Closing the Season with Inspiration: Naomi Arnold on Writing, Creativity and the Power of Retreat

We recently hosted our second Creative Writing & Reading Retreat with Nelson-based author and journalist Naomi Arnold, and afterward, we asked her to tell us her thoughts on holding writing workshops and how the ‘writing-curious’ among us can make the jump to becoming practising writers. 

Northbound, Naomi’s memoir of walking Te Araroa, was a finalist at the 2026 Ockham NZ Book Awards. She has also written an acclaimed astronomy history, Southern Nights, and co-wrote the Ockham-longlisted Force of Nature with Nelson journalist David Young.

What do you like about hosting workshops?

I love stepping away from regular life for four days and giving people a chance to conceptualise their writing dreams, sometimes for the very first time. One of our exercises has participants imagine and then write down what they want out of their writing life, and it is so rewarding to see them come alive and start filling up the page with their aspirations – some of which have been held secretly for 40 years or more. Of course, the trick after the workshop is to go home still holding onto the determination and objectives that we build, and the steps we have put in place to achieve them, and we cover that in the course too.

Some of our participants are professional writers in other fields and some are just beginning – it is never too late to start your writing career! There have been a mix of fiction and non-fiction writers in the groups, but we all face similar barriers and the course is designed for both. 

Happily, I have found all of the participants are so supportive of each other’s wide-ranging dreams. It’s wonderful for me to sit back and hear the group enthusiastically encouraging each other. They have uniformly been a great bunch and it has been a pleasure to spend time with them. 

What drew you to developing workshops?

I studied English so I suppose I’ve always been obsessed with books, writing, and talking about it all. I have been a journalist for 18 years and during my time at the Nelson Mail I was occasionally asked to give journalism and media talks to community or science groups, as I was the science reporter for a while. I enjoyed these and later established Featured, a website and e-newsletter that highlighted some of the best non-fiction writing in New Zealand. I also hosted a podcast called The Get with The Spinoff, which interviewed New Zealand’s best journalists. I had also taken a few journalism workshops with Stuff, and attended a non-fiction writing workshop in Texas as well. 

When my book Northbound was published and I appeared at the Auckland Writers Festival in 2025, the festival director asked me to create a travel writing masterclass. I was very happy to do so – and happier when it sold out! Kerry Sunderland, the Pukapuka Talks director at the Nelson Arts Festival, then asked me to hold a similar workshop for Nelson. And we were pleased that one sold out too. 

How did you develop Maruia’s workshop?

For our first workshop, I wanted to know who was attending, what experience they had of writing, and what difficulties they were having with it. So I sent out a survey ahead of time. It was very useful and I planned the workshop around the answers. 

Both workshops have had similar answers, in fact. Generally, people know they have a writer or a story in them, but are struggling with time, headspace, permission, confidence, and motivation. I wanted to help people unlock that, so I designed a series of exercises to help them think about and address these emotional or other barriers. We also have writing exercises and discuss how to read like a writer, becoming more analytical about our reading and figuring out how to refine our taste and our own work. Then I provide a framework and check-ins to help them put all of this into practice when they get home.

What makes Maruia River Retreat a good place for this sort of exploration? 

It is really the perfect spot to do this sort of work. Everything is done for you, you never go hungry, the sleep is amazing, the yoga is restorative, and there is always a pleasant diversion for your spare time, like the huge library, a river swim, or a hot tub. It’s luxurious but at the same time very down-to-earth. You sit with yourself (if you’re without your phone – more on that below!) and your true wants and needs come to the surface. You are forced to see and address them. 

I think the retreat nature of Maruia really complements this sort of self-discovery and creativity. Over our summer and winter workshops I have seen people arrive with attitudes ranging from loud self-deprecation to quiet nerves and disbelief – like, “Why am I here, how did I sign up for this? I am not even a writer.” By the last breakfast, I feel a real change. They are determined, they have accepted that a writing life is their fate, and they have started to believe in themselves as the kind of writer they want to be. And they have a plan! The plan might slow down or change as life gets in the way, but at least they know what they want and they have made a plan to get there. 

I think you have to regularly exercise that belief to keep it alive, so I offer check-ins later down the track to see how they’re going. We now have at least a couple of novels well underway. 

You ask participants to turn their phones off for the duration of the retreat. Why and what have the participants said about it?

I recommend this in our pre-email, but it’s not compulsory and I am actually not sure if anyone has done it for the whole time! I am always interested in talking to our participants about phone use, as it can be such a big factor in blocking creative work, for a variety of reasons from time to confidence. And of course there’s the addictive infinite scroll most of us are susceptible to, for which social media platforms were recently found legally liable. 

Turning off your phone isn’t compulsory, and seeing your phone as a problem depends on how attached you are to it beforehand, of course. But I have turned mine completely off for both four-day workshops now, and I have found it so clarifying for creative thinking and writing. Usually, whenever my iPhone is around and I need it for something tool-related, like noting work hours or logging a receipt, I’ll pick it up and then suddenly have lost 45 minutes to scrolling and general messaging or tapping around. But with my phone off at Maruia I instantly swapped that time for more reading, writing, and working, with no effort. In fact working became pleasant rather than a chore, because the phone was that much more ‘exciting’ for my brain in contast to research, crafting words, and organising interviews. I’m so happy to have cut out that fake sugar hit!

I fact I am writing this nearly two weeks since I left our winter retreat and I still don’t have my phone, as I took the opportunity to finally get it repaired. So it’s been in the shop since I left Maruia. I am quite glad the repair has taken forever, although travelling with a Nokia-style brick these days has had its own difficulties, from missing flights to being locked out of my bank account. 

I am always curious if this no-phone experiment helps our workshop participants with their writing too. But there are so many gorgeous things to take photos of at Maruia that the phones usually come back on at some point ☺

Want to know more about attending a Maruia workshop? Contact Naomi or reservations@maruia.co.nz for enquiries or to register your interest for our next season’s retreat.