There’s a version of your book that only exists somewhere else.
Not because the content isn’t already in you. It is. Not because you need inspiration, or a muse, or a moment of divine clarity while gazing meaningfully at weather.
Because the distance between your ordinary life and the book you’re trying to write is about four feet, and that is nowhere near enough.
The version of you running the business, managing the team, answering the messages at 11pm — that version doesn’t write the book. Not won’t. Doesn’t. It has never once written the book. It has been promising to for years and it is, frankly, a liar.
A Createcation removes that version of you from the building.
So what actually is it
A destination writing retreat. Four days. Six writers. Somewhere your brain hasn’t been before.
Not a holiday that happens to have notebooks. Not a conference where you sit through panels about craft while your manuscript stays exactly the same length. You come to write, you write, and you leave with substantially more book than you arrived with.
The format is deliberate. Small enough that I know what every person in the room is working on by lunchtime on day one. Long enough that you get past the awkward bit where nobody wants to admit they haven’t written anything since 2019.
Six people. Never seven. This is the part people try to negotiate and the part that doesn’t move.
Six is the number where I can read your work properly, where the group knows each other by the second morning, and where nobody hides at the back. At twelve it becomes a workshop. At twenty it becomes a conference with better catering. Neither of those finishes your book.
What actually happens
Mornings are teaching and structure. Afternoons are writing. Evenings are dinner, wine, and the conversation where somebody finally says the true thing about their book.
That last part isn’t scheduled and it’s often the most important.
Two formats, depending on where you are.
Find Your Voice — more teaching, more structure. For people starting, or starting again after a long and slightly embarrassing gap. We work out what the book actually is before you write 30,000 words of the wrong one.
Finish Your F*cking Book — lighter on teaching, heavier on writing, with one-to-one coaching built in. For people with a stalled draft who know exactly what’s wrong and have been avoiding it for eleven months.
The name is not a marketing flourish. It is a description of the mood by day three.
Why leaving actually works
There’s real cognitive science here — novel environments interrupt habitual thinking, and offloading your usual responsibilities frees genuine working memory. Your brain in an unfamiliar room makes connections it won’t make at the desk where you also do your invoicing.
But here’s the less scientific version.
At home, you write for forty minutes and then remember the dishwasher. On a Createcation there is no dishwasher. There is no school run, no quick call, no urgent thing that could absolutely have waited until Thursday.
There are five other people writing, which makes not-writing conspicuous. There is me, noticing. And there is the specific and useful pressure of having paid to be there.
Guilt is an underrated productivity tool and I have no shame about deploying it.
The thing that happens more than you’d think
Someone arrives with a business book.
Confident about it. Outlined, even. Fifteen years of expertise and a clear plan to turn it into the definitive guide to their field.
By day two, at dinner, they tell a story about something that happened to them decades ago. The table goes quiet in the way tables do. And they stop halfway through and say sorry, that’s not the book.
Reader, it is very often the book.
I’ve watched people leave with something completely different from what they came for. Not because I talked them into it — because four days away from your own noise is enough to hear which story is actually knocking. You can’t hear that at your desk. Your desk is full of the book you think you should write.
Both books are usually worth writing. But the order matters enormously, and you can only tell in a room where someone’s paying attention.
Where and when
Victoria BC — 1–4 October 2026. Finish Your F*cking Book. The only FFYB retreat of 2026, on Vancouver Island, where I live and where the orcas occasionally show up mid-session and derail everyone’s afternoon. Worth it.
Christchurch NZ — 19–22 November 2026.
Melbourne AU — 10–13 December 2026.
Cayman Islands and Lisbon — 2027. Waitlist open. Lisbon will be the first Createcation in Portugal, and I am insufferable about it already.
Venues stay secret until four weeks out. Partly logistics, mostly because I enjoy it.
What it costs
$3,500 — and in your own currency. CA$3,500 in Canada, NZ$3,500 in New Zealand, AU$3,500 in Australia.
Not converted. Not marked up because your dollar is doing something interesting this quarter. I’m not charging you more for living somewhere else, which shouldn’t be radical and somehow is.
Payable in three instalments if that’s easier, with no surcharge. Book eight weeks out and it’s $3,000.
And there’s Bring Four, Come Free. Refer four writers who book, and you’re the fifth — free. Not a discount. Not a credit toward something. Your entire seat, on me.
Who shouldn’t come
People who want a holiday. There’s a lovely version of that available and it isn’t this. You will write. It is on the schedule and I will notice.
People who won’t be read. Your work gets read and discussed. If that idea makes you want to hide behind the curtains, this will be an expensive four days of anxiety.
People with a finished draft. You need an editor, not a retreat. Save your money and I’ll point you at someone.
People hoping proximity is enough. Sitting near a bestselling ghostwriter does not transfer anything by osmosis. I’ve checked. You still have to do the writing.
What you leave with
Substantial book. Not a finished manuscript — four days is four days and I’m not going to lie to you about that. But thousands of words that didn’t exist, a structure that holds, and the specific knowledge that you can do this, which is usually the bit that was missing.
Also five people who know what your book is about and will ask how it’s going. That turns out to matter more than almost anything else. More than half the people who come to a Createcation carry on working with me afterwards, and I think it’s mostly that — having been seen doing it once, you can’t quite go back to pretending you’re not a writer.
Six seats. That’s genuinely all there are.
Apply for a Createcation — or join the waitlist if you’ve got your eye on Cayman or Lisbon.
Not ready to commit to a room full of strangers and your own unwritten book? Fair. Join the Author Empire and I’ll keep you company from a distance.
Your Next Fave Read
- Writing Retreat vs Book Coaching: Which One Actually Moves Your Manuscript Forward?
- Writing Retreats for Authors: What to Look For (And What to Walk Away From)
- Book Writing Retreats in 2026: What Actually Happens, and What’s Still Open
Ready to get your wisdom into the world, however you write it? Book a free validation call. I’ll help you figure out the right approach for your specific book and your actual goals, whether that’s coaching, ghostwriting, or the two of us writing it together.
