This past spring in May, we went on our first writing retreat as a group. About 12 of us headed out on a Friday from Seattle to go to Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL), a marine research area that UW has in the San Juan Islands. After about a 2 hour drive in a carpool, followed by a beautiful ferry ride, we arrived in Friday Harbor, the type of town people visit for the summer, with a quaint little downtown.
After, we headed for our afternoon check-in at FHL. FHL is located about a 30 minute walk outside the town of Friday Harbor, and we rented a couple of cottages to house all of us. The cottages have fairly stocked kitchens, two bedrooms, and a shared bathroom. Everything was clean but a little rustic.
It was in these cottages that I ended up working with a collaborator for almost two days straight. We would get food in the dining hall, then work on going through our qualitative data from earlier that year. We spent hours in the cottage, then at the picnic tables outside, to create a qualitative codebook that we could then present to our broader research team. I had never thought to create such an intensive work environment for qualitative analysis, and it was in that format, I think, I had the most success. For me, it truly opened my eyes to what a productive environment an intense writing collaboration space could be. Others in our group had goals to work on general exams, book chapters, illustrations for publications, and other research-adjacent projects.
However, it was not all work. We had coincidentally scheduled our writing retreat the same weekend as Friday Harbor Laboratories Open House. This made what probably would’ve been a quiet Saturday much more lively with the laboratories open, so we got to see live marine animals, participate in VR trials, and craft with seaweed. We also went into town to explore in the evening, and before boarding our ferry on Sunday, we went to San Juan Islands Sculpture Park & Nature Reserve. Others went hiking, running, or bowling at various points. The labs also have rowboats you’re able to use after taking an orientation, so I got to row in saltwater for the first time.
At the end, on Sunday morning, we all gathered after breakfast to reflect on the weekend. Many of us had made substantial progress on the projects we had intentionally come to the retreat with, and others got the chance to relax in the tranquility of San Juan Island.
If you’re interested in more logistics and a schedule you can check out this guide I made to plan your own writing retreat.