Writers Retreat with the Dodo Darlings

Dodo Darlings or Writers in West Wittering.

Can't decide on name so that is unfinished business. However, five writers went on an adventure to Wittering and if this sounds like an Enid Blyton adventure then that is deliberate. Five go down to the Sea would be a very apt description.

Armed not with ginger beer and egg and lettuce sandwiches but with wine and cake we descended on The Dodo in West Wittering as strangers and left as fellow writers having been fed by the generous and attentive Amanda Saint. Below is the first night's supper and each meal thereafter was just as abundant. No need to hide food away in the suitcase for midnight feasts, although I am sure Enid would have approved.

                    Light supper Amanda style on the well fed, well read writers retreat.

After an interesting and thought provoking workshop and memory mapping session with Jane Rusbridge where we worked on landscape and place, we went for a walk along the coast line. 

 Flowers by the sea- great detail . Just what I needed to make a scene more three- dimensional.

After this, I met new characters and expanded existing ones using the place and landscape workshop.We sat inside the converted railway carriages that had been tastefully painted in Farrow and Ball and decorated with a seaside theme feeling that we were in a photo shoot for Country Living .

 It was so helpful sitting next to the sea and using elements from our surroundings to expand into the written word. The sound of the sea rolled in from beyond the veranda as the gentle tap tap of computer keyboards and the clink of a wine glasses combined with the ticking of the clock displaying the tide timetable. We sat in companionable silence which was filled with imaginary characters who were gradually emerging to fill the bodies being created for them.

Writing places.

Later, we shared work, not compulsory, but spontaneously. So many different styles, so many stories and poems of interweaving metaphor.

I love writers retreats, they give you space, time and freedom.

They also force you to look at your writing in a different context. They are always not what you thought they would be but that is a good thing. If you knew what they had to teach you you would not need to go. Instead, meeting strangers because you share the same passion, is all you need to try out ideas in a safe environment. Leaving the day time responsibilities you are all in the same place because you all have an incomplete manuscript to work on.

                                                                     
                                                         Writers treats .

I came home with an expanded manuscript, new ideas for how the story might develop and many hundreds of words more than I arrived with. Also a new story to work on about a man and his dog, Pete and Barney who at some point will be created on the page, because he asked me to put them both into a book. How could I refuse?

                                            A writer's version of worry beads

 Hag stones for protection from Sarah who lives along the shore.

I needed these as I contemplated what would happen to one of my female characters

I gazed out to sea from the veranda.

Whilst others walked 

 and talked

and played.

Then I slept on it 

I always was good at doing homework in bed.

                                      This was the view from my bed at 7.00 am.

              In the morning I wrote the scene again from a different character's point of view

I needed that Creme egg when I had finished and I was glad that I had written that chapter in daylight.

And the five did have adventures but in the best tradition of Enid Blyton some of those are secret and you do have to be in our gang to know what they are. I wish my fellow writers all the best and I hope you all are published because I want to know how your stories end and your poems resonate.

For the record my story is set in Victorian England.

Almost a patchwork in its conception

The landscape of the story is not always calm.

 I had arrived with the proverbial weight of the world on my shoulders, but dumped that in amongst the shingle to free my mind to meet my characters . I left with the weight relocated around my hips and my new notebook significantly padded with plot development and story.

More retreats with Amanda Saint can be found here at fabulously inspiring locations.Retreat West

Information about Jane Rusbridge.

My earlier 2012 blog  Review of Rook

Written on location at  The Dodo, West Wittering Beach West Sussex