Writersfest 2019

Home again, home again, hot diggity dog, as my daughter used to say.

If you’re a writer, or have writing aspirations, and you live within travel distance of Kingston, Ontario, I strongly urge you to start saving now to attend the Kingston Writersfest in 2020.

There were two parts to the festival: onstage events such as literary talks, workshops, readings, literary dinners, and lectures; and a writing retreat filled with master classes. I took part in a two-day package which included an awesome room in the Residence Inn by Marriott, and six master classes.

The classes were two and a half hours each (with a break part way through). The first one was “Choosing Your Words,” run by poet Lorna Crozier. She talked about word origins and the difference between Latin based words and Anglo Saxon based words, and the appropriate uses of each. We heard about verbals versus verbs and how they applied to both poetry and prose.

The next class was “The Decisive Moment” by Voaden prize winner Damian Tarnopolsky. Using Shakespeare’s Richard III as an example, we discussed pivotal changes in character and why they’re important. We dissected Act I, Scene ii to discuss event, structure, pulse, and outcome. Then we applied what we learned to an exercise in improv.

The final class of the day was “Writing Character and Voice,” offered by Erika Behrisch Elce. We learned what exactly voice is and the little things that bring a character to life, how dialogue is not a character’s voice, but reveals a character’s voice.

Whew! What a long day!

The next day started with “To Be Here: The Writing Place” offered by poet and creative writing teacher Tanis MacDonald. I have to admit, of all of the classes it was the one that least interested me when I read about it, but it turned out to be my favourite. I think we did more writing – creative, not just note-taking – in this class, and although I came away with a poem I’m pretty happy with, much of what we learned can be applied to prose as well.

After this came “Beyond the First Draft: Polishing Your Work,” which was mostly a lecture by Rabindranath Maharaj. A lot of what he talked about was information I already knew, but there was enough new information to keep me happy. I couldn’t help thinking how useful a writing friend of mine would find this class, and just before the class ended I looked across the room and there she was, sitting at another table.

She was in the area for family reasons, and escaped just long enough to take in this one class. Talk about a coincidence! She had to rush back to her family, but we made a coffee date for when we got back home so we could talk some more about the class.

I was pretty much done for the day at this point and I chose to skip the last class, which was “Yoga and the Art of Relaxed Writing.” Instead I wandered around the city, stumbled across an outdoor fleamarket where I snapped up a couple of amazing finds, got myself a coffee and the most wonderful almond croissant ever, and took them down to a little park near the water. I tell you, I found that far more relaxing than any yoga would have been.

So yeah, I’ll definitely be going back next year. But next time I’m going for the whole thing.

Prompt of the Week

Once again instead of picking a prompt to work on this week, I’m going to list the generators and let you pick your own. I’m not sure if I’ll get to a prompt this week myself, but hopefully I still post something on Saturday. Maybe the poem I wrote at the retreat. :-)

The Story Shack
The Plot Generator
Writing Exercises and Prompts
Springhole
Seventh Sanctum
RanGen

Winterfire

I made it home from the retreat yesterday, although it was a close thing. There was a brutal wind, with snow on top of it, making the driving treacherous. One of the major highways was closed both ways due to accidents, and I only narrowly avoided being stuck waiting for an accident to be cleared away from the route I took. A second accident I was able to turn around from and take an alternate route.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about the retreat itself. The Winterfire Writing Retreat was held at the Loretto Maryholm Spirituality Centre, which is owned and administered by the Loretto Sisters of The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This probably accounted for the single beds with their super firm mattresses.

My friend and I got to the retreat on Friday with enough time to settle in, unpack, and relax a bit. Supper was a light buffet of seriously healthy food like avocado, shredded carrots, diced cucumber, couscous, chick peas – you get the idea – that you could combine in any way you saw fit. This was followed by the first workshop.

When I think of workshops, I think of everyone working at a single task. The Winterfire workshops were a little different in that we worked at several different things. For instance, there was a tiny card at each place with a single word written on it. We were to begin with the phrase, “I want to have” and write a short piece incorporating that word. The writing was timed, and after we were done we shared what we’d written before moving on to the next task. We’d usually do three or four of these little prompts (all different) before the workshop was done.

Saturday we did a prompt workshop as a group, then broke into two groups for more prompt writing. But it was after lunch that things got really interesting. We did something called “silent writing” for something like three hours. Now silent writing doesn’t just mean writing quietly, it means you don’t smile at anyone, don’t talk, don’t even acknowledge another person – not even to offer them a cup of coffee.

I was kind of skeptical of what this would accomplish, but I gotta tell you. I went into the silent writing time feeling tired and dragged out, but by the time it was done I felt rejuvenated. It was really weird, and really productive.

I got a lot of writing done at the retreat, most of it from prompts. And I completed two short stories. The other participants were a varied group, ranging from a young screen writer to a research doctor who was working on her memoir, with several different genres in between.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we were divided into teams to make lunches and dinners and the purpose was two-fold. The first was to provide delicious, home-cooked meals, which were not included in booking the house, and the other was to allow us to get to know each other better through a shared task. Remember, there were 15 of us and we’d never met each other before.

Would I do it again? Definitely. Being unplugged for the weekend was in no way a hardship. I got a lot of writing done and met some very interesting women – everyone seemed to have a story.

But next time I’m getting a room to myself.

Retreat! Retreat!

It happened like this. When I signed up for latest Writing Speculative Fiction course, I talked an old friend who’d just moved back to the area into taking it with me. We may not have written a great deal of deathless prose, but we had a lot of fun.

Now this friend and I happen to share a birthday. We used to get together to celebrate, but hadn’t done so in years. So this year we thought we should do something fun. At first I suggested going to Fallsview Casino in Niagara for the weekend. But then we thought, if we’re going someplace to gamble, why not go some place warm instead? So we thought about going to Vegas.

Shortly after this I got something in my email from this writing group I saw when I was at Word on the Street in the fall – I had signed up for a bunch of newsletters and theirs was one of them. Anyway, it talked about this writing retreat they were having in February called Winterfire. It sounded really interesting – I’ve always wanted to go on a writing retreat – and I jokingly suggested to my friend that we should do that instead of going to Vegas.

Much to my surprise, she jumped right on board with the idea. The political landscape being what it is in the U.S. right now, it seemed like a better way to celebrate. Plus there was the whole bright lights, people, and noise of Vegas as opposed to the quiet serenity of a small group of writers in the countryside.

Having never attended a writing retreat, we only had a vague notion of what it entailed. We had visions of a country inn, with room service and free wifi. We’d meet with other writers for workshops and exchange ideas. Then we’d sip hot toddies by the fire while sharing our work and discussing the finer points of great literature.

So we put down our non-refundable deposits and then found out what was in store for us.

The retreat is being held in a big old manor house that’s owned by a group of nuns up on Lake Simcoe. There is no wifi. There are no showers. Breakfast is provided, but we’ve been broken into five groups of three to take care of lunches and suppers – bringing the ingredients with us – and there is a whole list of food sensitivities and allergies to keep in mind when creating your meal plan.

Yikes! What have we gotten ourselves into?

Guess we’ll soon find out!