Why & How I Take Creative Retreats

Back in August I went on a creative retreat in the Tasman Peninsula for two weeks. It was quiet, right by the sea and so cold I wore thermals and a sleeping bag each day. My time was spent writing and thumb-nailing my graphic novel, looking at cows and bushwalking. These retreats are an annual ritual, a dive into fertile solitude for a week or two — and are immeasurably important for my mental health, creative projects, and business strategising.

Whenever I do one, and particularly when I took a sabbatical, people want to know why and how I go about crafting these space time oases. Here are some thoughts.

The why came about, because back in 2010 — when I first started my creative business — I realised that if I didn’t take some time away from the daily pressures of meeting client needs and running the business, I quickly slipped into a reactionary frame of mind that lead to overwork, personal compromise and burnout.

After talking with various artists, writers, entrepreneurs and parents, a few mentioned that they take short retreats to help them carve out time for creative projects and strategising, allowing them to refresh their outlook and make meaningful progress amidst the competing demands in their lives.

The first retreat I took was a breath of fresh air. Getting perspective, having time to take stock of what was and wasn’t working, get my priorities straight, develop a strategy and step into a proactive, intentional and generative frame of mind was invigorating. I also found that physically going away made a big difference. It helped set the intention for the duration of time. It helped me commit to making the most of it, and assisted with momentarily unplugging from daily life.

It can seem scary and indulgent to go away by yourself for a couple of weeks. Plus, it’s never a good time. When you plan to go away, inevitably urgent matters pop up. It can be really hard to say no. People may not understand what you are doing. Clients have emergencies, partners and children miss you, jobs get offered, friends have babies, opportunities pop up, your family decides they want to visit. There are lots of things that can stop you. But what matters more, urgent or important?

Whether solo or not, retreats create a unique space for reflection, emergence and planning. It is important. This is exactly why businesses have end of year reflection workshops and team planning retreats. The benefits are huge. It’s an investment. Without quality time thinking outside of the box, generating new work and thinking strategically are very hard.

From a business perspective, my solo retreats are a time to reflect, make sense of challenges, celebrate successes, learn, grow and chart the way forward. From a creative perspective, taking time out is essential for creative recalibration. Even with a creative business — you are still making creative work for others — and it is a fundamentally different process to making personal, sometimes risky, emergent creative work. Time out allows for breathing space, creative exploration, writing, daydreaming, experimentation and the opportunity to tune into and listen to myself, away from the noise of everyday life and people’s opinions.

How do I plan and structure these business and creative retreats? Firstly I make sure to save up some money so I can take time off. I chose a week in January for a business retreat and plan creative retreats after that. Over the week in January I follow a scan, focus, act methodology — reviewing the work of the previous year, reflecting, learning, exploring and then plan the upcoming year. I set things like financial targets for the upcoming year and each month, project ambitions, who I want to work with and why, and the kind of work I want to be doing. I also plan in time for creative projects and further creative retreats.

My creative retreats are structured similarly, so I can realign, generate new ideas, focus on creative projects such as writing my graphic novel, or work on a new animation or film. It is an important way for me to honour my creativity, to take my art making and play seriously. Thanks to these breaks I was able to create new works such as HEADSHOTS and BODY LANGUAGE. Without time away from my business, neither of these creative explorations would have been born.

A build on my creative retreat process was the sabbatical I took. I saved up to take 6 months off from my business in 2014, partly as a gift to myself for my 30th birthday, and partly because I really needed to slow down and look at what I was creating, check my priorities and think about where I was heading. This talk on the power of time off by Stefan Sagmeister was a key inspiration, as a way to rejuvenate and refresh my creative outlook.

My sabbatical gave me time to draw, write and animate in ways that I find hard to do when I’m busy with business. These creative activities then opened up new possibilities that I hadn’t even imagined, such being commissioned to make new comics, films and later animations for TripTank at Comedy Central in the US.

There is much more to say about how I approach and structure retreats, and the value of what emerges from them. As I’ve mentioned in a few previous newsletters I’m making a practical book that shares all the tools and processes I’ve collected over the years to assist with creative and business development, so I’ll leave the details for the book or another newsletter.

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The Dark Forest

This month, I slammed hard into a wall of despair with writing this graphic novel. (Surprise, surprise). I naively thought, “hey I’ve got creative chops, I’ve been making art for years. I know that it can be hard, terrifying — a tedious slog. But I can handle the pressure of the creative process. I’m a professional. No problem!”

Little did I realise that this whole long-form writing thing, which I’ve never done before — woah — it’s next level hard. I’m there. Putting in the hours. My butt is sore from sitting, and I have wrist calluses from typing. But the writing, it sucks. It’s word salad. The structure, of weaving diverse subject matter and perspectives together, now seems futile. How did I ever think this would work? In addition, I still have mountains of books on my desk plus links I have to wade through to check quotes and facts.

This creative stress quickly tipped over into extreme self-doubt and anxiety. (These have always been loud companions, but under stress like this they’ve been taking over.)

In utter desperation I shared this drawing from my visual diary with my Comic Art Workshop buddies. It was a call for help, a call for community, for collaborators, an attempt at shedding light on my predicament. And it was met with a loud “ME TOO” followed by “YOU ARE AWESOME, WE LOVE YOU AND YOUR WORK; PLEASE KEEP GOING”.

I was so heartened by the encouragement and level of “ME TOO” that I decided to share it publicly. The response was heart-opening. I was amazed by the number of professional artists and writers I know who are publicly adored, and seem totally powerful and confident in their work, but are struggling with exactly the same crippling terror and doubts. Why is this not talked about more often?

Maybe I’ve been partially brainwashed by the creative trend that’s everywhere at the moment — particularly in advertising, business and self-help spaces — encouraging people to write books, do intuitive mandala painting retreats, buy colouring books, take sabbaticals, start a band; heck even at McDonald’s you can design your own burger. We receive these messages — that creativity is sexy, fun, accessible, the key to your self-expression, your business innovation, your relaxation, your happiness. We’re told everyone is creative and you too can unlock your creative potential.

Certainly from the outside, when we look at other people’s art and see creative folks in the studio — it looks alluring and exciting. We want to do that. Look, they are working and drinking wine. They are so inspired. We love the delicious idea that the creative person is a divine channel to a fertile unknown. We want to be that too.

Despite my years of art making experience, I’ve somehow been hijacked by these seductive myths of creativity. I do not mean to discourage anyone who is on a fledgling path of creative exploration. Rather, I’m reminding myself, and you dear reader, that there needs to be more depth to the conversation. As creative endeavor deepens, as you extend yourself into uncomfortable new territory; you need to develop resilient creative confidence. Finding your voice is hard, and takes a lot of time and work, that people rarely see. It’s not glamorous. As Jessica Abel says “If what you’re doing is deep, if it’s worth doing, it’s going to be hard.”

The wonderful Joshua Santospirito recently reminded me of Jessica Abel, with my current creative struggles, and put me onto this fantastic podcast, about dealing with what she calls the Dark Forest.

In the revelatory podcast, she suggests that the way out of the emotional turmoil of the Dark Forest is to totally commit. To go further, and deeper into the woods. To get well and truly lost, and then transcend it. Then find/fight your way back. In her opinion, this is most often what it feels like to make art. It can feel like you’re flailing, like you’re completely incapable of getting your mind all the way around the subject at hand. The feeling of “I have bitten off way more than I can chew”.

Ira Glass chimes in with, just put “one foot in front of the other. Slog through and execute. That’s the job of making something. Creativity involves struggle. Jed Abumrad says wisely that , “somewhere in the middle of that trauma, I think I found my voice. There is a real correlation between time spent in the Dark Forest and these moments of emergence”.

So, if like me you are currently fighting your way through the Dark Forest, I hope that Kazu Kibuishi’s words are encouraging to you; the more you go to the Dark Forest the more “the terror gets reframed, because you know you’ve made it out a few times…You recognise the forest for what it is — a tool to hear the next version of yourself…You’ll get through it. You’ll be fine. This will help you progress. Over time you get used to this stuff coming up. Remind yourself that it means the next step is coming. When you feel terrible, it means something good is going to come.”

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