I’m just back from a fantastic writing retreat.

Never mind city breaks, or spa weekends  – lovely as they both are. For me, a few days holed up in the countryside with other writers is where I best recharge my batteries and come back ready to do battle in all areas of my life. There’s just something about cutting myself off from the outside world and barricading myself away with likeminded souls that really works for me. It’s not even that I write screeds and screeds – although I’m pleased with how I pushed my current WIP on this time. It’s that I come back full of ideas and enthusiasm and optimism and have nurtured old friendships and made new friends – including lovely ladies I have known on Twitter but never met in real life.

The retreat was in a gorgeous old house called The Throne in Weobley and was organised by my friends Jane and Moira from The Place To Write.

Honestly, do go on one of their retreats if you can. Their homecooked food is wonderful, there is tea and cake on tap and look what I discovered on my door when I arrived – along with a bag of my favourite chocolates!

Yes, I don’t have my own book cover yet, so they invented one for me. I rather like it!

The workshops were run by Isabel Costello and were on inspiration and motivation and gave plenty of food for thought. Everyone got stuck in and everyone was very honest and generous with their contributions, so I learned loads. Here were all are hard at work – we look very serious here, but rest assured that there were lots of laughs too.

I left with lots of insights on how to make my writing life more creative and productive, whilst boosting my resilience to the inevitable set-backs. It was brilliant.

Many thanks to Jane and Moira and Isabel and everyone else for making the time there so special. And a special thanks to the people of Weobley who had not been panic-buying toilet paper so I was able to buy a packet to take back to my home town where the shelves have been denuded!!

So here I am back at home again, refreshed and recharged and ready to take on the world.

Happy days xxx