A Week of Writing and Solitude

 

From June 22 to June 27, 2008 Billy Mernit and I will be conducting a writing retreat in Twin Bridges, Montana at Rockpoint Ranch - 2,000 acres of pasture, cows, river, trees and solitude.  Billy will be teaching a workshop on “Character and Plot for Fiction and Film”, and I’ll be teaching “Writing Your Life Into Story: Memoir and the Personal Essay”. Each workshop is limited to ten students and will be held Monday through Friday morning with afternoons devoted to your writing and one-on-ones with me or Billy. Lunches and dinners are included in the cost of $850.00. If you’re interested (or just curious) please email me at b.abercrombie@verizon.net and I’ll be happy to send you a flyer with more information.

Comments

[Jo]

oh how i love the idea of going to a retreat, especially one like this! but the idea also intimidates me! (not to mention the price it usually costs!) i feel a bit of envy coming on!!!

[mernitman]

this sounds great -- i just wonder why billy hasn't gotten it together to post about it on HIS site, but i guess we can look forward to that soon?

[Barbara]

Jo - Maybe next year?
Mernitman - Yes - looking forward to a post from Billy on this!

[Sintia]

I'm actually worknig on a related post at the moment where the inner critic crops up and one question I ask is: Who is the inner critic? The assumption is that it is part of ourselves and of course in one respect it is but it is also a proxy for people in our past (parents, teachers, peers even) who have stood in judgment over us. In my case this would be my father who, if I came home with a grade of 98% his first question would always be something like: What happened to the other 2%? Now he's dead but lives on as a part of my inner critic.Jim Murdochs last blog post..

[Uka]

Hi Joanna,I hope your inner critic has taken a vaictaon by the time you read this comment. They do like to haunt us. I loved your phrase break state . It's the first time I've heard it expressed this way, and I will certainly remember it. You write beautiful phrases, Joanna.Daphnes last blog post..8 Lessons A Nearly-Dead Dog Taught Me About Living

[Aashna]

Joanna, are you sure you are not meant to be in sales and marketing? You are the evelagnist and fire starter every business dreams of having wish my company could afford you full time!First Voice Thread possibilities, and now you are raising the bar (or fertilizing the tree) with our Twitter perches. This is indeed very powerful.I continue to love the 140-character magic on Twitter too compare this to the rambling that can happen with LinkedIn Answers, though that can be great, and of completely different character too.

[Camilo]

Pablo D'Stair November 26, 2011 Hey mate,Nice podcast (though you beettr not've been talking about me with that writers who put out a novella every few months of dubious quality etc etc because if you were I'll go Daniel Plainview on you, man, One day, I'm going to come into you home while you're asleep and I'm going to cut your throat )Anyway have an honest point, though not even bugging you this time: Now, you and I do have, I'd say, opposite side of the coin philosophies on a lot of things, but I think are very much like each other. In this podcast, you bring up the idea that too many writers would dilute the talent pool or words to that effect, that if everyone is writing and publishing there may be detrimental effects on writers who do have the talent and, so to speak, are deserving of attention.But elsewhere, especially implicitly, and even in this podcast a bit, you have seemed to subscribe to the idea that with writing and pubbing its kind of the best rise to the top sort of thing if someone is successful (largely) there is a reason having to do with talent, not just filling a particular market niche (we're not talking about the LCD, here, but proper writing).So, don't you think that this sudden influx of everyone is a writer and there are only so many readers would actually be a fundamentally positive thing in terms of truly good stuff rising and being noticed I mean, if there is a mess of shit in your backyard but there's a beautiful bauble floating in it, despite the shit you're going to notice that beautiful thing I'd say there's even more draw to it than if your backyard was just your backyard, because in that case you'd simply be comfortable, content to look at what you've always looked at and find pleasing in a general way, and a rarity, a beauty, might just be overlooked because, in general, you have a decent lawn.Haha, take that metaphor.If it's a talent rises to the top scenario (if one cares about the top and I do think not in a bad way you do and in a kind of traditional way) the more things to temper the talent, the beettr. You spoke even of motivation in this podcast if someone is a real writer, you know, they know they are good and they see an ocean of just mediocrity and know they could get swallowed in it, shouldn't the lesson be motivate from this, don't be caught in that slurry use the, so to speak, lowering standards of a lot of people to raise your own it's not enough to be okay or be pretty good it's now necessity to be unique, to be distinct, to be beettr and more defined.blah blah blah.I kind of side point bring this up because you feel this way about NaNoWriMo (did I get that right? too lazy to check) while I (not violently) share a lot of the same thoughts but aim them at workshopping, and peer groups, at collectives, at intensives with this or that author, at advanced classes and advice-sharing-personal-experience groups etc. etc. Do you see an overlap?

[Nuridin]

Reviews are not for authors.Thank you. Also, if I may bring up a penrosal opinion, all reviews are not for all readers. Each reviewer has particular tastes. For me, as a reader, the key to finding useful reviews is to find reviewers who not only intelligently engage the material, but whose tastes more or less parallel mine. Richard Roeper's opinions on film, frex, so rarely match mine that I almost never read him; on the other hand, I put a lot of stock in James Berardinelli's comments, because he seems to see and enjoy (or despise) many of the same things I do in a movie. Which doesn't mean that Berardinelli is a better film critic than Roeper; it just means his reviews are more helpful to me in figuring out which ticket to purchase to the Saturday matinee.