In the last week of July, for the past seven years, I’ve tutored a five-day, residential writing retreat at Wentworth Castle in Stainborough. It has become a regular fixture in my diary – akin to an annual pilgrimage. Me, my co-tutor Anna Chilvers, and 16 writers from the just-starting-out to the well-established. (Louise Jensen came one year to write what became her debut novel, the best-selling The Sister.)

Writing retreats are intense, as anyone who has been on one will know. One particularly memorable year, we got people to sit in colour of clothes order and a fight broke out in the red corner. Mainly though, people form friendships that sustain them through the rest of year and we get some writing done. For the last three, I used the time and space to send off my next novel to my agent.

This year, of course, we had to cancel – taking the decision almost as soon as lockdown measures were announced. We refunded deposits, briefly considered the idea of a winter retreat but decided, with everything up in the air, we should write off 2020 and focus instead on 2021.

Then, as we adjusted to the new, locked-down world, we heard from isolated, frustrated writers and found ourselves wondering whether we could do something on line. Was it was possible to create the feeling of a retreat (a hideaway) with writers spread across the country? Could a sense of community be built virtually? Would it make us feel better or worse?

We knew we’d have to imagine a different set of circumstances – no handy on-site cafeteria for starters [or main courses, for that matter ;0)]. Writers would no longer be turning up having left behind busy working lives – instead we knew they’d spent the last few months bored and furloughed, needing projects to get stuck into.

We reworked the agenda, halving the number of workshops and making space for one to one tutorials and smaller group work. We doubled the number of guest authors – it’s easier to get someone to drop by when you don’t have to arrange their transport and accommodation – and we increased the number of writing tasks.

We changed the title from The Art of Writing to Everything You Need To Know About Writing A Novel to reflect a more goal-orientated approach. Trying to get the balance right was difficult – we didn’t want to wear everyone out and we knew we needed to give people time for cooking their own meals and making their own beds.

We decided to hold it during the same period we would have held the physical retreat and despite less than 2 months’ lead-in time the course quickly booked up. (We capped the numbers at 16 – possibly because that’s what we’re used to – the truth is we could have taken more.)

It was immediately apparent that it was a different cohort to our usual group – more inclusive. Two writers I spoke to said health issues prevented them attending physical retreats and others remarked it only became affordable as an online event (without food and accommodation the price dropped by nearly 75%). The environmental cost also reduced – twenty fewer return journeys from all around the country. We had women with young families, who hardly ever attend the physical retreats, and more men too.

The discussions felt deeper and the sense of achievement higher. We got more done with fewer distractions – some writers had sent their families away in order to recreate the feeling of retreat at home. I discovered you cover more in an hour’s workshop on Zoom than in a classroom.

The surprising thing was the feeling of community (which, to me, defines a physical retreat) was the same – it didn’t seem to matter we weren’t meeting in the flesh. Perhaps the group took a little longer to gel without the boozy nights in the bar – but gel it did – and there were no fights to break up either.