In her essay A Room of One's Own in 1929, Virginia Woolf said that for women artists “a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself" and to develop the "habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think." But solitude is not the only sort of place to nourish creative expression. Many artists acknowedge the value of academies such as Idyllwild and Juilliard, and less formal artist retreats and workshops.