The Five Day Writer's Retreat

By Buffy Greentree

About to start a new writing project, be it novel, thesis or website?

Then you need to read this book first!

The Five Day Writer's Retreat prepares you for a lifestyle of writing and trains you to avoid the pain and anguish of writer's block and burn out later. It follows a health retreat format with food for thought, time for soul searching, gentle exercise and inspiration to keep you motivated.

Become a new writer, with passion and excitement again!

From Day 1 you will instantly begin to feel refreshed and recharged.

One reader couldn't wait to comment: "I've only just started reading the ebook and I just wanted to say, I'm blown away. I've finished reading Day 1 and I'm already feeling so much more motivated than before. You're on to a winner, here, I think!"

Thanks Lisa!

So indulge in a Retreat, because your writing is worth it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Buffy Greentree
• Release date: Jul 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301171453

Buffy Greentree

Buffy Greentree is an Australian writer: born in Melbourne, sojourned in Japan and the UK, and currently living in sunny Brisbane. After almost a decade in academia - getting degrees in Classics and Archaeology, Divinity (specializing in Old Testament Studies) and a little bit of Business Management - she realized it was a whole lot more fun to make up the facts. So she took up writing. Finally her varied career across different fields seemed to be justified. Also, the years of trying to drill good essay writing technique into students' heads had not been for nothing. Her writing, as with her university degrees and employment history, shows her love of variety. She's currently editing drafts for a chic-lit serial, a historic drama, a YA and a non-fiction. There might also be a theology PhD coming into the mix soon. She hopes she doesn't accidentally get it mixed up with the romance.

Book preview

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The Five Day Writer’s Retreat

Preparing you for a lifestyle of writing

Book I of the Five Day Writer Series

Buffy Greentree

The Buffy Group

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The Five Day Writer’s Retreat

Copyright 2013 Elizabeth (Buffy) Greentree

Smashwords Edition

Discover other titles by Buffy Greentree at www.thefivedaywriter.com

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To my partner in crime.

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Coming Soon By Buffy Greentree:

The Five Day Writer Series

The Five Day Writer’s Bootcamp

The Five Day Writer’s Drafting Affair

The Five Day Writer’s Editing Workshop

The Five Day Writer’s Online Platform Spellbook

The Five Day Writer’s Publishing Challenge

Young Adult Trilogy

Sally Hunt Vs. God

Sally Hunt Vs. The Bullies

Sally Hunt Vs. The School.

Blogs

100 First Drafts

Personal Fitness Base Camp

Buffy and God – The Blog

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Preface

It is not often you can legitimately say ‘this is the first time in history’ that a situation is occurring. In fact, as a Classicist (among many other things), I shudder every time I hear those words, as they are so often untrue. However, this really is one of the first times in history that entire civilisations expect their citizens to read and write. As a writer, how exciting is that?

With the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century there was an incredible increase in the spread of the written word and the ability to produce books. This changed the very nature of language and the spread of ideas. Now, with the advent of the internet, the change in society has been even greater and it is still developing. More people, in more places, can write words that are read all over the globe.

So what does this mean for you? It means that if you want to be part of this revolution, you need to be able to write epic content quickly. And if you want to do this, you need to approach writing with excitement and joy, not a sense of loathing and distrust. Writer’s block cannot hold you back!

Because of this, any amount of time that you put into learning how to increase your speed and ability to produce high quality content will reap great rewards. It is up to you to do everything you can to become a prolific writer. More (good) words, in more places, will equal success. I put ‘good’ in brackets, as this does not at the moment seem to be essential. However, it is and will become more so in the future.

As more words are added to the stream, only the well-crafted – the short ‘tweet’ that implies a novel’s worth of meaning, the pithy comment that draws readers to your site, the engaging blog post that keeps them coming back for more – only these will rise to the top. With so many new players coming to the field, the more awkward your communication is, the sooner you will be left behind. Not only that, you need to be fast as well. If it takes you a week to write a post about breaking news, 5,000 other websites will have already published it and be onto something new.

This book was originally aimed at aspiring novelists, however the more I write, the more I understand the universality of communication, and the ever growing demand for fast, effective words. So, after completing my first novel, which took several years, I set myself a challenge that I opened up to the world’s critique and comment through my first blog: 100 First Drafts. The plan was to see if I could write a hundred drafts of novels in five years. If you do the calculations, it comes down to roughly one draft every two weeks. It is insane, and glorious. The purpose was to train myself to become a prolific writer. And it worked. Within the first month I had finished the rest of my first trilogy. Furthermore, writing that fast was FUN.

As I started researching how to present my blog and create an online presence, I became more aware of the great need for more writers and better training for those already out there. Everywhere people were starting blogs and websites, wanting to submit to article directories to increase their back-linking and produce ebooks to establish themselves in a literary niche. And yet, many were struggling with the actual writing process. Most outsourced their writing to ghost writers, or bought (even stole) articles to post as their own. However, some writing work must always be done by the individual. And so I started to look over the notes I had developed over years of teaching academic and creative writing at universities, as well as the blog posts detailing my early adventures into prolific writing. The results are a series of books, starting with The Five Day Writer’s Retreat, which will guide anyone (who is prepared to put in the time) to become a better writer. You might not get a full novel draft written every two weeks, but you could double your own output, which will bring you success twice as fast.

I am prepared to put my name on the line to say that this book will be as useful to the novice blogger or would-be online entrepreneur as to the novelist. All you must do is take a little time in a week and work through the exercises, adapting them to your focus. Very soon, you will return to your written work prepared to produce your best content in record time.

A Little About Me:

My name is Elizabeth, but everyone calls me Buffy, so you can too. I’m a writer. I’m many things actually, but all of them involve being a fast and effective communicator of the written word. Most jobs these days involve this too.

I always wanted to write, as my family and friends will tell you. My first major success came at the age of 12, when I wrote the Christmas play for my youth group. It was titled ‘Cool Bananas’ and was a modern day retelling of the Nativity that included a garage instead of a stable and three Elvis impersonators as the kings.

However, I never thought of being a fulltime writer. I was sure my parents would have dissuaded me from such a foolish notion, and more importantly, there were too many other things I wanted to do as well.

After a slightly longer and much more varied academic career than I ever planned, I found myself teaching University level academic and creative writing. Even when teaching academic subjects, the need to drill my students in good writing technique was always there.

But what about my own writing? Aside from academic articles, essays and papers, it wasn’t until the beginning of May 2012 that I finally found the time to finish my first novel. It had been a life goal, and now it was done. Check.

Then I started the sequel.

I attended a writers’ workshop and found I was overflowing with ideas for novels. I made a list of the ideas I had collected over the past 20 years, and there were at least 25 books there, ranging from children’s stories through to supernatural thrillers, and many things in between.

So, at the beginning of July 2012, I started my writing challenge: 100 first drafts in five years. The purpose of it all? Firstly, just to see if I could. But more significantly, I wanted a challenge that was so ridiculous that I couldn’t stop to think about it. I, like most people, work well to deadlines. Everything became last minute and there was no chance to put anything off. The writing needed to be done and it needed to be done today.

I also started my first blog at this time, to discuss the lessons I was learning and give other people tips on mistakes to avoid (for example, the 30 hour novel – writing an entire novel over two 15 hour days – is not recommended).

The Five Day Writer series is a crystallisation of all that I have learned myself and taught others over this period. May it challenge you to reach for greater heights of writing achievement!

Yours,

Buffy Greentree.

The Buffy Group.

[e-mail]

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Introduction

Welcome

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin.

Welcome to The Five Day Writer’s Retreat, set in the panoramic expanses of your imagination. Lay down your luggage and take a deep breath of the fresh air. You are greeted with a cup of clear, refreshing jasmine tea in a beautifully crafted Chinese teacup. Take a sip and let it relax you.

You have signed up for a five day retreat from the pressures of life. Here you will be allowed to relax, given time to deal with your issues around writing and guided to discover hidden fears that are holding you back. You will experiment with techniques that will allow you to harness the creative flow. By the end you will find writing a more relaxing and enjoyable endeavour, rather than the torturous, teeth-gritting exercise it might have become.

As with all retreats, this is an opportunity to take some time out to prepare yourself for a change in your life. You will be asked to reassess your goals and desires around writing and at the same time you will be offered healthy, cleansing brain-food and guided through gentle strengthening exercises.

How you use this book is entirely up to you. It has been laid out to be used over five days, with the expectation that you will have one to two hours throughout the day to dedicate to it. It would be ideal if you can use it on a holiday, but it may also be fitted around your work and life commitments.

Each day is structured along similar lines. At the beginning of each of these five days, you are to wake up and do light writing exercise, in order to stretch your creative muscles. This should not be strenuous; more like daily Tai Chi For The Mind than leaping into the training program. I’ll lay out the basics here, so that on Day One you are ready to start as soon as you wake up.

First thing every morning, while still in bed, (even before your coffee, depending how desperate you are) grab a pen and paper, or a laptop, and start writing. The style of writing is not at all important.

The important thing is to let your mind write whatever it wants, with no restrictions. Don’t try to enforce any order on it, or give the piece any structure. If some words do not come, put a dash and keep going. The aim of the exercise is to warm up your creative mind and practice letting the words flow, with no concern for quality or purpose.

Each day your workout time is going to increase just slightly. You are going to try for at least 15 minutes the first day, and then see if you can stretch that time out towards half an hour to an hour gradually over the next five days.

The other important point for this exercise is that at the beginning of each day you start fresh. You do not read over what you have written, or try to continue on from yesterday’s session. Your mind will be in a new place and will have new ideas to play around with. Please keep a record of exactly how many minutes you end up writing for, as this helps you to calculate a measure of writing efficiency. Lastly, open yourself to learning to enjoy this time. There can be a wonderful feeling of freedom in abandoning yourself to your inner creative youth.

Following the morning’s exercise, there are a series of Food For Thought sections to feed your mind with ideas and motivational advice about how to develop and prepare for being a writer. These will be interspersed with Action Points, which you can jump straight into and turn your lessons into practice. I recommend always doing the Action Point, no matter how odd it may sound. If you do, by the end of the week you will notice significant changes in your readiness to write. You will be on track, and raring to go.

In the afternoons of the Retreat, we will have a Therapy session, looking for inspiration and examining deep-seated issues a lot of people have about their writing process. How much you take away from this section is entirely up to you.

This will be followed by a Writer’s Lifestyle Review, which will outline the practices of a famous and successful writer. The focus