Podcast: Planning a Creative Retreat

We’ve all gotten really used to creating in the margins, in the fits and spurts of time that we have in between errands and dinner prep and school pick up lines. But sometimes we have to admit that a project needs a bit more space than that. Ashlee Gadd joins us for this episode, and we discuss why she started taking creative retreats, what they look like for her, and how to plan one of your own.

Ashlee stays at the Hanford House in Sutter Creek, CA on her creative retreats.

Emily Freeman always books writing days back-to-back if she can. She discusses why on this episode of the Hope*Writers podcast.

Ashlee made an instrumental playlist and shared it with us all in Exhale here.

Ashlee wrote a whole post on planning a creative retreat on her blog.

Books we mentioned:

Bittersweet and Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan

Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Our prompt for you:

What would a realistic creative retreat would look like for you?

Think about or journal through how you could make it happen in the next 6 months? Next year? If the answer is no (and we understand that!), can you take a few elements from that retreat you just outlined and incorporate it into your daily or weekly creative time? Maybe something like lighting a specific candle when you sit down to write or queueing up a specific playlist. And maybe it’s asking for babysitting hours for Christmas instead of gifts, so you can build some mini-retreats into 2019.

Submission Opportunity:

Our submission opportunity for you guys this month is to participate in the C+C freewrite hashtag prompt! Through the end of the year, we’re using #myheartthisholiday to share our stories on Instagram. Share yours + we might feature on the C+C Instagram feed!

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