BALI FIJI BURMA MOROCCO LAOS VIETNAM
Breakthrough Writing in Fiji. March 8-15, 2014. Eat, Snorkle, Write, in Fiji’s hidden paradise.
Indochine Journey, Vietnam. Aug 15-31, 2014. Following the footsteps of Marguerite Duras.
Backstage Bali, Sept 25 – Oct 6. Join a writing retreat on the edge of a volcano before attending the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.
Moroccan Caravan, Nov 6 – 19. Ride a desert caravan into the heart of your writing.
CLOSER TO HOME
Birth Your Book in 9 months! an intensive one-on-one mentoring program.
First Page to First Draft – Semester 1 – 6 weeks in Newtown, begins Thurs Feb 20.
Draft Busters – monthly meetings in Petersham, Sydney.
Draft Swap, April 27, 10am-4pm – annual swap meet in Petersham, Sydney with fellow writers. Bring a finished draft to swap.
Memory Into Memoir, June, NSW Writers Centre.
Writers Journey Blog
At the beginning of another year we have the chance to remember what Zen buddhists call “beginners mind”. Natalie Goldberg in her classic, Writing Down The Bones, says “Beginner’s mind is what we must come back to every time we sit down and write. There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before. Each time is a new journey with no maps.”
The wisdom of remembering this approach means we can bring a freshness to each writing session; a way of seeing things as if for the first time. For me this sense is encapsulated in the haiku form, which is why I always like to have a haiku anthology nearby when I sit down to write. While we may never master the haiku form in this lifetime, we can use the haiku sensibility to bring ourselves into the present moment before we start to write, remembering all we have to do to make our writing sing is to capture the simplicity of each breathing moment.
We will be doing this in Fiji in March in our Breakthrough Writing Retreat, always a great way to kickstart your writing year!
