The Pivot That Stuck

Who knew our answer to isolation in the pandemic would solve so many issues for us for so long?

On the third Saturday of every month, I host an online Mini Retreat for writers just like you. It's an all-day, all-about-you-and-your-progress-palooza where you can make significant progress on your WIP, connect with other writers, and share the day's writing for positive feedback.

Mini Retreats did not exist before 2020. When lockdown hit, I had to pivot away from hosting in-person retreats to hosting online retreats. As far as I was concerned, even though travel wasn't going to be an option for a long time, that was no reason to abandon the spirit of the writing + creativity retreat. 

Thanks to the tech gods at Zoom, I was able to design an online retreat that delivers many of the same benefits writers get from going away on an in-person retreat, but in a more accessible, less contagion-prone way than meeting in person. 

I had no idea how it was going to work, if it was going to work, and whether writers would get real benefits from gathering online to write. All I really wanted to do was find an excuse for members of To Live & Write to get together and spend valuable time in each other's company, even though it could only be online.

Forty monthly Mini Retreats in a row later … I’m still gobsmacked by how powerful these things are.