So you want to be a writer? Try taking a holiday

Last winter, I spent three weeks in the beautiful Blue Mountains, hunkered down in a place called Varuna, The National Writer’s House, which is the most prestigious institution for developing literature in Australia.

Each year, hundreds of writers apply for fellowships and 33 are awarded to emerging and established writers across Australia.

Mick Dark (son of Eleanor Dark) and Varuna’s first executive officer Rhonda Flottmann, at Varuna in 1990.Credit: Troy Howe

Set in lovely gardens, Varuna’s five-bedroom house, with two writing studios, was the former home of Eleanor Dark, a successful novelist in the 1930s-50s. Her son Mick bequeathed her estate as a residence for writers working on fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

It was an act of incredible generosity from the Dark family, who still take a keen interest in the property. I was lucky enough to have Eleanor’s studio in the orchard as my writing room. At night, I’d join the other five writers by the fire for dinner.

For writers who often juggle other work with their creative writing, it’s hard to carve out time to concentrate on creativity. These residencies are highly sought after because they give you that time, plus the support of other writers and writing coaches.

The selection standards of Varuna are high if you are a new writer. For those who are thinking of starting a book, or maybe a memoir, another way to kick-start that book is to combine writing with a holiday.

Overseas writer’s retreats are a booming segment of the travel industry. Just a glance at BookRetreats – which pitches itself as “the world’s #1 retreat site” – shows dozens of options for writing retreats in countries from Costa Rica to Portugal and beyond.

Retreat to Hydra.Credit: iStock

From a seven-day Transformative Writing Retreat in a chateau in France to a six-day “Writing, Meditation and Cold Water Swimming’ ’retreat in the UK, the options are abundant and tantalising.

Many of these retreats combine yoga or wellness with writing. Depending on the destination, prices range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand.

But are they any good if you really want to write or learn how to write?

I have a friend who just returned from what sounded like a magical retreat in Greece. She had been trying to work on a memoir but needed guidance and inspiration.

My friend liked the idea of combining work with a pleasurable escapade. So she joined seven other women on a residence in Hydra – “Writing in Paradise” – run by Shelley Kenigsberg, who has been holding writers retreats, for many years in “paradisical” destinations such as Bali, Byron Bay and Sorrento in Victoria.

The course involved intensive days loosening up the imagination, free-writing, sharing work with the other writers, and generally “having a jolly good time,” Kenigsberg, an editor and publisher for over 30 years, says. “There’s got to be joy about it.”

The idea is to break the participants out of the “I can’t write” mentality. Like my friend, many have or had careers where they wrote academic or public relations prose and wanted to find their own voices.

Kenigsberg says that in the age of AI, there’s appeal in face-to-face learning. “I wanted to give the writers the company of other writers and also [to understand] the sense that everyone struggles.”

Memoir writing is a popular pursuit, but it’s also the most competitive. “It’s the fastest growing genre,” Kenignsberg says, “and it’s possibly the most disappointing in terms of getting published.”

I asked her how you could distinguish a good writer’s retreat from one that was just an excuse for a lovely holiday?

Find out about the philosophy of the person taking the course, she says. It doesn’t matter so much if they’ve got several books published, what matters is the process they’re going to take you through and if there’s a serious purpose with a commitment to an outcome, even if it’s half a notebook of good ideas.

In my friend’s case, the course gave her confidence to continue at home long after the last glass of retsina downed in a waterfront taverna.

If you want to be a writer, any time out where you give yourself permission to solely work on a writing project is invaluable. If you can manage to do it on a Greek island or in a Tuscan village, go for it.

And if you have an aspiring writer in your life, the gift of a writing retreat might be the Christmas present they’ll never forget.