Online Retreats & Community

Everything I do here is intended to help you write, to help writers to overcome procrastination and get it done. My aim is to facilitate and enable you to fulfil your dream. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside every time a writer walks away from a retreat happy, and having an online community to support writers and where I can hold online retreats is another way of making it all happen.

The next online retreat is on Sunday 5th February 2012. To join, you’ll need to subscribe to the forum.

 

Quick version?

The community helps you to write more/more consistently and to meet other writers. There are 2 main tools we’ll use, online writing retreats and weekly goal-setting and writing progress updates to help you keep your focus on your work.

When you sign up you get one month free trial. After this it costs £13.95 per month.

You can cancel via your Paypal account at any time if it’s not working for you and retain access to the end of your current billing period - I want this to be a community of people actively using the tools to commit to their writing.

 

Here are the full details:

How to Join the Online Retreat: Getting Into the Forum

  1. First things first. When you sign up for the online retreat, you’ll be taken to a page with a link inviting you to join the forum. Click on this link immediately – you will not receive an email confirmation to be able to do this later unless I happen to see it (not guaranteed). This will take you to a page to join the community.
  2. Log in and go to your profile page: http://writersplayground.ning.com/profiles/settings/editProfileInfo. The most important thing you should do here, other than telling us what you’re working on, is to upload a photo! Communities are all about people and there’s nothing more confusing than staring at a sea of blue heads. So even if you’re shy about putting your own face up, please do take 2 minutes to upload something to represent you.
  3. Mooch around the community and start talking to other writers. Introduce yourself here. For the retreat we’ll be using the main page to post our progress reports and see how other people are doing but there are also profile pages and forums to chat in.

Retreat Preparation

  1. Here is a goal-setting sheet in Word format. Fill it in. You only need to spend 10 minutes doing this, but it’s essential for making sure you get maximum benefit from the retreat. Now print it or scrawl a rough copy out and pin it up by your writing desk. This is what you’ll refer back to every time you get distracted to get you back on track.
  2. Get co-operation from friends and family. Put a ‘do not disturb’ sign up, make a note to turn your phone off, send the children to their Grandma’s house. Even if it isn’t usually, for this one day your writing area is YOUR zone.
  3. Prepare. Make sure you have music, snuggly slippers, all of the research you need, pens, notepads, ample tea and coffee supplies and good snacks (maybe we’ll have a snack update during the day and make each other jealous).
  4. Did you notice I said prepare? You’re at the writing retreat to write. Just because you’re at home and have the internet at your fingertips doesn’t mean it’s ok to spend an hour trawling for character names. Get everything you need for your writing work together now.
  5. Get an egg-timer or alarm clock so you can let yourself know when it’s break time. If you don’t have one, try something like the Online Clock. Whatever you’re using, test it.
  6. If you’re really terrible (or good, depending on your perspective!) at internet procrastination, consider using something like Freedom to completely block the internet for set periods of time between breaks.
  7. Make sure you’ve completed the steps above for getting into the forum. Then at around 10AM on Sunday log in!

Online Writing Retreat Timetable, Sunday 8th January 2012

10:00 We all log in. Yay! Log in and go to the main page to post your overall goal for the day and what you’re going to do by the first check-in. Then GO! Start work at 10:15 on Session 1.

11:20 20 minute break. Make a cup of tea and, if you want to, share your progress with the community.

11:40 Back to work. Session 2.

13:00 Lunch. Post your first official progress report and treat yourself to something nice.

13:30ish Back to work. Session 3.

14:40 20 minute break. Make a cup of tea and, if you want to, share your progress with the community.

13:00 Back to work. Session 4.

16:00 Finish! Come online to post your progress report. Repeat what you set out to do at the start of the day and tell us what you achieved. Give yourself a huge pat on the back!

Ready? Let’s go!

Free Trial and Payment Details

The community is very young. It’ll take a while to work out what the best bits of the forum are and how to organise it, and it needs to be used to make it truly valuable. That’s one reason I’m offering a free trial; the other is that I think you should have the chance to try and see if it’s an approach you respond well to before being obliged to pay.

If the community is helping you with your writing and you want to hang out with us still after your free trial, it will cost £13.95 a month. That’s less than just one cup of coffee a week from a major chain would cost, but if you aren’t convinced yet don’t worry, it’s completely RISK FREE. I’m convinced that if you use the forum and the online retreats the progress you make in your writing will be far greater than that weekly coffee. If it isn’t, I’d rather you spent the money finding something else that helps you write, so you can unsubscribe via your Paypal account at any time. If you unsubscribe during your trial, you’ll still have access until the trial ends.No questions asked, no hassle.

About the Community and Forum

The online community, the Urban Writers’ Playground, is brand new, and the more we use it the more useful it will become. The idea behind holding retreats here is that you have the opportunity to really make the most of a retreat by being part of something ongoing. To help give you accountability and keep motivation up (rather than just coming on a retreat then doing nothing for weeks), we have a forum thread to post weekly progress reports.

Weekly Progress Reports

I want the Writers Playground to be a tool you can use to help you write. Along with the online retreats, the weekly progress reports are at the heart of the community and the more you use them (even if you have nothing to say) the more useful they’ll be. I’ll ask you each Monday to post an update with your achievements for the week and ask you to think about whether you need to change anything to make writing easier – this is very much about keeping writing at the forefront of your mind and helping you to find more room in your life for writing, not about beating yourself up for not doing enough. We all have periods of not doing enough and the question isn’t ‘why am I so rubbish?’ but ‘what do I need to change to do more of this thing I love?’

Urban Writers’ Playground Zones

HOME

The home tab is where you’ll see what’s going on with other writers, everyone’s commitments and progress, any photos that have been posted, events, etc.  At the top is a box with what’s going on in the forum – click in the weekly targets and check-ins thread to post your updates. During online retreats you’ll click on the box next to your face in the ‘Online Activity’ area to let us know how you’re getting on.

MY PAGE

This is your profile. You can click on ‘edit’ and shift the boxes around or remove things you don’t want. This is where you’ll see everything that you have said or anything that others have said to you and you can also post photos or make comments.

MEMBERS

Click here to browse through other members. Go say hi to anyone you find interesting – you can leave comments on their walls or send them emails.

INBOX

If you look at the box towards the top right you’ll see an envelope logo marking your inbox. You can send and receive messages from other members here. You should receive an email to your regular inbox if anybody sends you an email here.

FORUMS

The most important thread is the one where you post your weekly writing update. We’ll get into the routine of doing this on a Monday, but you can post at any time about how your writing is going. Look at my original post and click ‘Reply’. If you don’t want to receive everyone’s updates, make sure you click on the ‘stop following’ button – it’s just underneath the text box where you type your reply/update.

There are areas of the forum for things like posting your work for critique, chatting about the industry and creative writing prompts. You can reply to other posts or start your own in the appropriate area. Do take the time to help others if you can or just to say hi. To get the most out of communities you need to be involved in them so don’t be shy, come and introduce yourself. You can choose whether you receive updates for threads you have commented on; if you get too many emails just visit the thread and look for the button unsubscribing you from updates.

CONTACTING ME

I’m not in there all the time, but I’m a member of the community and have a page there that you can contact me on. The community is about all of us and about using the power of working alongside one another towards common goals though. My focus with Urban Writers’ Retreat is very much on enabling you to get writing done, and I’m a very long way from being an expert in publishing, agents or anything else like that. For advice on that, I’d suggest asking in the forum. I’d love for you to come and say hi though, and to let me know if you have any suggestions :)

Posting Your Weekly Check-In

You can post your writing progress updates here using the box at the top. We’ll get into the routine of doing this weekly on a Monday night, but you can post at any time about how your writing is going and it’s where we’ll post during the online retreats.

 

Join the Community

The community is very young. It’ll take a while to work out what the best bits of the forum are and how to organise it, and it needs to be used to make it truly valuable. So I want you to join! That’s why I’m giving one month free. Online writing retreats are not guaranteed to run every month, but they will always be free to community members.

If the community is helping you with your writing and you want to hang out with us still after your free trial, it will cost £13.95 a month. That’s less than just one cup of coffee a week from a major chain would cost, but if you aren’t convinced yet don’t worry, it’s completely RISK FREE. I’m convinced that if you use the forum and the online retreats the progress you make in your writing will be far greater than that weekly coffee. If it isn’t, I’d rather you spent the money finding something else that helps you write, so you can unsubscribe via your Paypal account at any time. If you unsubscribe during your trial, you’ll still have access until the trial ends.

No questions asked, no hassle.

 

If you’re based abroad don’t worry, PayPal will do all the hard work for you and work out the exchange rate each month.

Please share this page with as many writers as you can! The more we have joining in the more fun and productive the day will be for all of us.

 

  • To get your free ebook helping you to improve focus and write more, sign up here. You’ll also and receive writing retreat updates and useful stuff for writers, yay!