the Write Retreat

If you are thinking of retreating it pays to get it right, WRITE?


There are times in our lives when, let’s face it, we need to take a step back. We need to take stock. We need to take time to breathe. Far too often our conscious mind says “Well yes, of course you want to do that but let me just say – NO! Not now, not in the next little while and just NO! You have so much to do – there are a hundred thousand things that are all clamouring for your attention when and if I give you a spare five minutes to even look at the possibility of dealing with them.”

Now that is when, and I mean right at that second you really do need to stop.

Serendipity led to meeting @Katherine Parris at a Writing Conference in August this year,
Katherine has a place in France, Brittany to be precise.
Not only does she have a place in France but she is opening her doors to writers and their families who perhaps feel the need to stop for a bit, take stock for a bit, but want to continue to have the opportunity to be writing at the same time – should they feel the urge.
Katherine is the proud owner of +‘The Write Retreat’ and it does exactly what it says on the tin.
On arrival we were struck by the total lack of noise. The air was easier to breathe and the pace was chaotically slow.
Walking into the Narnia cupboard would be similar I think – it is an assault on the senses to experience the total lack of forward motion that is France at its most laid back.
No sooner had we put the cases down than the wine began to flow and we were introduced to the family that would be ours for the duration of our stay, indeed we feel that we have become part of that growing family and are honoured to be so.
There is opportunity here. So much to see and do if you wish it, from the Menhirs to the Dolman, you are never more than two hours away from a coastline so there is ample to do for family who may not share your writing bug.
Perhaps it is your wish to make a full retreat and write that opus or Oscar winning screenplay? Then the annexe is the place for you. Flexible to the extent that it is up to you whether or not you interact with the family or live in splendid isolation, the choice is always yours.
The Write Retreat has to be experienced in all its wonder. The schoolhouse quietly situated on a main street, waiting expectantly for the arrival of the inspired and inspiring. The most amazingly eccentric but phenomenal restaurant bar that is Ghislane’s where in this the 21st Century you can have five courses and a litre bottle of good house wine for the princely sum of 13 Euros. The sleepy hamlet that is Kerivoa where the night sky is as blinged up as a hip hop DJ lottery winner with stars that shine and sparkle as Mozart and the Beatles would say, like diamonds in the sky only so much brighter and so much more beautiful.
Anyone who writes, has written, wants to write or is suffering from white page angst should go there.
The warmth of the welcome is out classed only by the feeling of belonging that occurs as if by magic. The rapport that springs from long acquaintance has been somehow concentrated and added to the air you breathe and the water you drink there.
Go to Kerivoa, get +the Write Retreat and breathe deeply. You will be inspired and recharged and you will return.

connecting the dots

Fae-rly Interesting

So, what is it with the fascination with the Shining Ones? We tell tales of them and wish on them and claim they are living at the bottom of the garden, and some may well be if we are very lucky. All these things and more we tell to our children. Stories of Wicked Witches and Wiley Wolves and quite psychotic mother goats’ who slit open stomachs and place rocks in there before allowing the recipient to drown themselves in a well due to their new weightiness.

Were these the play station games of their times. Was the story of Baba Yaga the equivalent of Grand theft Auto or whatever it is called?

Probably not, because unless I miss my guess there is an element missing in the latter, the moral tale, the warning to all who ‘play’ that they are going to be virtually made responsible for the carnage they make on the screen. Which part of it makes them think about consequences of choices?

If, as posited by Deepak Chopra et al, what we think we project and manifest then perhaps the reason we have so much violence and disharmony in the world is the constant onslaught of bloody adrenalin fuelled imaginings of one person that is connecting with the punters who play their game. What does one win with these things anyway? If it is a sense of achievement that is the prize surely it is society at large who should be thinking about just how low the bar of this particular achievement is set.

Instead of finding things to do it is an automatic response to get to a games machine or a computer, this is not just restricted to the younger end of the spectrum either, so in the morphogenic field it is not surprising that we are in the midst of scenes from Mad Max.

This sounds like I’m preaching that this is abnormal. Unfortunately being human kind of predisposes us to violence. We are after all the biggest predator on the planet.

The idea that what can be imagined can become manifest in the physical is nothing new; look at the communicators in Star Trek, good old James T. Kirk getting out his prehistoric mobile phone to get himself beamed up by Scottie. We already have the mobile phones and they have been working on the beaming up thing for quite some time. The boffins are busy boys particularly since the Quantum Theories came into their collective consciousnesses.

String theory now there is a fascinating one, but the Quantum theory small as it is… well now it is throwing up some very interesting posits of its own. It is proving the faerie tales of old, it is challenging the scientists dogmatic grasp on what reality is.

It is proving Magick exists and that it has been with us since we began to ‘string’ two thoughts together (pardon the pun).

So if that is the case and the Shining Ones exist in the Universe adjacent to this one, and they have areas of overlap couldn’t we perhaps concentrate on filling our younger minds with adventures in Quantum land where just any and every permutation of any given situation is possible and is happening in another Universe concurrently with this one.
Get a large Kit-Kat and cup of whatever you have and discuss that at tea break – see what happens.

Then just for fun, think about all the other ways the conversation could have gone and it will have somewhere. My head is now opening up to possibility and it’s a bit of a rush you should try it – no drugs required just imagination and if I can imagine it well – let me tell you a story about that…