Actually there are no rules. Only the cardinal rule that you’re there to concentrate on your writing.

A retreat does not mean silence, I hasten to reassure any who, like me, were convent-educated. Although a retreat can be solitary if you choose to go away on your own to a place where you’ll be left undisturbed to knuckle down to your work in progress.

Every writer puts a lot onto a page. Now and again the creative tank needs topping up, and a retreat is an excellent way to do it.

My preferred retreat is with a group of like-minded author friends in self-catered accommodation, so that your week or however many days you have will be full of conversation and laughter about books and much else.

What you’re escaping is the mundanity of everyday life and the miscellany of duties that so easily squeeze writing out of your day. Typically one of you takes charge of making the booking, while everyone present shares the chores and the costs.

Yes, you do need to eat, which may involve shopping and cooking. So why do it? Because it’s energising and inspiring.

You may have insightful discussions with fellow writers, refine your writing techniques or your approach to scheduling your work. On some retreats, authors agree to critique each other’s writing. Perhaps you’ll share information about book events or marketing strategies. In my experience, the knowledge shared can cover almost anything, from identifying songbirds to spotting sepsis.

Feeling cramped isn’t conducive to creativity, so you need enough bedrooms and bathrooms.

It stands to reason that self-catering works best when you know one another in advance, everyone is willing to pull their weight, and there’s no squabbling over bedrooms.

The venue can be at home or abroad, and it can basic or luxurious. Yes, ours had a heated swimming pool. OK, I’m lying. It had two swimming pools.

Based on experience, here are my tips as to what to bring with you:

• Power cables and adaptors (and remember to take them home at the end).
• Soap.
• Rubber gloves for washing up.
• A writing-related game to play.

We played ‘Who wrote this?’, a game devised by my husband, where we each placed three or so passages from our own books (or from a work in progress into a hat. We then took turns reading them out loud and getting everyone to guess the author.

We chose our extracts with care, as many of us know the others’ work. To avoid giving the game away, some of us changed the characters’ names in our passages. The evening turned out to be fun and insightful, especially on those occasions when the writing fooled us.

A favourite word game was the Dictionary Game (aka Fictionary which is also a tradename for book editing software – not needed for this game). Players guess the meaning of an obscure word. For each round, one player finds and reads out a challenging word, while the others compose a fake definition for it. The made-up definitions, as well as the correct ones, are collected by the selector and read aloud. Each player then votes on which definition they believe to be correct. Points are awarded for correct guesses, and for having their own fake definition chosen by another player. Another entertaining evening.

Have you been on a writing retreat? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please drop me a comment below.