You Know You Want To: Write and Retreat With Us This Year ✨✏️✨
🎁 Our New Year's gift to you 🎁 20% discount on our Park City Writers Retreat when you bring a friend and sign up by January 31!
Dear Writers,
Happy New Year! January is dark and cold; it’s also a fertile time for creativity. Your heart probably craves the sun's warmth, while your mind knows it’s a great time to write something new—or finish what’s starting to feel old.
Writers need solitude. We also need feedback. I do a lot of things alone: Write, run, practice “crow” and lift weights. I also do the same things with groups: Trade and share writing with writer friends; walk around the reservoir; take yoga and weight classes at the gym. This month, I took my writing practice a step further and hired someone to edit three short stories over the next three months. I know my writer friends will read my work and give useful feedback; I also know that by hiring someone to edit my work, I’m committing to finishing what I started. The commitment is serious: I’ll owe this person money if I don’t make my deadline.
Invest in yourself 🌱
We don’t often talk about money here, but investing in yourself is the equivalent of saying, I take my writing seriously. A close friend is in a writing group that met many times during the last two Presidential campaigns. The members made a deal: If you didn’t finish your work by an agreed-upon deadline, you had to make a contribution to the campaign of the candidate you did not want to win. My friend made her deadlines.
This is all to say: Writers need each other. We need to keep each other accountable. We need deadlines and we need a waiting audience.
Go deeper into your work 🪞
Writing retreats are the most fruitful way to go deeper into your work and finish it. Twice during December, I took two, 3-day writing “retreats” in which I did nothing but write, drink coffee, eat oatmeal, and text friends & family. These immersive writing “binges” give you the time and space to write about what scares you, and what you’ve been resisting, without interruption.
Whether you write every day, once a week, once a month, or whenever the muse speaks to you, there is only one way to get essays, short stories, novels, memoirs, and short story collections finished: by giving yourself a deadline and finishing what you started.
Join us and we’ll help you get there. Give yourself the gift of leaning into writing for the next five months, and then join us at our Writing & Photography Retreat in Park City, Utah June 2-5. You’ll have your work edited and discussed in a magnificent setting with other spirited and committed writers.
Why are writing retreats important? 💡
Writing retreats give you time to write. That may sound simple but it’s the truth. With nothing scheduled except writing and hanging out with other writers, you will double down on your work. You can submit up to 40 pages, double-spaced, before the retreat, and receive feedback on it during the retreat. That’s the equivalent of several essays or short stories, or a chapter or two of a book. During the retreat you can revise what you’ve submitted, write something new, take a nap or a hike—-but you will have cranked out 40 pages of writing, a huge accomplishment.
Recharge: Retreats are where you go to drill down on your work and recharge as a writer.
Revel in Creativity: Retreats allow you to revel in a project that takes up space in your mind, which you might not be making time for in your day-to-day.
Find Community: Retreats allow you to connect with other writers. We’ll spend three hours every day in writing workshops, and have lunch and dinner together. By the end of the week, you will have forged connections with writers with whom you can share work long after the retreat ends.
Explore with Curiosity: Retreats allow you to explore “what ifs?” What if I approached the story this way? What if I wrote from another character’s point of view? What if I interviewed my grandfather’s estranged brother? What if I tried to understand why my oldest friend ended our friendship? What if I tried to make the theme of “loss and renewal” a thread in these stories? What if I wrote this section of the novel in the second person? What if I wrote this short story from the point of view of my late aunt? What if I took details from the ship’s manifest that my great-grandmother sailed to Ellis Island on, and turned those facts into fiction?
Don’t forget about Joy: Retreats are fun! We will eat well, hike well, and enjoy the gorgeous mountains and lush foliage endemic to Park City, Utah.
Still need convincing? 🏕️
Join our 30-minute Zoom Q&A on February 10 at 7 P.M. EST. Amy and I will share how we came together to create this retreat and answer your questions!
Join award-winning writer Laura Zinn Fromm and professional photographer & journalist Amy Eskind for a 4-day writing and mobile photography retreat in the wilderness.
Writing ✍️
We’ll meet for three, 3-hour writing workshops.
Writers can submit up to 40 pages (10,000 words) before the retreat begins and will receive line edits, written feedback, and a discussion of their work during the retreat.
Writers can sign up for one half-hour, one-on-one conference with Laura.
Activities 📷
Amy will host one 2-hour mobile photography workshop and teach you how to take better cell phone pictures, using her signature “precious diamond photos” method, which relies on color, cut, clarity, and carat to produce gorgeous cell phone photos.
We’ll spend afternoons writing, reading, hiking, touring the Olympic Park in Park City, and visiting the Family Search Library in Salt Lake.
We’ll host “open mics” over dinner so writers will have a chance to read their new work out loud.
Lodging 🏕️
Hotel Rooms. Please reserve your room directly at any of these hotels in the Canyons in Park City: The Pendry, the Westgate Park City Resort & Spa, or the Sundial Lodge—all within walking distance from each other. We will eat dinner in the Canyons and provide transportation to and from the Canyons to our writing workshop location.
Transportation 🚖
Please book your flight in and out of Salt Lake City, roughly 40 miles from the Canyons hotels by ride-share or taxi.
Price 💵
Inclusions: Transportation will be provided from the Pendry Hotel to and from the workshops; 4 lunches, 3 dinners, and 1 welcome cocktail.
Exclusions: Alcohol, Olympic Park Tour entrance fee, hotel rooms, breakfast, and other transportation.
Cost: $2,000. (Early bird special: Bring a friend, sign up by January 31, and receive a 20% discount. Code: 2MATES).
Note: We are a small business and cannot give refunds for workshops or meals. Please buy trip insurance and book your hotel room directly.
Our online book group starts Thursday night, January 9
Our weekly midday writing workshop starts Thursday, January 16