The Rewrite Retreat: Why Your Next Draft Deserves a Plane Ticket

Let's be honest: your last draft is sitting there judging you from across the room like a disappointed parent. You know what I mean: that screenplay you lovingly birthed, the one that felt so brilliant when you typed FADE OUT with a flourish and a celebratory glass of wine. The one that now reads like it was written by someone who learned dialogue from infomercials.

If you're a screenwriter staring down your second act, you especially know this feeling. You've done the thing: optioned something, got a producer meeting, maybe even earned the right to call yourself a "screenwriter" at dinner parties without that subtle eye-roll from across the table. But now? Now you're stuck in the Hollywood equivalent of middle age, wondering if your best work is behind you or if you're brave enough to reinvent yourself entirely.

Here's what I learned after dragging my own stubborn second draft to San Miguel de Allende: sometimes the best thing you can do for your screenplay is give it a change of scenery. Not because Mexico has magical cinematic powers (though golden hour in San Miguel is awe inspiring), but because distance (literal, physical distance) gives you permission to see your work with fresh eyes.

The Geography of Perspective

There's something liberating about editing your American indie drama while sitting in a café where the barista doesn't know your coverage history, your past pitch meetings, or that embarrassing table read where you discovered your dialogue sounds nothing like how actual humans speak. In San Miguel, you're not "the screenwriter whose last script died in development hell." You're just another person with a laptop, wrestling with character arcs in a place where storytelling has been happening for centuries.

I discovered this accidentally. What began as a writing retreat became a rewriting revelation. Stripped of familiar surroundings and the comfortable excuses that come with home (the closet that needs organizing, the Netflix queue that demands "research"), I had nowhere to hide from the truth: my second draft wasn't broken. I just hadn't found the heart of the story. The emotional spine that hooks audiences... and script readers!

The Courage to Kill Your Darlings (in a Beautiful Place)

Mid-career screenwriters in particular carry unique baggage. We're old enough to know what good writing looks like and young enough to still want to prove ourselves. We've internalized every pass, every lukewarm coverage (The Blacklist, anybody?), every well-meaning cocktail party inquiry, "Anything I might have seen?" with the enthusiasm typically reserved for a gynecology check-up.

This can make us precious about our work in all the wrong ways. We cling to scenes that felt cinematic at 2 AM but play like amateur theater in daylight. We refuse to cut characters because, darn it, we worked hard on those attributes, even if they contribute nothing to the story other than prove we can write witty banter that nobody will ever utter.

But here's the thing about rewriting in a place where every street corner looks like a movie set: suddenly your visual storytelling has competition. That opening sequence you were so proud of? It pales next to actual golden hour light cascading over actual colonial architecture draped in brilliant bougainvillea. Reality becomes your editor, and it's brutal.

The Expat Advantage

San Miguel is full of people reinventing themselves. The school teacher who became a ceramic artist. The lawyer who leads cooking classes. The banker who runs a boutique hotel. It's a town that understands second acts, and the energy is contagious.

Writing alongside people who've already blown up their lives and started over gives you permission to blow up your screenplay and start over too. When everyone around you is proof that reinvention is possible, destroying half your script stops feeling like failure and starts feeling like freedom.

Speaking of reinvention.... Inspired by the fascinating people around me who are busy reimagining themselves (many in their tercera edad, as we call it in Mexico), I'm creating a TV series about three expat women, with the revolutionary message that your best life might just be getting started at 60.

The Long View

San Miguel operates on a different clock. The town has been here more than 500 years; it's not impressed by your development timeline. The architecture reminds you daily that some things are worth taking time to build correctly. The local artists, many of whom didn't start their careers until their 50s or 60s, embody the radical idea that your best work might still be ahead of you.

The Return

Eventually, you have to go home. But here's what I've noticed: screenwriters who've taken their rewrites on retreat return with something invaluable. Their scripts are not only better, they have better relationships with their own work. They've learned to see their screenplays as separate from their ego, something that can be improved rather than defended.

Whether it's your second, fifth or twentieth draft, it deserves better than your home office and your local Starbucks. It deserves the same care you'd give to any project worth producing: attention, time, and maybe a romantic getaway.

Your best draft is waiting. Sometimes it just needs a plane ticket to get started.

San Miguel Sunset Photo Credit: Lorraine Flett