Fiji,  March 10 -17  2012 -  Breakthrough Writing Retreat

Cost:  $1500 ( end of summer discount – not including flights)

Limited places – Book Now

This perfect combination of an intensive laboratory atmosphere in a relaxed tropical setting enables you to find the kind of focus, energy and inspiration you cannot achieve when working alone or fitting writing around a busy life.

Bring a  current writing project or use the daily exercises to start a new one.There will be plenty of time to focus on individual trouble shooting,  critiquing and exploring new writing territory.

Workshops take place every morning and writers are expected to use some of their time in the afternoon to complete specific writing goals. At the workshop meetings, essential elements of writer’s craft are revised while in the early evening sessions writers have a chance to read, critique and receive feedback on any aspect of their writing or writing process.

In the afternoons while exploring Fiji’s hidden paradise island Vanua Levu, you can find answers to all your writing questions. In an island rainforest, on a deserted beach, snorkeling the reef in clear blue lagoon waters, you will learn new techniques for exploiting every writing moment.

Using the senses to capture all the elements of tropical island life you will bring new energy to old habits and ideas, as you get in back in touch with the essence your creative self. Craft becomes pleasure in the natural process of making your work sing.  Be prepared to play with maps and clues, nature and art and go digging for creative treasure.

Throughout this week you have the opportunity to focus totally on your work and show yourself and others just what you are capable of. The lab concludes with celebration drinks and readings.

Island Writers – Breakthrough Writing Retreat

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Day 1: Sunday
Arrive : Welcome ceremony and dinner.

Day 2: Monday
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop – Breaking Through to the Essence of Your Writing.
Setting goals, mapping the territory, making a plan, hunting and gathering. Dreaming up descriptive detail, creating the atmosphere of your writing.
6.00pm –7.00pm:  Reading and feedback
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 3: Tuesday
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop – Breaking Out of Old Habits.
Dealing with the negative critic, procrastination, avoidance addiction, transforming obstacles into descriptive imagery, character and plot.
Afternoon: Visit to Savusavu town
6.00pm –7.00pm:   Reading and feedback
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 4: Wednesday
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop – Breaking Into Voice.
Rediscovering your writer’s voice, developing its character, tone and rhythm, through the building blocks of sentence, paragraph, scene, chapter, story.
Afternoon: Beach outing
6.00pm –7.00pm:   Reading and feedback
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 5: Thursday
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop – Breaking It Down.
Effective editing, busting bad writing habits, going for the jugular, ensuring the impact of our writing with pace, style, rhythm, timing.
6.00pm –7.00pm:   Reading and feedback
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 6: Friday
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop – Breaking Into a Run
Finding dramatic tension in action, plot, juxtaposition and opposition. Foreshadowing and suspense techniques, character development,  emotional subtext, subplots and storyline.
5.00pm –6.00pm:   Reading and feedback
6.30pm: Drinks and dinner at Savusavu Yacht Club

Day 7: Saturday
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop -  Breaking Out of The Mould
Enhancing the unique qualities of your writing, finding unity and cohesiveness, experimenting with form. Setting future writing goals, discussing publishing options.
4.30pm – 5.30pm: Village visit and meke (traditional dance)
Final dinner and readings and celebratory drinks

Day 8: Sunday Return home
Testimonials
“Jan Cornall is one of those rare people who can capture the creative thread in someone’s writing and build it into something worthwhile. If you’re stuck, she’s the one. If you’re going gangbusters, she’ll fine tune you. She makes a group come alive – and there’s no better place for it than Daku.” Peter Bishop, award winning short story writer.

“Every now and again in this world of spin, hype, over promise and under deliver, we get a surprise. Our expectations are exceeded. My experience of Jan Cornall’s Writers Workshop at Daku Resort, Fiji was just one of those rare times.

Here I was sixty thousand words into a novel and totally stalled. I am an experienced writer, I know all the gimmicks but still “the very urgent but not important subsumed the very important but not urgent,” in my life. The casualty was my demon, my novel. What I needed was some isolation, immersion and the company of like minded writers to resurrect my demon. Daku Resort (a jewel ) and Jan Cornall provided just that.

Jan is a more than a competent facilitator and an excellent writer. She is non invasive but nevertheless resolute on our purpose for being there. She coaches and pushes….just enough. Her workshop was one of the best things I have done in the past twenty years.” Chris Richards, Canberra.