Goodbye, cruel world

The blank page is a terrible thing. Suddenly, there are urgent things to do like weeding the window box, buying new shoe laces, going to the pub. But what if the writer/musician/artist is away from home, where such displacement activities are not available - no post to open, no dog to walk, no kettle to fix - in that legendary cottage in the country or in a friend's flat in Paris? Or, maybe, in a designated artists' retreat where all you have to do is make your own bed and be civil to the people either side of you for the duration of the evening meal?

However, even that amount of socialising may be too much for those people who prefer to work at home and don't relish having to participate in the gossipy chumminess that can develop in such surroundings. Some enjoy the company of like-minded people, while others again are simply grateful to have a quiet space in which to work.

Artists now are spoiled for choice. Retreats are everywhere, whether it's a coach house in Annaghmakerrig, a studio in Temple Bar, a cottage on Achill Island, a hilltop apartment in the Catalan Pyrenees, a restored guesthouse close to Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate, a crenellated mansion outside Paris, a house at the foot of Australia's Blue Mountains, a log cabin in Saratoga or a small barn with garden and pool in the Lot Valley. And that's just for starters.

Marina Carr, commissioned to write a play for The Project Theatre, is currently working in one of the studios which Temple Bar Properties let out to writers for a nominal rent of £20 a week. "If I wasn't working here," she says, "I'd be fighting for space at home."

Dublin Corporation, in partnership with the Dublin Writers' Centre and the Arts Council, funds an annual scheme whereby an artist receives a bursary of around £10,000 plus the use of a room in Parnell Square in which to work, in return for giving talks and workshops. The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) also operates a similar scheme in Dublin's Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.

The most profitable schemes, from the artist's point of view, however, are probably the ones that are fully residential. Eamonn Sweeney wrote his first novel in a bedsit on Dublin's North Circular Road but much of his latest one - The Photograph, due out in May - was written at Yaddo, the artists' colony close to Saratoga Springs: "Everyone had breakfast together at nine and then we were given our lunch pails and sent back to our log cabins in the forest to work until dinner. No phone calls, no talking. No visitors allowed into the colony. But what I liked best about it was meeting people. There were writers from Russia and the Ukraine and some performance artists from Greenwich Village and like everywhere else, in the evenings, we used to go to the pub in Saratoga, which is about the size of Sligo." He has also stayed in Henrich Boll's cottage on Achill Island: "That was completely solitary. Nothing to bother you and the Achill people would be killed making sure you had enough turf."

Different altogether is Refugi Irlandes, set up last year by Bernard and Mary Loughlin, who used to run Annaghmakerrig. Situated in one of the highest inhabited hamlets in Spain, Refugi Irlandes is as isolated as you can get. The nearest shop is 5 km away and the nearest bus-stop, connecting with Barcelona and France, is 12 km away. For some, this isolation is exactly what they want. "It's a medieval village and a good place for walking," says Anne Enright, who spent some time writing there last summer. "I found it great to work there - although I can write anywhere. The mix was interesting: Dutch and Romanian as well as the local people. I helped bring in the hay, and the fiesta was on while I was there. The air is astonishing and so are the wild cherries that grow everywhere. And the edible dormice, though I didn't eat any of those."

So what with haymaking and village festivities, did she get much work done? "Oh, yes. There are 16 working hours in the day and that's enough for anyone." The best plan, when going to a retreat to work, is to be clear in your mind how you're going to spend your time there. Map out your project and try to get through each day's work, an activity which may, of course, involve a lot of thinking or staring out the window. Gossip has it that at Annaghmakerrig, little real work gets done what with the ballad sessions, the poker games and the pub outings. For some, this may well be true but for the truly disciplined - and those for whom peace and quiet are precious - time spent at a retreat can be productive in a way that can't always be quantified.

Mary Morrissy spent a month at Katoomba, in Australia, as part of an exchange organised by the Dublin Writers' Centre and their partners, the Australian James Joyce Foundation: "I had just finished a book - The Pretender (just out from Jonathan Cape) - so in a way I was at a bit of a loss as I wasn't working on anything definite. But, as it happened, I found the place inspiring and now my next novel will incorporate something of that part of Australia. Katoomba is in the Blue Mountains. The dawn chorus was clamorous and the autumn mist slightly spooky. Quite different from my earlier experience of Australia when I'd lived in Sydney."

Different yet again is Las Cabanes, in the Lot et Garonne Valley in the south of France. Centred on an old farmhouse and huge converted barn, the accommodation is geared towards week-long writing courses but there is a smaller, self-contained barn with its own secluded garden where individual writers can get on with their own work undisturbed. Two hours by train from Bordeaux, Las Cabanes is as far from temptation as you want it to be. Which means you have a walk, through shimmering summer heat, of about 15 minutes before you reach a shop - or a bar. The walk back is made easier by the knowledge that you can cool off in the pool on your return.