Archives

Stories play out in all sorts of locations. You might think of those venues for drama as a stage, where characters collide, declare their love or spit their vitriol. The […]

We had a fun creative writing webinar which we ran from our ​Venice Writing Retreat.​ Jo-Anne, Richard and Fred answered questions on aspects of writing, publishing, and the creative process. [...]

I’ve been having that feeling again. The sense that you exist on another plane from other people. That there’s no one on earth who can truly understand where you are […]

Here’s a three-finger exercise for you: what are the sinewy fibres that link conflict, character and climax? The question arose as I pondered my strategies for our latest foray into […]

Don’t feel guilty for focusing on your creative needs – your life may depend upon it My mother was raised a Calvinist, so I was taught that time taken for […]

I love being able to do this – it’s like offering you a magic carpet, and transforming you into a Venetian writer, practising your craft in a 16th century palazzo. Now […]

There’s a flat, yellow rock I swim out into the ocean to touch each day. It’s where I acknowledge what I have, give thanks … and beg favours of the […]

How did we get to December? Surely it was only last week that the other Joanne (Hichens) and I were swimming at sunrise beneath the towering cliffs of the Tradouw […]

A theme that has turned up time and again in these little essays is the virtues of restraint and limitation. I’m not sure whether this is not something that applies […]

I wasn’t looking forward to Venice. I know – sacrilege, right? I wondered at myself. What did it say about me? Did it mean I was tired of life, as […]

Writers of all stripes and levels of experience have something in common. It’s not necessarily a particular love of words. Some writers, after all, are moved more by a love […]

I’m sitting in Campo Santa Margarita here in Venice at a café table, on the shady side of the square. Across from me, beyond the trees and a couple of […]