"Metamucil for The Writer's Mind"

I admitted to my writing students today that I have done a piss poor job of promoting my weekend writing retreats (there is another coming in April) and after much humorous discussion from the peanut gallery their feedback was...

"Just tell them it’s like Metamucil for the writer’s brain. It really gets things moving. They’ll get it”.

Lmao. Thank you, Stephanie. I'll be asking you to market for now on.

But seriously. Even though I am a writer myself, I have found it hard to properly explain my retreats in any kind of way that does them justice. So instead I decided to tell you the why and the way I created them.

The truth is I created them with my own lost/stuck writer self in mind. The one who needed help, but didn’t know how to ask for it. Because I got stuck. A lot.

Not because my ideas weren’t good enough. Not because I wasn’t creative enough. But because my ideas were always so unwieldy. They always seemed smarter than me.

It took everything I had in me to pin them down. And my need for breakthroughs with them, literally caused me pain. Because my passion and desire to see them come to fruition, at the level I could see them in my head, was so strong. 

What I needed was a safe space to work it out. I needed a way to not be so in my head about it all. To be reminded to not take things so seriously. To have an excuse to focus for a full weekend.

And I also needed to be reminded to take breaks when the pressure got too strong. To be asked a ton of questions, that I most definitely had the answers to, but for whatever reason had trouble accessing. All I knew is it felt like all the information was trying to come through at once. And I really needed some outside witnessing from folks who just "got it" in order to help me find a thread I could build on. 

So I created my retreats to be the provider of all of that support. Each one is different. Each one focuses on a specific area. And each provides the kind of space a writer needs in order to walk away with real results. The ole ahas!

My retreats don’t assume or diagnose what might be blocking a writer ahead of time. They give writers the space to feel into it, and spontaneously decide for themselves, what they need to work on in the moment. A sort of choose your own adventure. While still offering enough structure to ensure forward movement.

Because what I know for sure, is that sometimes a writer needs help working out their story. But sometimes, what they really need, is help working out their own selves. They’ve got something in their blindspot, that can only be fixed, by going straight to source.

So my retreats make room for whatever it is that is needed. And there are different coaches to work with, depending on what the focus/angle ends up being.

The retreat coming up is called Embracing Your Villains. And it’s exactly like it sounds. We’re going to take the weekend to really swim inside the POV of our villains (whether real or fictional) in order to see things from a new perspective.

There is much information that can be gleaned from looking at things from another angle. My students agree it's been one of the most powerful tricks in the book for getting them unstuck, be it with their story or their life. 

So there we go. This is my best shot at explaining the unexplainable. Something you really need to be there to experience. 

If you're in a space where you are wanting to take some time out, and cause some dramatic leaps. And you'd like to do so while in a really loving and wise environment. With coaches who support you from a place of having walked the exact walk themselves. Then I hope you'll join us.

The retreat will be April 24-26th. It’s just $199. And it’s not a stuck on ZOOM all weekend kind of thing.

There will be lots of alone time, using the prompts and journaling. And just the right amount of checkins with the community to ensure you keep moving forward and don't get to locked in your head.

And the only prep you'll need to do is to clear your schedule for those dates and protect that schedule like a Mama Bear protecting her cubs. 

So if the dates work for you, and it sounds like something you might need, dive in. You can sign up by clicking HERE