have a much deeper experience, primarily with yourself.
The other thing I love, I mean, there are self retreats. Like when I was working on my memoir, Burning Light of Two Stars, I found it really hard to do the deep work just at home in the routine of my days. And so fairly often, maybe four times a year, I would take myself to a monastery in Big Sur.
And I would just book it for like three or four days, and I would be in some little funky trailer, eating actually bad food. They served you food, but it was like really minimalistic. But the, I didn't care. I was there just to work on my book and I could work on my own rhythm. If that meant at three in the morning, I could do it at three in the morning.
And I got such incredibly, huge progress and huge breakthroughs on writing my book from taking that kind. So that's like a self retreat. So , that's one way to have a writing retreat. And I've used it myself to great advantage, as have many of my students. And then there's retreats with other people or with a teacher.
And there's different types of writing retreats. I've taught ones that are what I call a work weekend. Where people come, they have a project they're working on and they spend many hours every day immersed in that project.
And they could be at different phases. Someone could be writing a book proposal, someone else could arrive with two cases of journals from 30 years ago that they wanna read and they don't really know what they're doing with them. Someone else is, they have a shitty first draft and they're gonna read their whole manuscript, and really get that kind of 30,000 foot view of what they have and what they don't have, without editing along the way. Someone else might be about to publish a book, and they're looking at their page proofs, and someone else might be writing something that's like a family history for their children and grandchildren.
So along that whole continuum, people come, they have a project they're working on and they basically, what I do is I create the conditions where people can focus very deeply. If either in person or sometimes I've done these digitally so that people learn to focus and concentrate even at home.
And then we meet several times a day. People have little individual meetings with me, little coaching sessions, and then we'll meet a couple times a day. People come and they share little bits of work or a dilemma or a problem and I will work with them and everybody else is able to witness and listen in a little fishbowl, and then in the evenings people take turns reading their work and getting some feedback from the group. And it's a very simple structure and people get so much, they have so many breakthroughs and they get so much done. So that's another type of writing retreat that's more focused on working on a particular project.
And the other ones, the ones I really love the most are like the ones you came to where it will be a residential retreat. I like to teach for a week, if possible, five or six days, six or seven days, and there'll be a theme. It could be I've done a lot of retreats dealing with grief or i've done it on, building resilience in a time of uncertainty. That was one I taught last fall. I just last week taught one called Flourishing as we age, and I made that one women only because I decided that a lot of women are not gonna talk about their bodies and the changes in their bodies if men are in the room, so it was a women only retreat. Mine, they aren't all that way. And it was like 25 people from 57 to 93 91, I think. And this cross generational conversation was just phenomenal. And what I love in those settings is the connections people make with each other. And although I am a writing teacher and the vehicle we're using is writing, what I think my core deepest skill is group facilitation and creating an environment that feels incredibly safe, nurturing, and confidential, where people can do very deep work that's very supported. And writing is the tool.
And I, I love watching people. They come in the first day and they're wary and they're like, I don't know. Why did I come to this thing? And a lot of hesitation, and kind of fear. And then the last day they're just beaming, and the love in the room is palpable because when people become vulnerable and are witnessed by each other in a safe environment and really work deeply on their issues, their fears, their grief, their joy, their not knowing what their next direction is, there's just a feeling of incredible lift at the end. And I think people go home with greater clarity. More grounded. More resilient.
And so I really love, I love that and what I love the most is people will say to me, I'm still meeting with the small group that I met at your retreat, and it's five years later and we're still getting together.
So I love connecting people with each other almost more than anything else. More than teaching someone, this is the best. Sentence to use to start your memoir, or, why don't you change the inciting incident here? I mean, I can teach those things, but what I really love is the intimacy and community that gets built at a well-structured, well-run writing retreat.
Rachelle Ramirez: So we've talked so far about three different kinds of writing retreats. The second one was group with some, maybe you're gonna meet one-on-one with somebody. You're gonna do some group share if people want to. How is this third one you just talked about different? What are some of the things that, when you say group facilitation, what does that mean?
Laura Davis: To, to run a retreat well, I plan a lot, so I teach a lot with a friend of mine, Evelyn Hall, and she brings like a different quality that I bring all the structure. I'm the writer and I'm like the head of the retreat, like the, this part. And Evelyn is like all heart.
She brings in dancing music, she brings in an altar, she brings in this spiritual component. She brings in just a huge open heart. And I think we're a really good balance for each other.
Yeah, the difference is like the first thing I was describing, that work weekend, it's for people who are actually, their goal is to publish something or their goal is to complete a particular project and they want feedback on their work. That's why they're there.
So they're, it's all about the writing. And I think this other kind of retreat, the ones that are focused on grief, aging, resilience, or just general writing retreat-- i've done all kinds of topics over the years-- it's much more focused on the process and it's really writing as a tool for self-discovery, writing as a tool for healing, writing as a tool for transformation.
And so at those retreats, there's no feedback. We're not listening to someone and saying, oh, if you change this story this way, it would be more effective. So it's really more of an experience of writing from a deep place and being witnessed and heard, but not having the work critiqued.
And there are a lot of people come to those retreats who don't necessarily define themselves as writers, but they like to write. So maybe they write in journals or they're writing is a tool that they use in their life, for coping, for self-exploration, for self-knowledge, for venting, for accusing, for informing, educating. They're word people, but publishing is not what they're interested in.
I mean, people who wanna publish can come too, but the purpose of that retreat is not to further their book, it's to further their life. So that's, you know, That's another kind. And the other kind that I really love so much. It's something I started doing when my daughter who's now 28, she was 15, so this is like 13 years ago, and she was gonna graduate high school early.
She was our youngest and when I started seeing the empty nest ahead of me, I decided I wanted to also teach writing retreats in other places around the world. And the first one I did was in Bali, and I'm going back to Bali in August. It'll be my 11th time taking people there. So obviously I really love it there.
And these trips combine adventure travel, usually staying in really small boutique hotels, really kind of off-the-beaten-path tourism with a certain amount of, there's usually like hiking or snorkeling or they're active, physically active. And then there's usually art, seeing art and music and, it like the Bali trip is called Back Roads of Bali. Like you're not going to the main tourist sites, and so it combines touring and really getting to know a country or a region with writing.
And the writing is a smaller component here, like the other retreats, like the one you attended, we would write for three hours in the morning, three hours at night, you'd be in a little group that wrote for another hour. It's like writing, and then resting or hiking or walking. But on these retreats the writing might be a couple of hours a day, and the rest of the day you're doing other things. I teach people a little bit about travel writing so they can record their experience. But it's also a way to ground and to, to bond with the other travelers.
And I think there's something wonderful about a creative vacation that sets it apart from just typical tourism. There's something about doing something creative every day that, creates bonds, you pay more attention. I get people much more tuned into the sensory details of what they're experiencing every day. And then you get a, you have a written record of your travels. I so I've done this in a lot of places, Bali a bunch of times, and this year and last year I added a component of visiting Balinese healers because our guide is very in the world of Balinese spirituality and healers. So we're visiting healers and studying spirituality, and that's kind of the theme of the trip. And then we're writing a little bit. And I, I've gone to Spain, Tuscany, Greece Vietnam, Lao, Cambodia, Peru a couple of times. I'm sure I'm missing a couple places.
And that the other one I did, which is was another kind of creative thing is I when I was in Peru, my wife is a yoga teacher and sometimes she goes on these trips with me and teaches yoga, and so she really liked Peru, so she went with me and I always take these trips and I always will hire like a tour company to do the logistics because I don't know these countries. So i'll get someone else who will do all the hotels and the transit, and so it's really easy and smooth. When people arrive, everything is all set up. That's why people come. They don't wanna make all those arrangements themselves. And this woman said, I'm gonna send you a guide. And and I was kind of shocked, like, I'm not even gonna meet the person who's guiding us till I get there.
And I was kind of uncomfortable with that. And we get there and this woman named Brenda Porter walks in, she's in her sixties. Probably I was in my early sixties then. She comes in, she's a lesbian from Colorado. And she was like the most amazing guide. I mean, just an incredible wilderness guide. Like I, when I'm with Brenda, I feel like no matter what emergency ever happened, I'm sure we would be taken care of. Like she's just oozes capability, and stuff. And on that trip, every time there was like a little break and people were looking at Machu Picchu or they were doing something, she would pull out this little notebook. A little tiny, like this big little tiny thing of watercolors. And she would start sketching and doing watercolors, like a five minute sketch or a 10 minute sketch. I was so intrigued by that. And her work was beautiful and she said she's been doing that kind of travel sketching and painting for decades. And and then she told me she had she had taken groups on the Camino to Santiago and that was on my bucket list, 'cause I saw the movie The Way.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah.
Laura Davis: And I was like, I really wanted to do the Camino in Spain. And so we dreamed up a trip together where she would teach art and I would teach writing, and so we set that up for 2020.
I, I think I posted it on my website. I think it sold out in 24 hours. It just like, people really wanted to come. And then of course COVID happened and we had to cancel, and then we set it up again for the following year, went through all the prep. Had to cancel it again, so we finally got to do it in, I dunno, a few years ago, and then we did it again.
So we've done it twice and we're gonna do it again in 2026. And that was just fantastic. It was like 12 or 14 people hiking the Camino, walking across a country, and then we would just stop, and Brenda would say, now we look at the light in those trees.
I learned to see differently. I'm not an artist I, but I learned to see differently because of Brenda and I took her classes, I was. The total beginner, but I had so much fun because I didn't have any ego investment in painting, so I could just have fun.
And I think from her classes, I started studying photography because I really got into the visual of how to see things. We didn't have a lot of writing time on that trip, but we had like a, I think four days where we didn't walk and we just stopped and we would have a day of just like art and writing, and then the next day we'd start hiking again.
That was an incredible experience.
Rachelle Ramirez: What was that? The feedback from writers on that particular kind of trip? 'cause that's rather unusual writing retreat.
Laura Davis: Well, I think the people who signed up, their primary desire was to hike the Camino to Santiago. Like they wanted to do the Camino. And the fact that there was gonna be a component of writing and art was a bonus. The description was very clear. This is not for you if you wanna hole up somewhere and write. It was really about wanting to do the Camino in community, in creative community.
So, yeah, there were writers there who were, I would say serious writers, but they were there to do the Camino. They weren't there to work on their novel. One woman on that trip is a memoirist and now she's in my, one of my classes. Now she's writing a memoir about her hike on the Camino.
So it definitely provided material for her, but she wasn't writing it while she was on the Camino.
Rachelle Ramirez: I would imagine that the act of walking and doing so much walking that I would assume that people aren't doing in their, back home, they're not doing as much walking, could sort of change the brain in ways that could be really conducive to writing.
Laura Davis: Yeah, I mean, I just remember having done it even twice, I just kept being thrilled, like, oh my God, I'm walking across a country, like you're walking through farms and then you're walking in the woods, and then you're walking through cobblestone streets in a little village, and then you're walking through a damn city, and, and then there's people from all over the world hiking it with you. It is just a really incredible experience. And there were some people on this last trip who were, it was a Catholic pilgrimage and we had, I think, four Catholics out of, I think there were 12 or 13 people on the trip who were, they were really into the churches and the, that whole aspect of the spiritual part.
But I think everyone had a reason they wanted to go on a pilgrimage. Somebody was retiring, someone had just was grieving a death, someone had gotten a divorce, someone was trying to figure out what the hell to do with the rest of their life. So, people had they were in transition of some kind.
And I think the idea of that kind of spiritual journey was really appealing to them and then that we were writing it, we, like I said, the days we had off, I would teach like a three hour class or something. We would do something more serious. But some of the days I just would hand out like these little writing prompts that I prepared out in a bag, and they would be things that people could be thinking about as they walked. Or a little inspiring quote.
So I had to get creative about how to bring that component into that trip. But nobody complained. People loved it, because they, I think the main thing when you're creating an offering is to be very clear about what it is and what it isn't, so, when I'm teaching a retreat that is not a hundred percent writing focused, I want it to be super clear because you don't want someone coming who expected one thing and gets another thing.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah, that'd be the bad apple trying to spoil the bunch possibly in there.
Laura Davis: Right.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. So when you put these together, are you pre-screening the people who are coming? Is there, has there been any need? I know you have a very, you have a very niche audience in general, probably, you have people who already gravitate to you. So do you have that be the sort of screening process of bringing people in? Or do you do you feel like you need to do more than that?
Laura Davis: It depends on the retreat actually. For like the work weekends that I've done, I don't have any criteria. The people could be beginners, they could be advanced, because everyone's sort of on their own thread.
The retreats I did about grief, I had a pretty thorough, very thorough screening actually, because that retreat really was not appropriate for someone who was in the absolute heat of grief.
Because, I'm not a therapist and it is therapeutic, but, and I think I create a very safe container, but I'm not a therapist, so it's not a therapy retreat. So yeah, I would try to screen out people who I felt like they would maybe be overstimulated by hearing everybody else's stories or that they would be served in a more, in a one-on-one therapeutic relationship, but that doesn't happen very much.
And usually, it means I would have a conversation with the person and as I describe what actually will happen, usually they're the ones who say, I don't think this is the right fit for me
Rachelle Ramirez: Yep. Yeah.
Laura Davis: That's the goal. You don't wanna tell someone they can't come. And for like the Camino, we had to physically screen people, I mean, someone had to be capable of hiking.
And we had these Zoom calls ahead of time where we talked about training. We gave people training guidelines. We talked about what boots to get. We talked about gear, all of that. And and people were, they were in good shape when they came. On that trip, we had a van that would take our luggage.
I mean, this was a little bit cushy of a Camino trip because the van would pick up our luggage in the morning, take it to the next hotel. So all you had to carry was a day pack with what you needed for the day. And that van would meet us at a designated spot, like at lunchtime. And, if you had a blister or you were too tired or, you couldn't make it, it was a really long hiking day, you could hop on the van and get a ride, so I. I, I wouldn't call it a forced march.
And I've told a lot of people this, when you're on the Camino you get up, you walk, and then there's like a restaurant right on the Camino, and you stop and you get a cappuccino, and go to the bathroom, and then you walk some more, and then we stop and we write for 20 minutes, and then we stop and then we go to lunch.
And so you are walking all day, but there's a lot of resting, also a lot of stopping, and you walk at your own pace. Sometimes you're walking with part of the group and you're singing. Sometimes you wanna walk alone for the whole day and just be silent. And so sometimes you're up front, sometimes you're going much slower, sometimes you're stopping and taking a lot of pictures.
We'll always have like a guide in the front and a guide in the back, which we call the sweep to make sure nobody gets lost. And then, people would get like, on WhatsApp, we had a little WhatsApp group. They'd get a little, that day's mileage and where the stops were so they could find them and Camino's super well marked. I think it would be very hard to get lost on the Camino.
Rachelle Ramirez: So generally, does it seem that people self screen pretty well for the retreats that they sign up for as long as you are clear?
Laura Davis: very unusual that I have to, decide that someone isn't the right fit for something. And I mean, it's rare. Yeah. I think people self screen really well and I think that comes from, I think when you put these kind of things out, you wanna describe it accurately.
I'm a tiny little tour company. Some of the big companies like Road Scholar and things like that, they have a whole like ranking system. This is a number one trip, a number two that has to do with the level of physical activity. I'm just not doing enough to have those kind of systems in place.
Yeah. And I make everybody get travel insurance. That's a requirement, so that if they have to, they have a, they break their leg or somebody dies in their family or something, that they'll be covered. And I'll be covered.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah, that's a good idea. That's a great idea. Before we go, is there anything that you wanted to share with people about perhaps choosing a writing retreat for themselves?
Laura Davis: Yeah, I think it's what, I'm describing such a wide range, and there's retreats that are super focused on like publishing and, writing queries or how to get your manuscript ready for publication. That would not be one I would be teaching, but there's just an incredible range and I think it's What are you looking for?
I think a lot of people come on my retreats, especially the ones that are out of the country, and their motto might as well be while I still can. I tend to have women. Mostly women. I've had men on my trips, but it's usually like 80% women between probably 45 and 80, so I think for a lot of people it's like, okay, I could do this. And for some people, they're retired, they have the time.
So yeah, I think about what are you looking for? Are you looking for an environment to really focus on writing your book? More like a residency, where you're just gonna have the conditions where you could deeply focus on writing and only writing? Or are you looking for an adventure? Are you looking for international travel? That's where all the details are gonna be. taken care of someone else, and you're gonna get to write. Are you wanting to deal with your aging or are you dealing with a loss and you want a place to process it?
It really depends what you want. And at different points in your life, you might want different things. I've gone to probably all those kinds of retreats myself. I mean, I don't just like teaching 'em, I love going to 'em. Yeah. So that's what I would say. Think about what it is you're looking for and make sure what you're choosing is a good match for what you're wanting .
Rachelle Ramirez: I think that's great advice. The only people I've ever heard complain about a writing retreat were those where they signed up and they went without enough information about what was gonna happen. So what they got might've been a perfectly wonderful retreat for someone else or for them at a different time, but it wasn't what they expected and it wasn't what they thought they were signing up for. So they've spent the whole trip sort of trying to reposition themselves in, in their expectations, and so I think that's really great advice.
Laura Davis: I mean, I think the other thing that I would say is make sure if you go on one of my trips, make sure you're okay traveling with a group. I had someone come once who was like, she discovered she really didn't like being around a group of people. She wanted to do her own thing. I was like, well, why did you come on this trip?
Why didn't you do your own thing? So I would say if you want a group experience, have a group experience. If you want to make all your own arrangements and you really wanna be completely free, then don't be on a group trip, or I've had a lot of people who are traveling for a longer period of time. They come to my retreat and then they take off and they're doing something else, their own thing, so it's kind of the best of both worlds.
Rachelle Ramirez: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me today and discussing retreats. And again, thank you so much for offering retreats because one of yours has made a huge difference in my life. So thank you, and I hope to speak to you again soon.
Laura Davis: Okay, Rachelle, so good to see you.
Anne Hawley: You can learn more about Laura Davis's upcoming retreats at lauradavis.net. And if you'd like a weekly dose of writing insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the write anyway newsletter at pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
And that's it for this episode of the Write. Anyway podcast, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.