Join Writing Excuses for an opportunity to rest, recharge, and rekindle your writing practice

Sometimes maintaining momentum as a writer is hard. We all experience times of drought, where the ideas won’t arrive and the words won’t flow. Or times where the busy nature of life simply blocks us from hitting our goals.

In either case, the answer often isn’t to push harder. It’s to pause, reset, and carve out dedicated time where you can simply be creative.

This summer, Writing Excuses Retreats invites you to nurture your creative process, unlock inspiration and find companionship among fellow writers.

For one week, hosts Mary Robinette Kowal, Erin Roberts, and DongWon Song, will guide you through a restorative retreat designed to help you ignite and nurture your creativity. The week will include interactive and collaborative workshops and classes balanced with plenty of free time to connect, write, brainstorm, or simply stroll the grounds of the retreat center.

Enjoy (Re)Generative Programming

Our goal is to provide an environment where you can choose to learn new skills, generate new ideas, or focus on your writing (or all three!). To that end, our programming is entirely optional and includes plenty of restorative time. In general, programming options include:

Personal Creative Time

Because this retreat is focused on helping you make progress on your new or next idea, each day includes dedicated time to pursue your own creativity. This can be used as time to write, nap, explore, or practice your craft. There is no wrong way to make the most of this time.

Large-Group Classes & Workshops

Keeping with the theme of (re)generation, each instructor will teach at a class and/or workshop during the retreat. These sessions may focus on mindset, craft, the business of writing, or other topics designed to kick your brain into gear for creating new work.

In addition, activities may be planned throughout the day to give you other ways to engage with your creativity. These may take the form of outdoor explorations, music, art, or improvisation.

Small-Group Breakout Sessions

Small-group sessions are an excellent way to connect with your fellow writers and receive feedback. Participants will have the option of signing up for small-group breakout sessions with our instructors, Mary Robinette Kowal, Erin Roberts, and DongWon Song.

Breakout sessions typically include:

6-member Critique Session: Members will submit novel or short-story excerpts up to 3,000 words for critique by the group as well as one of the instructors. *Note: Signing up for a critique session means you are committing to read and critique the stories of other members in your group.

Unlocking Session: These small group sessions are places to brainstorm with a group about your writing project or process. Unlocking sessions in the past have included discussion on everything from how to make time to write to the intricacies of a specific magic system.

*Please note that due to time constraints we may not be able to accommodate everyone with their first choice of breakout session.

1:1 Office Hours

Dig deeper into what’s currently blocking you, ask for clarity over a topic covered in class, or explore a new idea you’re excited about through a 1:1 session with instructors. These drop-in appointments will be made available throughout the retreat.

Collaborative Creative Time

Each day will include a period of time for you to work collaboratively with your peers and instructors. This time could include an informal group Q&A, collaborative writing time, or anything else your instructors think may benefit the group.

Meet Your Instructors

Your instructors and guides for this retreat are core cast members of the award-winning Writing Excuses Podcast. Each of them bring their own unique perspective and experience around creativity, writing, and the publishing industry.

DongWon Song

DongWon Song is an agent at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency representing science fiction and fantasy for adults, young adult, and middle grade readers as well as select non-fiction. They were formerly an editor at Orbit, a product manager for an ebook startup, and taught at institutions including Portland State University and New York University. DongWon is Korean-American, trans, and nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. Visit their website here.

Erin Roberts

Erin Roberts is a speculative fiction writer who tells stories across formats. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Sunday Morning Transport, and The Dark, and has been selected for three Year’s Best collections; she has published interactive fiction in Strange Horizons and Sub-Q Magazine; and her game writing appears in D&D adventure books Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel (D&D), Hunter: The Reckoning Fifth Edition, Paizo books including Pathfinder: Lost Omens Travel Guide and Starfinder Interstellar Species, and Zombies, Run! Erin is a graduate of the Odyssey Writers Workshop, earned an MFA from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine, and is currently a Provost’s Early Career Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin.

Visit her website here.

Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Spare Man, The Lady Astronaut series, The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, Molly on the Moon, and numerous short stories. She’s a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the RT Reviews award for Best Fantasy Novel, the Nebula, and Locus awards. Her stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, several Year’s Best anthologies and her collections Word Puppets and Scenting the Dark and Other Stories.

Calculating Stars is one of only eighteen novels to win the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards in a single year. As a professional puppeteer and voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), Mary Robinette has performed for LazyTown (CBS), the Center for Puppetry Arts, Jim Henson Pictures, and founded Other Hand Productions. Her designs have garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve. As an audiobook narrator, she records fiction for authors such as Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi.

Mary Robinette lives in Nashville with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters.

Visit her website here.

Accommodations & Travel

The 7-day retreat will be held at the Mt. Olivet Retreat Center near Farmington, Minnesota. Just a half hour drive from Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, the center takes you away from the busy city life and into a peaceful environment surrounded by woods, lakes, and prairies.

The Retreat Center

Mt. Olivet Retreat Center is a place of exceptional beauty and gracious hospitality, far from the business and busy-ness of everyday life. Surrounded by woods, lakes, and prairies, there’s ample space to explore, rest, and connect. All floors and locations in the retreat center are wheelchair accessible.

There are five miles of trails running through 154 acres of woods, prairie, and marshlands (with a 425-foot floating marsh walk). All conference rooms have large windows and excellent natural light, as well as many places to hide away and read, write, or sit peacefully.

Meals

Meals will be served onsite and we will work with the center’s staff to ensure your dietary needs are accommodated. Their produce in the summer comes from their own gardens or other local growers.

Sleeping Arrangements

We have three types of sleeping accommodations available:

• Single occupancy hotel-style room with its own bathroom

• Double occupancy hotel-style room with its own bathroom

• 2-6 person dorm-style room with four shared bathrooms

In addition, there is one wheelchair accessible hotel style room with two single beds and an accessible bathroom. We have this room on reserve so please contact us if you wish to book it. 

Note: Dorm rooms can technically hold up to 8 people per room, but in order to get everyone a lower bed, we will limit the occupancy to 6 per room.

Travel

The retreat will begin on Sunday evening on June 9th and conclude Saturday morning of June 15th.

Your travel to and from Minnesota will be arranged by you. Once in Minneapolis, we will arrange a pickup at a hotel near the airport with a large bus transport to the retreat center. We will also provide transport from the retreat center back to the airport at the end of the event. You are also welcome to drive directly to the retreat accommodations (address will be provided after registration) and parking is free onsite. 

Ticket Types

We have four ticket types available.

• Dorm Room Lodging Ticket

• Double Occupancy hotel style room ticket

• Single Occupancy hotel style room ticket

• Day Attendee Only*

All ticket types will give you the following access:

• All lectures, lessons, breakout sessions, and other group activities during the retreat

• Access to the grounds of the retreat center for solo and/or unofficial activities such as writing, walking, game playing, etc…

• Office hours with the instructors!

The Dorm Room and Hotel Style tickets also include

• Lodging for starting June 9th until the morning of June 15th

• Three meals a day starting with dinner on the 9th and ending with breakfast on the 15th

The Day Attendee Only ticket includes

• No lodging option, you will be making your own arrangements for sleeping

• Lunch and dinner will be included in the price (if you want to include breakfast it would be an additional charge of $20 per day) - starting with dinner on the 9th and ending with dinner on the 14th.

*This ticket is meant for local residents who are close enough to commute to the retreat each day. If you live over an hour away we highly recommend purchasing a ticket with lodging included.

Scholarships

As always, we are offering scholarship opportunities: four for 2024 Cruise, two for the Minnesota Land Retreat and one for the UK retreat.

We have two different scholarship types available. Half of the scholarships for the cruise and Minnesota will be awarded to those in financial need (the “Out of Excuses” Scholarship), and half will be awarded to writers of color.

For the UK retreat, since we have such a limited capacity, we will only be able to award one scholarship. This scholarship is available for anyone but will fall under the “Out of Excuses” category.

To find out more about the scholarships and how to apply visit our website here.

Our scholarships are run by donations and our Patreon. You will have an opportunity to donate toward them during checkout and we appreciate any amount you can send our way so we can hopefully offer more scholarships in the future!

Retreat Policies

Attendance Requirements

All Writing Excuses seminar attendees must be 18 years of age or older.

We will also be requiring vaccination against COVID-19.

COVID Policy

Writing Excuses will require vaccination for all attendees and staff*. In addition, we will require all attendees and staff to take a Covid antigen test with a negative result within 24 hours of the start of the event; we do not need to see your test result, but you will be required to confirm that you have taken the antigen test, that it was not expired, and that your result was negative.

Writing Excuses acknowledges that we cannot negate all risks associated with in-person group events. However, these are the steps we will take to mitigate that risk

• We require full vaccination for all attendees and staff. We are aligning our definition of "fully vaccinated" with the CDC's definition or to align with the requirements/definition of your country of residence.

• We will require all attendees and staff to take a Covid antigen test within 24 hours of arrival in Minnesota or before the start of the event.

• At this time we are not requiring masking while at the event. However, we will be monitoring the CDC guidelines/recommendations as well as the current conditions and may change to require masking if we deem it to be necessary for safety reasons.

  • We will, however, maintain a mask positive language in our communication and provide a positive environment if you choose to mask at the event.

  • The lecture spaces will have space for attendees to spread out a little and there are outdoor dining options available.

• We will provide KN95 masks to all attendees at no charge.

• We will make hand sanitizer and antimicrobial wipes available to attendees.

• We will provide a clear plan of action for anyone who begins showing symptoms, or who tests positive.

• All classes will be recorded, and will be made available to those who fall ill, as well as to those who are healthy. Accessibility practices like these are good for everyone!

• We will continue to develop our plans based on current conditions and CDC guidelines.

*We are willing to discuss granting exceptions to the vaccination policy on a case by case basis if there is a medical reason why you are unable to be vaccinated. Please reach out to us at contact@writingexcusesretreat.com with any questions.

Harassment Policy

Writing Excuses is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference without a refund at the discretion of the conference organizers.

Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention. Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

Instructors, staff, volunteers, and family members are also subject to the anti-harassment policy.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference with no refund. If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact any member of conference staff immediately.

We expect participants to follow these rules at all conference venues and conference-related social events.

Accessibility

The access policy of Writing Excuses follows the Social Model of Disability. This regards barriers to the full participation of disabled people as the fault of society (and more immediately we as the organizers), not the 'fault' of the person with a disability. We further reject any negative value placed on a person because of their disability, or indeed on their disability. Disability isn't good or bad, it just is. Please respect our disabled members by engaging in neither negative stereotyping (eg 'If I was you I'd kill myself' or 'I'd rather be dead than in a wheelchair) nor pity ("I'll pray for you to be cured') - many disabled people do not want to be cured and regard their disability as a fundamental part of their identity.

Additionally, please note that person-first language ("person with disability") is not the universally preferred form of address for disabled people. Many prefer the Social Model and 'disabled person'. Please treat the appropriate form of address for disabled people as you would treat preferred pronoun usage, by asking for their preferred form of address and using it.

One of the reasons we picked this retreat center is that all floors have elevators and there are ramps into every building. There is one wheelchair accessible hotel style room with two twin beds and an accessible bathroom. Please indicate on your registration form if you require this room or reach out to contact@writingexcusesretreat.com with any questions. 

The shared bathrooms for the dorm rooms have large shower stalls but there is a slight ledge in front of them that might hinder some mobility devices. If finances are a concern for the hotel style room please reach out to us and we can discuss a discounted rate.

If you have any other accessibility concerns or needs please let us know either before or after registration.

Refund Policy

Note: Fees are non-refundable. This includes the 0.65 booking fee as well as the 3% credit card processing fee that is not reflected in the listed ticket price but will be added to your order prior to purchase.

• Full refund until April 30th

• 50% Refund from May 1st - 7th

• 25% Refund from May 8th - 15th

• No Refund after May 15th

Have more questions? You can also message us at contact@writingexcusesretreat.com.