Greetings, BYTS friends!
I have just returned from three splendid weeks away in Tuscany and Umbria, Italy, a country I had never visited before, but where I felt so at home.
Here I am leading a writing workshops at the Certosa di Pontignano, a magical monastery with three cloisters, each with a gorgeous garden at the center.
While leading two writing workshops there, I did a lot of writing, as I always write along to the prompts I offer others. But now, back at home, it seems that words fail me when it comes to describing the trip itself, and its impact on me.
To use a metaphor, I feel like I brought home piles of beautiful yarn with me (my memories)...and it is going to take time to undertake the thoughtful process of knitting it all together into a story-garment that captures the magic of my experience.
Ancient little streets like this are in every medieval hilltop town in Tuscany.
As a memoirist, this is a familiar dilemma. How can we ever fully capture the richness of our lives in the flat linearity of words on a page?
Go for scenes, is what I always suggest. Don't just "tell" what happened, "show" it with vivid scenes that not only transport your reader to the place, and give an intimate sense of the characters, but also reveal how that place, those people, and that experience made you feel.
On this trip, instead of madly journaling every day, I snapped lots and lots of photos that will help me recall where I was and how I was feeling at each stage of the journey. Writing in response to photos is always a good exercise for memoirists, and I was quite intentional in capturing the details of people, places and activities that made the biggest impression on me, to use later as the launchpad for writing.
The stone faces everywhere fascinated me.
I don't know yet whether I have my own version of Eat Pray Love or Under the Tuscan Sun brewing; time will tell. I do know that these three weeks of travel had a profound impact on me, in ways that I sense will change my life going forward.
I'm already planning my next trip to Tuscany with Il Chiostro, in June 2024; I’m dreaming up a workshop called "Living the questions: a soul journey for writers & other creatives," inspired by Rilke's famous advice to the young poet:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
BYTS member Mary Klug writing under the benevolent gaze of an ancient fresco at our beautiful monastery-retreat center, San Fedele.
I would also love to return to Chianti next spring for another week of magical "Riding & Writing," at the fabulous dressage stable Il Paretaio.
The view from the ring at Il Paretaio is so magnificent, it’s distracting!
And my travels this summer are not over: I'll be heading for my family's summer home in Nova Scotia soon, and from there on to an exciting Riding & Writing week in northern Iceland. Due to a cancellation, I have one spot open--maybe it's for you!
One thing for sure, after the years of pandemic restrictions, it feels so good to spread my wings, soar back into the world again, and come home creatively replenished and energized.
What about you? How are you engaging with the world this summer? Let's meet at the BYTS Conversation Lounge and share!
—Jennifer
Writing at the heart of the old stone farmhouse at Il Paretaio, in a room decorated by ribbons won by the De Marche family, riders and teachers extraordinaire.
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In an article just published on Jane Friedman's blog, Audrey delves into potential implications and how writers might use chatbots like ChatGPT.
Our Popular Fiction Writing Intensive Continues
Are you looking for a way to initiate or maintain momentum on a novel or short story? These weekly sessions can help! We have two spots available for the next session starting July 11
We're changing the format slightly and adding some generative writing time in addition to feedback and discussion.
Four participants meet for two hours each week (Mondays, 9am Pacific). You'll have an opportunity to generate new material during the first hour with tailored writing prompts.
Then, during the second hour, share and receive gentle, encouraging feedback either on the work you just generated or on a work in progress. The second hour also will address writing craft and questions related to your work or fiction writing more generally.
It's such a cliche to say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but cliches come about because they're true. I look forward to seeing what results when you are ready to process the experience in words. And I'm excited to hear about plans for June 2024! I guess I don't have an excuse for not accompanying you next year :-).
oh thanks so much Jennifer, for what you say about writing memoir from "within a place." Really intriguing. We are so rarely actually present where we are. And I love your theme for next summer's workshop...deeply powerful, for sure.....Welcome home with all these gifts!