VOICES ON THE COAST 2024
8-10 November
Mark Smith and Ingrid Gaiotto welcome you to this fully accommodated workshop retreat. The environment will be nurturing, supportive and stimulating, with morning guided writing sessions designed to shake loose new ideas and structured talks around key writing principles. In the afternoons, there will be opportunities to share your writing in a supportive, salon-style atmosphere, designed to encourage and inspire.
In this weekend retreat, author Mark Smith will be working with a small group of writers interested in exploring their creative voice and crafting stories that are truly individual and unique. Using workshop activities gathered over thirty years of teaching, and the last ten years as a published writer, Mark will guide participants through the essential elements of storytelling – character, setting, exposition and imagery – with an emphasis on drawing on lived experience to generate and define their own voice. These techniques will be adaptable to both fiction and non-fiction.
Come with a desire to explore what you can create through language, a willingness to restart a stalled project or generate ideas for a sparkling and surprising new one, and maybe a written extract or two from work already in progress. Mark is new enough to the publishing world to understand the frustrations and joys of sharing your work, gaining feedback from your peers and learning what to take on board and what to leave behind. He learned his craft through short fiction, and by taking part in workshops like this one, where he met writers at a similar stage in their careers and became part of a network of like-minded creatives that still nourish and support him now. His guided workshop sessions will draw on the works of writers familiar to participants as well as providing prompts, tools and techniques that they can draw on long after the weekend is over.
Allow yourself the luxury of an uninterrupted writing focus in this convivial atmosphere, delight in delicious local food and wine and enjoy an introduction to vibrant Geelong and the Eastern Beach waterfront.