I recently checked my calendar and noticed something exciting. In the first week of July, there are zero appointments on my calendar! Now, I love coaching the 60-some clients I am working with this year. I love getting on Zoom calls and helping professional artists and budding writers build lives around their creativity. And…I love the weeks when I have space to do my own creative work.

With all that space next week, and it being an American holiday, I decided to take the first week of July as an at-home writing retreat. My time will be focused on making serious headway on my book, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Writing a World-Changing Book. My birthday is smack in the middle of it, so I may take some time for a massage and dinner with my sweetie.

How to design an at-home writing or art retreat? With all the roles we play and things we do, it’s not easy. But it’s possible. I have written about this before, but I’ll share the current practices I use to structure an at-home retreat.

Set an intention. Mine is: I am deeply and happily immersed in the work of writing this book. While I may work on other things too, my focus is my book.

Set a goal. My goal is to complete the revisions on this draft and to go over the whole book to make sure it’s organized in a way that is most useful for the reader. This is an ambitious goal, but I find it helpful to set goals that really engage my focus and energy.

Set aside other things. I have a lot of other projects on the docket for the fall and for 2019. (I can’t wait to share with you!) But this week’s focus is on making as much progress on the book as I can. Its next step is giving it to a few beta readers, and I want to get it in shape as soon as I can.

Set space. I will set aside cooking and cleaning by making a giant salad and making sure I have other food for the week prepared or delegated. The studio will be clean and ready to work. My writing space will be in my office, at the Botanic Gardens, and as a treat, a cafe nearby.

Set up physical support. Walking and exercise benefits my creativity enormously, so I will make sure I have that on the calendar. There are some new aqua classes at the rec center that I am eager to plunge into.

Set focus. I am always challenged by doing my work simultaneous to posting on social media. Shots of me working on my book in the Botanic Gardens are fun and hopefully inspiring. But do they help me hold my focus? I will decide next week if sharing my progress helps me or detracts from my focus on writing. Sometimes it’s good to go into the writing cave solo.

Set boundaries. This one seems obvious but it’s rare that we actually set up boundaries to serve our focus. My boundaries for the week include letting my husband know that I am focused on the book, and that I will be diving into it first thing during the day, taking time midday to work in my art studio, and then resuming work in the afternoon. Other boundaries include not checking email until midday, after a solid writing session.

Set up fun. When we’re working in a focused way, we also need to give ourselves a break with some delight and fun. I will have time each day to continue with the 100 Day Project – about 15 days left! Spending time making art always calms and replenishes me. I will also plan to go to a movie one night.

What about you? How can you set yourself up for an at-home retreat? It could be a day, or two, or three days. Make it yours and make it work for you and your project.

When I talked about my book idea with my colleagues, I felt the fire and the passion of what I want to share with my readers. I sat down to write an introduction, a ‘what this is about’. I wanted to write something that rang true, that would incite joy and possibility and empowerment.

But when the moment of truth came, my writing felt stiff and formal. It turns out this happens a lot. We set out to write the introduction, but it all seems too big. Too much to gather in one chapter. An introduction is a sort of stand and deliver moment. It should explain what’s to come.

But you may not know what exactly will be in your book, so starting there, while it seems to make sense, actually clogs up our ink. Still, it’s helpful to have a clear rallying cry about your book. This will galvanize and energize you throughout the writing process. It will also give you a way to easily communicate what your book is about, should you choose to talk about it with other.

I suggest writing a manifesto to serve as this rallying cry. Write the introduction after you’ve written the book.

Draft your book’s manifesto now

A manifesto is about what the impact you’re committed to having for your audience. A manifesto is a stake – what you’re taking a stand for. Try this exercise that I use with my clients and that finally worked for me to carve out what I wanted to say.

(Note: if you have stage fright or dread public speaking, imagine that for the sake of this exercise, you are released of that fear.)

Imagine that you’re in a room full of the specific people you wish to reach. You’re on stage, looking out over your audience. They’re smiling at you, sending love and appreciation. They are eager to hear what you have to say.

You have five minutes to tell them what you want to share. Answer these three questions to get to the heart of your work:

• What do you want for them?
• What must they know now?
• What do you want them to do with the knowledge you’ve given them?

Imagine yourself speaking to your people, from your heart, as if this were your one and only opportunity to do so. The time is now. The need to share your work is urgent.
Feel free to speak it aloud and record it. You can play it back later. Use Dragon Dictation software, ‘voice to typing’ in a Google doc or other recording device. Or just speak it, then type like mad what you’ve written. You can also set a timer for 10 minutes and free-write your answers to these questions.

Conjuring up a direct and sincere communication with the people you’re writing for can lead you past insecurities that are common at the beginning of writing a book.

Drafting your manifesto can help you focus on your work as a gift to your people instead of a reflection on how great you are. Your manifesto will help you get out of your own way and hush your inner critic.

This may take several drafts, and it may take time. Don’t worry about it. Get the gist of it out and keep going.

You can write a manifesto or rallying cray for any project, not just a book. Try it and see how it impacts you and your project.

Excerpted from my upcoming book, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Writing a World-Changing Book.

Books are powerful. Books can change lives.

Women are powerful. Women change lives.

Women writing books = power pair. Women’s books change the world.

Women’s voices are ringing more loudly and truly than ever. 

Now is the time to bring your truth, your expertise and your power to light. 

Now is the time to access and express your wisdom. The world needs it more than ever. 

The world needs you more than ever.

Write. Write it now. We need it.

You’re ready to get to work on your book or body of work or whatever your dream project is.

You go to your ‘zone’ and prepare to get into your flow state. But first, you check in. You check email. You check Facebook. You check Instagram. You check to make sure someone has liked or loved or responded to you.

You know what happens next. You’ve frittered away your focus and lost your precious creative time.

From what I have seen with my clients, the biggest challenge we face is lack of FOCUS. It’s incredibly difficult to harness our attention and focus on anything for longer than a few minutes.

And yet our attention and ability to focus is the #1 thing that is required to make anything. We need to be able to shut out others’ voices and opinions. In order to be a writer, artist or business owner, we need to temporarily suspend our other roles as mother, employee, caregiver, household manager.

We must continually train our attention and focus. As we near the completion of a book or body of work, our fears and insecurities grow and focus gets dimmer. We need to be vigilant and protective of our ability to focus.

The ability to wrangle our focus is the main skill we need to cultivate. My clients have found success with some of the following:

• Start with smaller bits of time and build to longer creative sessions.
• Use a timer. The Pomodoro Technique is an example of this, but you can use any timer. My writing students like Insight Timer because they can program the interval bells to their liking.
• Practice simple rituals to enter and exit the creative zone.
• Change locations to do the work, even if it means simply shifting the easel.
• Use free-writing or a sketchbook as a way to warm up before the real work.

At the end of the day, while all these things can be helpful, we must take responsibility for the quality of our attention. The quality of our focus is reflected in the quality of our work.

What helps you to harness your focus so you can get your creative work done? Share below in the comments section what helps you focus.