The Art of Writing – a writers retreat in Casentino June 2014

One of my Facebook friends commented last month that it seemed as if we were running a rather enviable eating retreat – was I sure that is was really a writers workshop?

Indeed it was!

The Art of Writing is truly a writers retreat, and great food was only one of the joys of our location in Borgo a Caiano, an  agriturismo location in the mountains of  Casentino– a part of Italy frequently referred to as La Toscana Nascosto -Hidden Tuscany.

Ombretta Stoppioni , our hostess at Caiano is a seriously good cook and she creates dishes from salads and vegetables picked fresh from her  home garden – which she garnishes with humour as shown above.

Her husband Roberto helps with everything , including cooking huge streaks on a gigantic barbecue.

Thus no writer goes hungry and, as we all know, it is difficult to work on an empty stomach…..

Delicious though it was however , nobody was staying at Caiano for the food.  Our objective was to enable our delegates to take a week away from their usual life to concentrate on writing – and during this period of immersion to provide them with help , support and new methods to help to get their project from plan to publication.

The five days included workshops such as Monday’s  Getting Started and Keeping Going with author and Arvon lecturer Jim Friel.

Later that day Guest lecturer and author of 20 novels Emma Fraser shared her experience and advice about Staying Focussed.

Every afternoon was set aside private time for writing – with all three  tutors available for support throughout.

Australian author and owner of The Art of Writing writers retreat Lisa Clifford, who now lives in Tuscany, shared her experience and inspirational tips about Writing from a Sense of Place – using examples from her own recent murder mystery story Death in the Mountains and her own history of how she finally decided to stay in Tuscany with her husband (finally!) -Paulo, from The Promise.

We reviewed some wonderful examples of  Character and Place created by some of the classic writers with Jim Friel – taking some descriptive pieces out of their usual context and focussing on them really makes you see and feel how beautifully crafted they are – and writing our own example makes you realise that it isn’t so easy to do!

An Art of Writing delegate from 2013 Matthew Ferrara rejoined us for the course and also gave us his advice and experience with Social Media networks. Understanding how Twitter, Facebook, Videos and Blogs works for writers is not simple- but these days publishers insist on writers helping with their own promotion.  Matthew, in his inspiring lecture on Creating Your Brand, made it all seem easy.

On Wednesday we looked at  Memoirs; collecting, collating and recounting your own story. Lisa Clifford explored the memoir genre, using some examples from her best selling memoir The Promise, which is currently being taken from page to screen by Global Entertainment Media and Luminous Range Films. Lovely Lisa explained her own working methods including deciding which details to leave in or out.

As a break from writing we visited the family home of one of our delegates Martha Specht Corsi – the Tower of the Castle at Porciano – which also contains a museum of Italian artefacts with a small area devoted to American items collected by Martha’s father – she is shown below displaying the boots that he wore throughout the war , which were so comfortable he kept them to wear thereafter.

The view from one of the windows near the top of the Tower gives some impression of how beautiful Casentino is – the Tower on the opposite hill is Romena Castle , owned by Martha’s sister – now sadly in ruins – one of the families claim to fame is that they provided shelter for Dante in his unhappy time of exile from Florence.  Unfortunately he repaid their hospitality by damning them to the Inferno in his Divine Comedy…… but they take some consolation from the fact that not every family can boast of being mentioned in one of the most famous writings of all time.

After the Tower we went onto the Cipriani Farm to learn how to make sheep cheeses – A Casentino farming experience with Lorenzo Cipriani, and his family which includes milking his sheep, an optional experience but I was determined to do it – and it was a joy!

After the sheep were released the family carried home the foaming pails of warm milk and we  then watched Lorenzo making ricotta and pecorino – some of which we were able to eat later.

The evening finished with a light meal of the cheeses we’ve made, together with Lorenzo’s home-made prosciutto and salami and a local red wine.

Thursday bgan with a session  on Point of View and Dialogue with Jim Friel , and after coffee the group discussion Scenes with Jim’s guidance with the afternoon free as always for Private writing time – everyone had a specific book in mind so this gave them time to get on with developing their work in preparation for the individual ReDrafting Workshops that were held with Jim, Lisa and Emma throughout Friday.

Our evenings all began with an aperitivo whilst we took part in a Skype conversation or one of the lectures mentioned above.

Later there was an evening meal prepared by Ombretta and during our last supper on Friday we even read aloud a short piece of our work to one another..

The most important thing for us was to know that we were on the right track with this class so the Feedback form at the end is vital and very gratifying when we got comments such as these below.

SOME COMMENTS FROM OUR JUNE WRITERS:

‘The quality of tutelage was stellar. Each contributed with their own experience and area of expertise. I’m so happy to have kick-started my writing journey with this course!’ Sasa.

‘Extremely valuable. I learnt so many skills and exercises to develop my writing. I found the one-on-ones with my tutors helpful and inspiring. I cannot think of anything you need to do to improve the retreat.’ Margaret.

‘Everything was absolutely perfect – better than I expected. I feel I benefitted greatly from my week.’ Orna

What else can I say? – except to send my own best wishes to all our delegates for well earned success with their forthcoming books.

Our next Art of Writing Course is September 14-20 2014 – We have one space made available through ill – health of a delegate – an opportunity for any last minute takers? 

We plan to be back in Casentino in June and September 2015 

Acknowledgements: Many of these portrait photos were taken by Irish designer and writer Orna O’Reilly (shown above)  easy to find as  they carry her logo – my thanks to her for sharing them with our group.