Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Hallie's back from Tuscany


HALLIEEPHRON: I’m just back from a ten days in Tuscany, teaching a writing workshop for MINERVA EDUCATION. Rhys taught there last year.

Here's me arriving at the Florence airport and being met by... just kidding, though I am at the airport.

Seriously, it’s a rare gift to get to work with a small group of writers long enough to really understand the book they’re trying to write, help them grapple with their story, and see the revisions they’re capable of. This group completely blew me away.
I look forward to hosting on Jungle Red each of them on Jungle Red when they publish their books.



Here are some of a few of my take-aways:

- Alora... this is my new favorite word. Italians use it to preface just about anything they're telling you. I think it's equivalent to "So..." which is my favorite crutch word. Saying it, they stretch out the middle syllable (alorrrrra). 



- Opening scenes are brutally difficult to write. There’s so much to establish (characters, setting, situation) for the rest of the novel to work, and yet… you have to capture the reader’s attention without bogging them down with information.



- Arcs are elusive. They're what presented these writers with the biggest challenge. It’s one thing to write a great sentence of paragraph or page. It’s the arcs that kill you—the changes that take place, the before/after. Related to this is the realization that “The king died and the queen died” is not a plot; “The king died and the queen died of grief” is. (Per E. M. Forster)



Every novel needs one major and several minor overarching arcs that stretch from beginning to end. Ever scene needs one. Every main character needs one. If you know what they are when you set out to write, then you’re lucky. For most of us it’s a voyage of (painful, laborious) discovery that involves writing and rewriting and rewriting again. I felt as if in the week we worked together, these writers found their arcs.



- Uniqueness is every writer's gift. Every writer’s story is uniquely their own, even when they’re writing fiction. In this group, if you spent 10 minutes with each of the writers and then read their pages, you’d have no trouble matching the person to the work. It’s what makes their work so special but it also makes it harder to “murder your darlings.” Every single writer in this group was up to that task.



- It’s easier to critique than it is to write. ‘Nuff said.



MINERVAEDUCATION is the 6-year-old brain child of Pier Raimondo Baldini and Cajsa Baldini. They’re both professors at Arizona State University. They are charming, amazing organizers and lovers of good writing. The workshops are based in the absolutely gorgeous Hotel Colle Etrusco Salivolpi (a so called agriturismo, a converted ancient farm house). We worked most days on this porch overlooking vineyards, an Etruscan tomb, and a valley that stretched to the horizon.



The hotel is walking distance from the delightful Castellina in Chianti, with charming restaurants, churches, shops and services. We made regular pilgrimages for gelati and leather goods. Meals most nights were at a restaurant just up the road where we all fell in love with pici al cacio e pepe—fat spaghetti-like local pasta that’s rolled by hand and perfectly coated with cheese and pepper. Simple. Delicious. It's what Italian food is all about.
Alora... next year, Cajsa and Piero have lined up Ann Cleeves to instruct. All I can say is, count your pennies and if you possibly can, sign up and sign up early. When they say small group they mean small.

Have you treated yourself to a working vacation? Where did you go and, looking back, what was your before/after arc?

35 comments:

  1. Your trip sounds lovely, Hallie. I’ve never gone on a working vacation, but it does sound like a treat . . .

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  2. I wanted to go to your workshop and to Rhys's - what a wonderful picture you paint, Hallie. I go alone to Cape Cod (during the off season) once or twice a year to write like a maniac. The cottage is walking distance from a lovely beach on Buzzard's Bay, so it's kind of a vacation, and this year I'm going in September, so the weather will be perfect - as long as we don't get a hurricane.

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    1. Have a great retreat, Edith! I'm so impressed that you can do this alone.

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    2. Edith, this sounds idyllic! "Buzzard's Bay", the name alone creates an atmosphere of mystery.

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    3. Thanks, Hallie.
      Lyda, it IS idyllic. It's a Quaker retreat cottage behind the West Falmouth Meetinghouse. I have the whole house, which looks out onto a marsh, and doesn't have wifi - perfect for productivity!

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  3. this sounds incredible! And that is my favorite Italian dish, I had it twice in NY last week. But nothing lives up to Rome... And Ann Cleeves next year, I'm swooning!

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    1. Lucy, you'd have LOVED it! For the gelati alone.

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  4. I had several month-long stays in New Orleans dealing with family matters. I quickly settled into a routine (sprinting with coffee, morning walk before 10am, errands, writing the rest of the day under the wheezing window air conditioner. I became very introspective, very mindful of sights and smells, snatched conversations, and of course, the birds and gardens.

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    1. We have so little time spent alone these days... I'm thinking I should do more of it. Step 1: Lose the cell phone.

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  5. Cacio e pepe is my favorite dish from my own Minerva Education experience. If you make it, Hallie, I want to know how it turns out. It's deceptively simple, but durned complicated to make it right.

    That porch is a great spot! Unfortunately, when we were there it was unseasonably cold, and raining all over Europe, so we only got to use it twice.

    So interesting about the arcs. There is so much to know and learn about writing.

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    1. and I'm not sureyou can get that pasta -- pici -- in the US. There it's often ade fresh (not dried). Ingredients: flour and water. Period. How is that possible? (Isn't that the recipe of wallpaper paste?)

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    2. In Rome they use a different pasta, according to a travel/cooking show I saw on PBS. But the real secret is the alchemy that happens between the pasta, pasta water, butter, and cheese. Mine ended up just so-so.

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    3. You're right -- all the ingredients are different. Water, even. The flour. The cheese.

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  6. I had a working vacation a few years ago, filling in for a month for the Rector of the American Episcopal Church in Florence while he was on sabbatical. All I had to do was conduct 2 services each Sunday, and preside at 2 'destination' weddings. The rest of the time I got to be a tourist, living in the Rectory, which was in walking distance from the train station, the grocery, the gelato shop, restaurants and every other fabulous place we could get to. And I got paid! It wasn't a writing workshop (I'm not a writer, unless you count sermons) but it was the best working vacation I've ever had!

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  7. Looks like a lovely trip, Hallie. I love Italy. If only someone would give me $10,000 to use as I see fit...

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  8. Hallie, this is what we dream a writer's life will look like and you've lived it! How wonderful!
    I have had two writing vacations and the third is coming up this August.
    The first vacation I returned to a small town north of San Francisco to see how much it had changed since I briefly lived there in the late 70's. I was so happy to see that the core personality of the place was still in tact. It has become the setting for my own "Cabot Cove". Now I go back as often as possible to write.

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    1. Sounds like a great way to mix work with pleasure. Traveling solo and for your writing is pretty special. I spent part of a week in Beaufort, SC to research one of my books.

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  9. Hallie, wonderful post and lovely photos! Yes, my working vacation was at Book Passage Mystery writing workshop several years ago. Several of my favorite authors were there that summer. The workshop itself was wonderful.

    For a while after the workshop, I would get emails from people I did not recall meeting at the workshop and I found out that the organizers shared our email addresses. I did not know that! LOL. I gave out my business cards with my email addresses and I wrote down names of everyone I met! There was a famous author who explained that my email address was on the list and he apologized. I did not know about him until I got his email and now I see his name on best seller lists!

    Now I am in a Facebook group with alumni from that year and I actually met many people from that group.

    A friend at the workshop shared her opinion that of all the writing workshops she had been to that she thought that our Book Passage workshop was the best writing workshop. She had been to many all over the country. I had opportunities to chat with Rhys Bowen, Isabel Allendre, Jacqueline Winspear, Laurie King and many wonderful authors.

    Diana

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    1. I MET Rhys for the first time at that conference... and I'll be one of the authors teaching there this year. LOVE that conference, and it truly is an intense workout as well as a vacation. I can't begin to count the number of writers and aspiring writers I've met there and kept in touch with.

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    2. How wonderful that you met Rhys!

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  10. Glad you had such a great time. And yes, it is easier to critic than to actually write. Which explains why I do what I do. :)

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  11. I am swooning too hard to comment. xoxoxo

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  12. Hallie, that sounds so fabulous. I would go for the food, never mind the writing, lol. But I'm sure it was a great experience for your students. And isn't it interesting how much we learn from teaching or critiquing? Ann Cleeves next year should be terrific.

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  13. Shalom Reds and fans. A busman’s holiday in Italy sounds like fun. The only time that I have been outside on a sort-of vacation was when I traveled to Israel to live on a kibbutz for six months with a group of mostly English speaking young Jews. I paid my own airfare and the kibbutz gave us dormitory-style accommodations, 3 meals a day (except on Yom Kippur), and 20 packs of Israeli cigarettes a month. Five and a half days a week, we worked about half-days and the other half-days we studied Hebrew. I was in my mid-thirties but most of the participants were younger, in their mid-twenties. The work varied from week to week. I sometimes worked on the community’s fish farm, which consisted of half a dozen large man-made ponds that were stocked with St. Peter’s trout which we would harvest in large nets. Other times, I worked in an optics factory (they made lenses for eyeglasses and rifle-sights). At the time they were testing and perfecting robotics to automate the work. The ulpan (Hebrew classes) was fun and stimulating. They offered classes in three levels of difficulty. A was for beginners. B was for “easy” but not quite beginners. And C-D for intermediate level language learning. All the classes used an immersion method, meaning that for the most part, the class was Hebrew only. No English or other language allowed. The highlight of the classes was when the teacher would tell us stories about the early days of the kibbutz and the formation of the State of Israel. I also with everyone else was called upon to prepare stories that we would tell to the class. I prepared and told the story from the children’s book called The Loudest Noise in the World, which was first published in 1954, the year following my birth. In preparation, I could not just use an English-Hebrew dictionary, because I would be telling the stories to people who were also learning the language. I had to find words to express the concepts that would be understood. All told, the time I spent in Israel was one of the great moments of my life.

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    1. Busman's Holiday! Now that's a wonderful term I haven't heard in a while. That sounds like a fabulous, life changing experience, David. Wow. 6 months!!

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  14. I can't imagine a budding writer having a better opportunity than to work with you, Hallie, or Rhys or Ann Cleaves in a small group setting like this for a week. Tuscany would be inspirational in itself and having a brilliant author as your tutor/mentor would be perfection.

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    1. I know this will sound twee, but the real pleasure was getting to work with those writers. I got really lucky.

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  15. I want to go!!!! How lucky those students were to access your brain, Hallie! Thank you for sharing your insights and pictures with us. I've never done a writing retreat other than local plot group weekends with two trusted writer friends. Maybe we need to consider Italy!

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    1. Go for a week, Jenn! The place we stayed would be absolutely perfect.

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  16. No jobs I ever worked offered retreats. Tuscany sounds fabulous. Lucky dogs!

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  17. Yay, Hallie! I'm sure they will never forget the things you were able to teach them. Lucky group indeed.

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  18. The closest I've come to a "working" vacation is when I went to cover the Wizard World comic convention in Philadelphia back in 2005 for a website that I was writing for at the time.

    I was there from Thursday through Sunday and while I had a good time attending panels, talking to some creators past and present, doing some buying and gathering info for the article I would write, it was still work. But it was weird because I stayed with a friend and the day I got there, his girlfriend broke up with him. So that made things a bit awkward.

    And when I came home I had the next two days off but was busy with summer basketball league preparations the first day and my dad's cancer surgery the second day. There was a LOT going on as you can see.

    But hey, I got to meet J. Michael Straczynski and Jim Starlin so that was pretty darn good. And the article turned out nicely too.

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    1. That sounds fantastic. I see Wizard World is still humming - their conference in Philadelphia starts tomorrow!

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  19. The only thing like that was when I went to Argentina to improve my Spanish through my college. I had to attend some classes at JFK University in Buenos Aires and write a paper when I got home.

    My work was all clerical so I had to be in the office to open mail, file, etc. Which was fine because my vacations were all fun!

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