Picture this: you wake up early on your only day off, and the first thing you grab is your phone to check what time it is. Yes, this, even while you’re dreaming of getting away from screens. Of course, you’re lucky because you didn’t have to set the alarm last night. In a few minutes, you order your breakfast and some groceries online. By noon, you are being bombarded with pings. You check WhatsApp to find out your girl gang is planning to meet for lunch. You freshen up and book a salon session online. All the while, you keep wondering if you can get some time away from screens.

But your Sunday lunch with your besties can’t wait. So, you quickly dress up and book a cab. Your lunch date becomes a day-long gossip session. You click tons of Insta-worthy photos and add great filters and trending hashtags before posting them. By the time you get back home, you’re too drained to work on that dream book you’ve been planning to write. You check your office WhatsApp group to plan ahead for the Monday morning blues waiting to pounce on you. You then make a quick dinner and get into bed while browsing through Netflix. Or you get on Kindle for a late-night read. And that’s how a perfect Sunday ends. Sounds familiar? This is exactly how I used to spend my Sundays during my corporate stint back in Bengaluru. 

But I often wonder how much faster I could’ve written my first book, a poetry collection that I had been planning to publish for years, had I not been in the city or around screens. In this blog, we’ll tell you how getting away from screens makes you write better, with insights from Gurugram-based poet Chandana Bardia and Dehradun-based journalist and writer Prerna Raturi. While Chandana attended The Writing Masterclass with actor and author Manav Kaul, Prerna was a participant at Satkhol’s Himalayan Reading Retreat, led by award-winning blogger and book reviewer Debdatta Dasgupta.

How Does the City Hustle Impact Writing?

Writing when you’re already preoccupied with your kid’s pending school fees or your cleaning didi’s sudden absence is completely different from writing in a remote retreat far away from the city hustle. Prerna agrees when she says she is “bored” when she is away from the city. What she means is she feels less stimulated when she’s at a reading or writing retreat far away in the mountains. 

Prerna believes that, apart from being a creative person, she is also a chronic procrastinator. “I look for ways to distract myself,” she says when asked about how the city affects her. Whether it is because of screen addiction; the sensory overload of cars honking, doorbells ringing, and people chattering constantly; or just her overstimulated mind that’s always looking on the outside for more stimulus, Prerna feels she can’t do justice to her creativity in the city.

Chandana too feels we are slowly becoming slaves to smartphones and moving towards a future where we’ll be more machines than humans. When talking about the motivation behind travelling to Satkhol for a workshop, she said, “Sometimes, we need a deliberate pause from the hustle, the notifications, and the endless doomscrolling. We all long for it. Yet, somehow, we are bound to our routines and forget to stop. The writing workshop in Satkhol offered me the opportunity to choose peace.”

Writing Without Screens: How the Retreats in Satkhol Help 

“The reading retreat in Satkhol was absolutely amazing,” Prerna says. While talking about the impact Satkhol had on her, she tells us that by the end of the retreat, she felt a shift in her brain. The whole experience was almost meditative and elevated her to a state of mental peace, where she read better and faster without trying any speed-reading tactics. “I finished four books in three days, and one of them was non-fiction,” she adds, explaining how the time away from screens and any artificial dopamine kick helped her retain whatever she had read in those three days.

Chandana’s experience too wasn’t much different. She explains, “For four beautiful days, my phone became almost irrelevant. Writing was my priority. Amid serene nature, words began to flow, thoughts found their way onto paper, conversations replaced notifications, and my creativity found a space that I had been craving. Those four days were some of the best days of my life and helped improve my writing significantly.”

What Do Participants Carry Back from Satkhol? 

Speaking about the exact course elements that helped her write better, Chandana said, “During the workshop, we were introduced to assignments and time-bound exercises that brought back memories of my childhood days. Since there were no distractions, we could think faster, observe better, and were able to complete all the tasks within the timeline provided.”

Describing how this remote writing retreat helped widen her creative horizons, she added, “Some of the projects required collaboration, while others allowed us to step into another participant’s story and write by adopting their narrative. This was liberating. Our discussions with Manav and his book recommendations helped open up an entirely new world. The whole experience was an exercise in imagination and collaboration.” 

And here’s what Prerna had to say about her takeaway: “I learned a lot from the reading retreat in Satkhol and later applied them to my writing. The mental peace I achieved there helped me a lot later. These days, whenever I get a writer’s block or a mental deadlock, I take a mandatory walk in nature. Thankfully, I live in Dehradun, which, in spite of its bustling vibes, has a lot of nooks for a casual stroll.” 

She says she often takes long walks in the open or just stares into nature. It soothes her mind and allows her to settle into herself. The feeling of calm she gets after this brings a lot of ideas to her automatically. Soon, she has entire chapters and structures framed in her head. The fact that nature can play such an important part in helping writers is something she hadn’t realized before she visited the retreat in Satkhol.

Advantages of Writing Without Screens

What Prerna and Chandana felt in Satkhol was no less than therapeutic. We have jotted down a few such advantages of writing (and reading) without screens:

• Boundaries: A quiet retreat without screens sets the right boundaries. There are no interruptions (constant pings, swipes, and notifications) to mess with your mind anymore. It’s just you and nature (and, of course, your manuscript)!
• Better memory: Writing on paper helps the brain register better. Multiple studies have shown that writing by hand increases brain activity and is better for human memory when compared to typing on a computer or a screen. 
• Boost to creativity: A screen with its set templates or formats doesn’t do much to enhance your creativity. Writing on paper (and any hobby that doesn’t involve screens, such as doodling or collage-making) helps you explore your creativity. You aren’t stuck to rigid rules.
• Slow reflection: Typing on a screen is not as therapeutic as jotting down things by hand because writing on paper slows your thought process down and gives you enough space to reflect. So, your brain gets more time to process your thoughts.
• Tangible record: Just like retro-themed objects such as Polaroid cameras are making a come-back, journals or physical copies of your writings are precious tangible records that no digital form can replace. This is something you will cherish going through later. Writing without screens also helps you track how your writing evolved over time.
• More human: In a world that’s being swept away by AI-written content, your writings (without any screens, be it to distract you or to write) automatically become more human. There’s less perfection, no backspacing, and a lot of doodles. 
• Better observation: Without a screen in front of you to distract you, you tend to observe your surroundings a lot more. So, your story might just end up with a description of the bee that got lost in your room briefly before making its way out or the random dog that came and sat by your feet while you were busy drafting your manuscript.
• No technical/operational glitch: Can’t carry your laptop with you on a train? Need the internet to get some input for your write-up, but a patchy connection has ruined your mood? Getting away from screens helps you avoid such technical and operational goof-ups. Carry a journal and write in peace from your hotel balcony or a cosy café in a remote hill station. That’s the magic of screen-less writing!
• The sensory experience: Writing without screens around you makes the whole process more sensory. The texture of the pages of your notebook when you turn them, or the sound your pen makes when it strikes the surface your journal? You soak it all in and then release it all through your words. Literary experts would agree that this is cathartic. No technology in the world can replace this feeling.
• Digital detox: Staying away from screens is not just a fad that’s coming back in the literary world. You will find a lot of people struggling with relationship problems or mental health issues experimenting with off-the-grid vacations and digital detox spells. These small breaks away from city life, as we know it, help people concentrate on their personal and professional lives better.

Final Thoughts: Ditch the Screen Once in a While

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how getting away from screens helps with writing. Yes, you are likely to find it tough to write with 20 tabs open on your screen. So, even if you’re a Gen-Z writer who swears by her writing tools and gadgets, try ditching the screen once in a while. Join a creative writing camp, interact with fellow writers and readers, try a digital detox, and watch how that complements your writing skills. See how writing without screens feels, and we promise you won’t regret it. 

In case you’re still finding the idea of getting away from screens tough, take some time out from your busy schedule and just get lost in nature! No phones. No laptops. Nothing to distract you. Just your own thoughts and a journal. We assure you, you’ll love it!