End of summer special $1500 ($2400 with flight from Sydney / Brisbane)

Breakthrough writing is a week’s creative writing retreat during which Jan does what she’s so good at: focussing on what’s swirling around in your mind, accessing it and getting it down on paper in your own voice. As any writer knows, none of this is easy – and all of it is essential.

Jan is coming back to Daku Resort for the third time: this is what Chris Richards had to say about the 2011 workshop he attended:

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.

Workshops take place every morning and participants are expected to use some of their time in the afternoon to complete specific writing goals. During the workshops, we’ll revise the essential elements of the writer’s craft, and you’ll have a chance to read, critique and receive feedback on any aspect of your writing or writing process. Begin a new work, refresh a tired old draft or come as you are. Jan uses the principles of the course to work with all genres including scripts, poetry and non-fiction with the emphasis on breaking new ground in your chosen writing form.

It takes place in March, which is the end of summer in Fiji and can still be hot and humid – but this end of summer price is a real low-season bargain which should really take the heat out of your purse.

A writing workshop is a precious opportunity to forget all your daily responsibilities and be greedy with your writing time. No work; no cooking or shopping – just pens, paper, inspirational teaching and a group of others who share the passion.

Then spend the afternoons relaxing or exploring the island – snorkeling the reef, hiking up the mountain, visiting a local village, having a spa massage or reading by the pool.

Throughout this week you have the opportunity to be a serious writer and show yourself and others just what you are capable of. The lab concludes with celebration drinks and readings.

Jan Cornall is a highly experienced teacher, renowned for motivating writers in all genres to set and complete writing goals while instructing them in essential writer’s craft. Participants in past workshops include many who go on to publish. First time author Marguerite Van Geldermalsen, Married to A Bedouin, received invaluable help from Jan’s workshops. Margo Lanagan, award winning fantasy writer wrote her novel, Tender Morsels, with the support of Jan’s Draft Buster workshops, as well as her novella Sea Hearts, the winner of the 2010 World Fantasy Awards.

Others who have benefited include : Margaret Wilcox, Gone (Penguin); Anne Lovell, Connie’s Secret (Allen & Unwin); Catherine Therese, The Weight Of Silence (Hachette Livre); Margaret Stevenson Meere, The Child in The Lotus (Rockpool); Walter Mason, Destination Saigon (Allen & Unwin); Yvonne Louis, Brush with Mondrian (Murdoch); and Mary Delahunty, Public Life, Private Grief (Hardie Grant).

She has also written over 15 produced plays and musicals, a feature film (Talk 1994), a novel (Take me to Paradise, 2006) and three CD’s of songs. Jan’s cabaret musical, Failing In Love Again, (with pianist Elizabeth Drake), was a cult hit of the comedy/cabaret revival in the early 80’s when Jan performed alongside Jeannie Lewis, Margaret Roadknight, Robyn Archer, Wendy Harmer and Gretel Killeen.  www.writersjourney.com.au

Read Jan’s account of the 2011 retreat at Daku Resort »

Program Includes

• Return domestic flight from Nadi to Savusavu.
• Return airport transfers from Savusavu to Daku Resort.
• 7 nights accommodation at Daku Resort in traditional bures with private facilities.
• Breakfasts, lunches and dinners are provided.
• Course fees.
• Lectures, excursions as indicated.

Program Excludes

• Departure taxes applicable to the standard itinerary.
• Comprehensive Travel Insurance.
• Optional activities not listed on the program
• Costs of a personal nature eg laundry, massages, private trips
• Meals taken in transit at the airport

Cost of course
$1500 per person twin share (includes flight from Sydney)
$300 single room supplement
or course plus international flight Sydney-Nadi return: $2400

The course runs for 6 days, and includes workshops, local excursions and free time.
Throughout this week you have the opportunity to be a serious writer and show yourself and others just what you are capable of.

Programme

Day 1:
Arrive : Welcome ceremony and dinner.

Day 2:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Return home.

» » Make a booking

Margo Lanagan writes strange and intriguing tales of worlds that are not quite ours. Her characters could be people we know, but they speak differently from usual, and behave in unexpected ways. What drives them, she asks, what horrors and hopes, what wounds and anxieties? A writer who has clearly found her own voice, she writes finely crafted short stories and novels straddling the young-adult/adult demographics, and keeps a foot in both the literary and speculative genre camps.

During this course she’ll be encouraging you to write truly, madly and deeply.

Truth: getting authenticity and authority into your fictional settings and characters; finding ‘the telling detail’ in a scene or character; writing convincing dialogue; making action feel real.

Margo specialises in suggesting whole worlds and histories obliquely, from the middle of a story’s action. Some of her stories happen in undefinable lands, in unidentifiable cultures, but still feel firmly rooted in reality. In the first two days’ workshops, you’ll find out what sort of decisions you need to make about setting and character, and you’ll learn how, once decided on a point of view and a locale, you can let a few items around them do all the work of fleshing out the story world’s past and present. These two days are all about choosing tools that work for you, in a world that smothers writers with authoritative-sounding rules and advice.

Madness: freeing yourself to take leaps in the dark; getting out of your own way; refreshing your writing; disciplining your inner editor; filling the well; experimenting with strangeness.

Well acquainted with frustration, writerly self-delusion and the sheer overwhelming size of the novel form, Margo knows how easy it is to get bogged down in a story, to turn your writing into a chore, to become dutiful and joyless as you sit to the task every day. She will share with you some of the exercises and techniques she uses to clamber out of writing ruts, to stay sane through the solitude and to re-re-reacquaint yourself with the rewards that drew you to writing in the first place.

Depth: writing the story that only you can write; confronting your fears; writing from your depths—but keeping yourself safe/sane.

If you do not listen to your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also, you will have betrayed your community in failing to make your contribution to the whole. —Rollo May

Is your writing trapped in niceness? Do you find yourself reaching for clichés? Does your writing feel tired, or trivial, or bore you sometimes? Maybe you’re swimming on the surface, snorkelling when you could be free-diving, admiring the pretties when you could be bringing up sunken treasure. The final two workshops will be about writing stories that matter—to you, and therefore to the world; how to make your readers laugh, cry, worry—and carry your stories around as talismans.
This will be an intense retreat—but in a good way. Come along and refresh your writing, try new techniques and reconnect with your own personal sources of story.

 
Teacher Margo Lanagan was born in 1960 and spent her childhood in the Hunter Valley (NSW), her teens in Melbourne, her twenties travelling, and then settled in Sydney. She has a history degree from the universities of Western Australia and Sydney. Once she’d tried kitchen, sales and office work, she decided there had to be more to life, and she has been working towards full-time writing, (and sometimes succeeding!), for 20 years or so now. When the money runs low she does contract technical writing.

 
Her books include four short story collections (Yellowcake, Red Spikes, Black Juice and White Time) and two novels (Sea Hearts and Tender Morsels).

 
Margo maintains a blog at www.amongamidwhile.blogspot.com
She can be found on Twitter as @margolanagan

Programme

The programme is structured around morning workshops, with afternoons for activities and free time to enjoy a spa massage, snorkelling on the reef, relaxing by the pool or carrying on writing.

Costs
AUD $2,180.00 twin share

Single supplement: $350
Non-writing partners: $1200

Program Includes

• Return domestic flight from Nadi to Savusavu.
• Return airport transfers from Savusavu to Daku Resort.
• 7 nights accommodation at Daku Resort in traditional bures with private facilities.
• Breakfasts, lunches and dinners are provided.
• Course fees.
• Lectures, excursions as indicated.

Program Excludes

• Comprehensive Travel Insurance.
• Optional activities not listed on the program
• Costs of a personal nature eg laundry, massages, private trips
• Meals taken in transit at the airport
• International flights to Fiji.  We are happy to quote on these and book them for you if requested. Flight prices fluctuate according to demand.

Make a Booking »

This inspiring and practical creative writing masterclass will show you ways, and give you time, to start (and keep) writing the stories or poems that only you can write. “Creative writing,” said E B White, “is the Self escaping onto the paper.” Let your Self escape here in paradise, and let Mark help you get it down, memorably, as he leads his second retreat in Fiji (read an account of his first creative writing workshop here at Daku Resort on our blog – and the beautiful poem he wrote whilst here is posted at the end of this page.)

Mark’s approach balances instruction—especially on technique and craft—with free-flowing discussion, reading of exemplary pieces of copy, and in-class and out of class writing exercises. Mark is the author of eleven books of prose and poetry, and the winner of many literary prizes: his most recent one is the highly prestigious Montreal Poetry Prize worth $50,000. (See http://montrealprize.com/competition/2011-montreal-prize-winner/ for the poem and full details.)  His books on the writing craft (The Little Red Writing Book, The Little Green Grammar Book, The Little Black Book of Business Writing) have inspired and guided writers everywhere for many years. A master craftsman himself, Mark emphasises in his teaching what he calls “the disciplines of beauty”. His masterclass is a deep, whilst relaxing, immersion in creativity and literature, under Mark’s gentle tutelage—a unique mix of inspiration, practicality, free-wheeling discussion, rigour of thought, and spiritual challenge.

Good writing sounds like someone speaking in a voice truer than the voice they use for gossip and scolding—it sounds like someone in particular, talking to someone they love about something they know well. Writing well asks you to master the divine dichotomy—the meridian you hold between fierce attentiveness and reckless abandon. Learn more about that in the safety of the workshop, within the heavenly calm of this retreat.

In creative writing, what you write about matters much less than how you do the telling. Voice, in other words, is just about everything in a novel or a short, a poem or a memoir or an essay; the narrative is just the task that gets the writer to the table; it’s the vessel that floats the voice. Though of course the tale (the plot, the topic, the setting) counts, it’s the telling the reader really reads, and it’s the telling that lasts. To tell you what a good book is about is to tell you next to nothing about the book. What lasts is everything not reducible to the narrative.

So, to write well is to talk like someone in particular (you way down deep); it is to tell a story the way that only you can tell it. But, curiously, one’s own voice doesn’t come easy; naturalness is hard work. How you get your authentic voice down on paper—this is where technique comes in. Sentence craft, rhythm, and the other disciplines of grace: like all Mark’s teaching this is what this masterclass focuses on.

The retreat is open to writers of all levels, although it assumes that everyone will have done at least some creative writing . It looks at creative writing of all kinds, short and long fiction, poetry, memoir and narrative nonfiction. The program includes five half-day sessions and plenty of time for writing, reading, reflection and consultation with Mark. The workshop is based on Mark’s acclaimed and bestselling guide The Little Red Writing Book, and each session explores ideas and practices that help writers with creativity, composition, style, plotting, planning, editing and publishing their work. Each day, you’ll also have a chance to share pieces of writing you’ve composed overnight, thoughts about your writing progress and your responses to the daily readings.

And we’ll be dreaming. “Writing”, Mark wrote in his poem “Things I’m Trying to Believe”, “is dreaming with a pen in its hand”. So bring your pen, and let this magical place take you back to your own dreaming place, your self way down deep—the place where the writing rises—and let Mark help you get your dreaming down on paper.

Course structure

Day one:
All Good Things Come by Grace, and Grace Comes by Art, and Art Does Not Come Easy – on what writing really is, on cliché-busting, originality, and the creative disciplines

Day two:
Write What You Don’t Know (about what you do know) – on what to write about and how

Day three:
Shortcuts to Your Writing Self – on tricks and tools and techniques for writing memorably

Day four:
More shortcuts

Day five:
Wild Mind: Tidy Mind – on planning, cohesion, structure and form

Day six:
The Art of Silence – on letting the writing come, on editing, unwriting, finishing

Course teacher
For ten years Mark was a book publisher and, before that, a lawyer. He lives and writes in the Southern Highlands, southwest of Sydney, where he runs the Cowshed Classes. Check him out at www.marktredinnick.com.

Good writing is talk tidied. Writing is talking heightened by art and set down on paper. Literature is divine chatter – the god in you talking with the god in me.
Mark Tredinnick is an acclaimed poet and essayist, and a much-loved writing teacher. His books include The Lyrebird (2011), Fire Diary (2010), The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir (2009), The Land’s Wild Music (2005), and the bestselling writing guides, The Little Red Writing Book (2006) and The Little Green Grammar Book (2008).

The Blue Plateau won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and was shortlisted in 2010 for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Mark’s other honours include the Calibre Essay Prize, the Blake Poetry Prize, and the Newcastle Poetry Prize, and his work has been published in The Best Australian Poems and The Best Australian Essays.

Writer's on last year's retreat finding inspiration...

Programme
The course dates are Saturday 11 to Saturday 18, with both Saturdays as travel days. The workshop runs over six days. We’ll run workshops on five mornings with one free day. You get the afternoons off to wander and read and write and talk with Mark about your writing.

Saturday 18 August
Leave Sydney, arrive Nadi. Local flight to Savusavu.
6.00pm: Drinks and welcome.

Sunday 19 August
9.00am – 12.30pm: Workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 2.30pm: Mentoring
Afternoon free
7:00pm: Dinner

Monday 20 August
9.00am – 12.30pm: Workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 2.30pm: Mentoring (1 session)
Afternoon visit to Savusavu

Tuesday 21 August
9.00am – 12.30pm: Workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 2.30pm: Mentoring (1 session)
Afternoon: Beach outing

Wednesday 22 August
9.00am – 12.30pm: Workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 3.00pm: Mentoring (2 sessions)
Afternoon free

Thursday 23 August
9.00am – 12.30pm: Workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 3.00pm: Mentoring (2 sessions)
Afternoon free
6.00pm: Drinks and dinner at Savusavu Yacht Club

Friday 24 August
9.00am – 12.30pm: Workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 3.00pm: Mentoring (2 sessions)
3.30pm – 5.30pm: Village visit and meke (traditional dance)

Saturday 25 August
Return to Nadi and on home

Cost of course:
$2180 per person twin share
$350 single supplement

Program Includes

• Return domestic flight from Nadi to Savusavu.
• Return airport transfers from Savusavu to Daku Resort.
• 7 nights accommodation at Daku Resort in traditional bures with private facilities.
• Breakfasts, lunches and dinners are provided.
• Course fees.
• Lectures, excursions as indicated.

Program Excludes

• Comprehensive Travel Insurance.
• Optional activities not listed on the program
• Costs of a personal nature eg laundry, massages, private trips
• Meals taken in transit at the airport
• International flights to Fiji.  We are happy to quote on these and book them for you if requested. Flight prices fluctuate according to demand.

Mark’s poem written at Daku:

Daku sestets                            Mark Tredinnick June 2011

The morning is a hand-
tinted photograph torn from Life
Magazine one afternoon late in1956. In which paradise
Decomposes sweetly beneath the mission green boards of a hut,
And a man sits, remembering too thickly and breathing too thin,
And the bay, in the shining robes of a Siddha, finds shore
and finds it again. The sea at its karma
Along the coral beach is the fierce blue mind
of the kingfisher, making plans
on the powerlines even now.

The sky here is a mile
too big for the bay’s boots. Savusavu—
This flooded arena in which nothing much, on the surface of things, ever happens,
To the enormous delight of the cava-mellowed mob of semi-superannuated
Mountains in their green flak jackets
and their greener fatigues—Savusavu
Is morality play in countless acts of cloud and itinerant weather.
It’s where the whole world’s water cycle dress rehearses.

At evening, the coconut palms
crane their long necks to watch
The sunset turn water into wine. They’re still there,
Leaning at erratic, companionable angles, when,
backlit by the bawdy moon,
The clouds compose a map of the frantic tectonic world, and then map it all over again.
In the darkness, the susurrus of the bay resumes, and the blue boat drones sheepishly home
From oyster grounds,
and fruit bats and geckos pick up roughly
where the weavers and mynahs left off
In the dusk, and on the deck, the man paces.
He’s spent the day in books and birdsong,
And he’s come away with nothing to show for it. The amber-eyed kitten,
A stray and infantile muse, he decides, who’s found him here,
too late to do anyone any good,
Bats wildly at mosquitoes and downs a moth drawn to the violet neon light
And wolfs it down alive. The green resort bus passes
on the road like an infantry battalion,
flags of conversation
Streaming from its windows. Given time, he thinks, everything,
even the saddest thing, becomes the idiom of love.

The course
Your life story is a part of you – and is a part of your family’s history. Whether you’ve had a quiet life, an exciting roller coaster of a life or even played a part on a bigger stage, there’s sure to be a tale worth telling. Getting it told properly needs care and crafting. Perhaps you had the experience of almost drowning in the surf – how will you tell that story? Will you be able to evoke the terror you felt? And where did the story start – that morning on the beach? Or three years before when you first started swimming? Or five years before that when you started to try to outdo your younger brother at EVERYTHING – including being in the surf when the waves were too big?

Isolating the right experience to write about is critical. Writing about it is a challenge. Placing it in the right part of your life is confusing. And yet you can learn to do all this, and tell a fabulous story of your life. Once you’ve begun the process, you’ll be hooked.

This course shows you how to move from the experience to the written memoir. We will concentrate on the memoir, which focusses on a specific subject or theme from your life rather than the entire story. We will look at how to write about and around it in a way that is engaging for your readers and will also shed light on the bigger picture of your life story.

You will get: A reader of course readings and writing craft notes, in-class writing exercises, presentation/discussion of particular writing/editing skills & techniques. Each meeting you will also receive verbal feedback and discussion of your work from me and other members of the group. You will also get access to a safe space in which to test out your writing and exchange ideas and skills – a community of writers, engaged in a similar writing journey. Each participant will submit between 2-4000 words of their writing (to do with the experience you wish to concentrate on) two weeks before the retreat. This work will be forwarded to the other participants, and everyone is expected to read each other’s work, as we will be workshopping this, as well as new work generated at the retreat.

Beth Yahp is an award-winning author, editor and creative writing teacher of adults and children. She has published short fiction and travel/ memoir feature articles in Australia, South-east Asia and Europe. Her novel The Crocodile Fury is translated into several languages and her libretto, Moon Spirit Feasting, for composer Liza Lim, won the APRA Award for Best Classical Composition in 2003. Beth has worked as an editor and taught creative writing for many years, including at the University of Technology, Sydney, the University of Sydney’s Centre for Continuing Education and the American University of Paris. Beth is currently completing her Doctorate of Creative Arts in travel and memoir writing at the University of Technology, Sydney. She was the presenter of Elsewhere, a program for travellers on ABC Radio National (2010-2011).

Cost of course:
$2180 per person twin share with private facilities

$350 single supplement

Program Includes

• Return domestic flight from Nadi to Savusavu.
• Airport transfers from Savusavu to Daku Resort.
• 7 nights accommodation at Daku Resort in traditional bures with private facilities.
• Breakfasts, lunches and dinners are provided.
• Course fees.
• Lectures, excursions as indicated.

Program Excludes

• Comprehensive Travel Insurance.
• Optional activities not listed on the program
• Costs of a personal nature eg laundry, massages, private trips
• Meals taken in transit at the airport
• International flights to Fiji.  We are happy to quote on these and book them for you if requested. Flight prices fluctuate according to demand.

Programme
The course runs for 6 days, and includes workshops, local excursions and free time. We will have a couple of readings during the week when we will set an evening aside to listen to each other’s writing.

Day 1: Saturday 15 September
Arrive: welcome ceremony and dinner.

Day 2: Sunday 16 September
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop 1 – Chasing the Shimmer: finding my story; capturing the world on the page, making things new; creating a safe space; charting intentions; filling the well of my creativity.
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm: Tapa making demonstration (traditional bark cloth)
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 3: Monday 17 September
10.00am – 1.00:pm Workshop 2 – Giving Feedback, Describing Places and People: learning to support our creative selves, the critic’s useful role (strangling the negative critic), lively vs. dead description, describing a character, describing a place, how much to include, how much to leave out.
1.00pm: Lunch
Afternoon: visit to Savusavu town
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 4: Tuesday 18 September
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop 3 – Bear at the Door: writing a scene; creating dramatic tension; the uses of dialogue
Afternoon: Picnic lunch and beach outing
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 5: Wednesday 19 September
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop 4 – Showing and Telling, Transitions: learning to trust your reader, learning to trust yourself; moving characters around in space and time
1.00pm: Lunch
2.30pm – 4.30pm: Workshop for locals – Telling My Story 1: making things new, describing places and people. This is a special project that Beth will be running for local writers in Savusavu; course participants are welcome to attend if they wish but it’s not expected.
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 6: Thursday 20 September
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop 5 – Our Moments of Being: writing emotions, exploring light and shadow; capturing emotions on the page
1.00pm: Lunch
2.30pm – 4.30pm: Workshop for locals – Telling My Story 2: charting moments of being, writing emotions, writing about things that matter
4.30pm – 6.30pm: Village visit and meke (traditional dance)
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 7: Friday 21 September
10.00am – 1.00pm: Workshop 6 – Curiosity, Vulnerability, Vocabulary: what keeps readers reading and writers writing; beginnings and endings; sustaining your writing life
Final dinner and readings and celebratory drinks

Day 8: Saturday 21 September
Return.

From Rosie after her 2011 writing retreat at Daku:
Magic! I loved it. Small but fabulous group, very committed, worked hard but also lots of fun, the staff were as usual wonderful.  They put on a memorable farewell night with kava, a lovo and singing and dancing by Keni’s children (Keni and Mereone  sang with them) and a rendition of Gilbert and Sullivan by one student – the extraordinary Kevin who is a professional singer among many other things.

It’s a great place for people  to get to a deeper  level with their manuscripts. It really is the best teaching experience for me too - to see  the way people’s work improves over the week is a joy. I believe this is partly because they become so relaxed and open in this lovely place.

The course
Working on your manuscript with a mentor can make a profound change to your attitude to your writing. It allows you to step back and establish the perspective you need to develop it further. This course combines classes with workshopping and one-on-one mentoring. As you analyse and discuss both your own and everyone else’s writing it will give you a dynamic new understanding of how you can shape your work.

Rosie Scott’s courses at Daku are becoming regular events – have a look at her website for some of her students’ comments: www.thesecondevolution.com/rosie/mentoring.html

The course will be limited to 8 people, and she will ask everyone to have at least the beginnings of a manuscript – a couple of chapters of a novel, or two short stories you have written or are working on. She is aiming at those people who want to write and have started the process, but need the confidence to get their work into shape. Her approach is inclusive and individually focussed. She eschews any hard and fast rules about writing fiction, and concentrates on inspiring and liberating people to find their own voice, and to discover what works specifically for them. She focuses on affirmation and truthful feedback: What works? Why? What doesn’t work? Why not? And how can it be fixed so that it does?

The programme follows a schedule of morning workshops. They will start with writing exercises and general discussion, and then go on to an intensive workshopping of your writing – and before the course, she’ll ask you to send her the writing you want to have workshopped. This will be a very freeing process: many students initially find it alarming, but always come to value it for the connection it gives to their audience, and the acceleration of learning across all aspects of the craft.

In the afternoons she will give every student a one-on-one mentoring session when she will get to grips with the structure and pace of your work and help guide you onto the next step.

The afternoons will otherwise be free for more writing, activities – or just relaxing and enjoying the resort facilities: have a spa massage, go snorkelling, or lie by the pool and read.

Rosie Scott is an internationally published, award- winning novelist, playwright, short story writer, teacher, script editor and poet.  Her latest book Faith Singer was included in an international list of 50 Greatest reads by Living Writers set up by The UK Guardian, Orange Prize Committee and Hay Festival. She is an experienced and highly successful mentor: Georgia Blain said she couldn’t have written her best selling novel Closed for Winter without her  (Closed for Winter was also recently made into a feature film starring Natalie Imbruglia). She teaches creative writing at UTS.

Born in Wellington, New Zealand, her degrees include BA, M.A. Honours in English, a graduate Diploma of Drama, a Graduate Diploma of Counselling (with outstanding student citation) and a Doctorate of Creative Arts.

Rosie’s novels have been shortlisted for most Australian and New Zealand national awards. Her award winning play was the basis for a feature film which won awards in Japan and France, and her short stories have been anthologised widely nationally and internationally.

She has mentored numerous young writers  for the Australian Society of Authors and many books both professionally and for writer friends and family  including Bella Vendramini’s best- selling Biting the Big Apple,  Anne’s Deveson’s Lines in the Sand and Resilience. She has also taught writing to high-security violent inmates at Long Bay gaol for several years and written for the Sydney Morning Herald as a critic.

Programme

Saturday 22 September
Leave Sydney, arrive Nadi.
Local flight to Savusavu.
6.00pm: Drinks and welcome.

Sunday 23 September
9.00am -12.30pm: workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 2.30pm: Mentoring
Afternoon free
7.00pm: Dinner

Monday 24 September
9.00am – 12.30pm: workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 2.30pm: Mentoring
Afternoon visit to Savusavu

Tuesday 25 September
9.00am – 12.30pm: workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 2.30pm: Mentoring
Afternoon: Beach outing

Wednesday 26 September
9.00am – 12.30pm: workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 3.00pm: Mentoring
Afternoon free

Thursday 27 September
9.00am – 12.30pm: workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 3.00pm: Mentoring
Afternoon free
6.00pm: Drinks and dinner at Savusavu Yacht Club

Friday 28 September
9.00am – 12.30pm: workshop
1.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm – 3.00pm: Mentoring
3.30pm – 5.30pm: Village visit and meke (traditional dance)

Saturday 29 September
Return to Nadi and on home

Cost:
$2180 twin share.
$350 single supplement

Program Includes

• Return domestic flight from Nadi to Savusavu.
• Return airport transfers from Savusavu to Daku Resort.
• 7 nights accommodation at Daku Resort in traditional bures with private facilities.
• Breakfasts, lunches and dinners are provided.
• Course fees.
• Lectures, excursions as indicated.

Program Excludes

• International travel to Nadi
• Comprehensive Travel Insurance.
• Optional activities not listed on the program
• Costs of a personal nature eg laundry, massages, private trips
• Meals taken in transit at the airport

Make a booking »

Valerie’s course offers a fabulous opportunity to work with Australia’s Queen of Romance in creating your romantic hero and heroine. Where better than a romantic Fijian resort to share Valerie’s passion for romance in real life and in fiction, while you explore the secrets of romance writing.

Valerie is an enormously successful author and shares her expertise and her knowledge of writing generously. In this week, you will work closely with her in getting to grips with the essentials of romance writing, and receiving her constructive criticism and feedback. You’ll also discover the sheer joy of romance writing, where passion and drama are central and your own enjoyment of the story you create is an essential part of the process. She will be giving writing exercises to develop the lessons of the daily workshops. By the end of the week you should have a hero and heroine, a firm idea of the hurdles they face – and with any luck, a plan to deliver a powerful resolution.

Valerie will also discuss the business of selling your work, and will talk to you about approaching agents and publishers. Everyone knows it’s not easy – so you might as well learn from the best.
Above all, this will be a week of fun and companionship, and a chance to immerse yourself in your writing. Romance writing is just as much hard work as any form of writing – but that doesn’t mean you won’t have a marvellous time in the company of other writers as you share your passions, explore your characters, discuss their dreams and enjoy the beauties of Fiji.

Valerie Parv
Valerie is author of over 50 novels with sales of over 25 million internationally. She holds an MA in Creative Writing, and firmly believes everyone has a story to tell. Valerie held Australia’s first romance writing workshop in 1988, which led to the founding of Romance Writers of Australia, and she has been a member ever since.

In 1994 the State Library of New South Wales, Australia, began to acquire Valerie’s papers for their collection and continues to acquire material from her. “These papers detail the author’s career as one of Australia’s most successful writers in the romance genre and include manuscripts of her works and correspondence.” [The State Library Collection, Annual Report]

Valerie is the first Australian author to receive a Pioneer of Romance Award recognising her contributions to the field of romance writing. The award was presented to Valerie by Romantic Times Book Reviews Magazine at their annual Booklovers’ Convention in Los Angeles 2011

A qualified trainer and counsellor, Valerie conducts seminars and workshops on creativity and all aspects of the writing craft based on her best-selling guides for writers: Heart and Craft, (Allen & Unwin, 2009) How do I Love Thee (Valerie Parv editor, Allen & Unwin, December 2009) , The Art of Romance Writing (Allen & Unwin 1993, 2004) and The Idea Factory (Allen & Unwin 1995).

Valerie continues to write her page-turning novels because they affirm her belief in love and happy endings. As she says: “Love gives you wings, romance helps you fly”.

Daily programme
The course runs for 6 days, and includes workshops, local excursions and free time.

Day 1: Saturday 13 October
Fly to Fiji and on to Savusavu.
Arrive at Daku Resort : welcome ceremony and dinner.

Day 2: Sunday 14 October
9.00am – 12.00pm Workshop: Who are these people?
Finding the heart of your hero and heroine; what makes them who they are? Using your real-life experiences to create wonderful characters.
12.30pm: Lunch
Afternoon free
6.00pm – 7.00pm: Reading and feedback
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 3: Monday 15 October
9.00am – 12.00pm Workshop: Conflict in Paradise
Conflict is essential to a page-turning story. But what is and isn’t conflict? How do you identify and maintain conflict when your hero and heroine only have eyes for each other?
12.30pm: Lunch
Afternoon: visit to Savusavu town – wander round the market, have a fruit smoothie at a cafe overlooking the harbour, buy some local handicrafts, get a shirt made at the tailor’s.
6.00pm – 7.00pm: Reading and feedback
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 4: Tuesday 16 October
9.00am – 12.00pm: Workshop: Speak to me
Dialogue is a great way to show, rather than tell, your story. How you can use dialogue to give your characters their own unique voices so they share their story with us in their own words.
12.30pm: Lunch
Afternoon: Beach outing – when we’ll drive along the coast to a beach fringed by palms.
6.00pm – 7.00pm: Reading and feedback
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 5: Wednesday 17 October
9.00am – 12.00pm Workshop: Through their eyes
Call it viewpoint, point-of-view or POV, this is a romance writer’s most valuable tool. How to use viewpoint to bring your characters to life and transport readers into their world.
12.30pm: Lunch
2.00pm: Tapa (traditional bark cloth) making demonstration: one of our staff has kept the tradition alive. She learnt from her mother and has now taught her daughter; watch her as she decorates the cloth with paint made from mangrove roots.
6.00pm – 7.00pm: Reading and feedback
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 6: Thursday 18 October
9.00am – 12.00pm Workshop: Snakes and ladders
Avoiding plot holes and sagging middles. Organising your plot so it hooks readers from the first paragraph, and won’t let them put your book down until the very end.
12.30pm: Lunch
Free afternoon.
7.00pm: Dinner

Day 7: Friday 19 octber
9.00am – 12.00pm: Workshop: The writing life
What do editors want? Do you need an agent and how do you find one? The pitch: selling your work to an editor in one sentence, 2-paragraphs and a synopsis. Can you give up your day job?
12.30pm: Lunch
4.30pm – 5.30pm: Village visit and meke (traditional dance) – we visit a nearby village and then sit in the community hall for a wonderful display of dancing and singing.
Final dinner and readings and celebratory drinks

Day 8: Saturday 20 October
Return to Nadi and on to Australia.

Cost of course:
$2180 per person twin share
$350 single supplement

Program Includes

• Return domestic flight from Nadi to Savusavu.
• Return airport transfers from Savusavu to Daku Resort.
• 7 nights accommodation at Daku Resort in traditional bures with private facilities.
• Breakfasts, lunches and dinners are provided.
• Course fees.
• Lectures, excursions as indicated.

Program Excludes

• Comprehensive Travel Insurance.
• Optional activities not listed on the program
• Costs of a personal nature eg laundry, massages, private trips
• Meals taken in transit at the airport
• International flights to Fiji.  We are happy to quote on these and book them for you if requested. Flight prices fluctuate according to demand.