Writing Retreat Review
From May 24-May 26, fifteen writers from the Shanghai Writing Workshop ventured to Chongming Island and wrote, studied, and socialized for three days.
We held a variety of different workshop and writing challenges that allowed writers to reflect upon their own skills and build a skill set that will prove useful on future writing endeavours. Ryan Thorpe led morning speed writing and brainstorming challenges as well as lecturing about the divide between fiction and non-fiction and the process of publication.
Stephanie Hernandez, Mike Robinson, and Morgan Schillingberg gave lectures that ranged from erotica to creating monsters to developing pressure in short fiction. Each workshop coupled theory with practice and gave participants a chance to apply the theories to their own writing.
After three days, everyone left the island full of lessons and new approaches for writing and revising fiction. With lots of small writing exercises to fuel us, we learned that Ezra Pound was right when he stated that “perception is the beginning of imagination.” Many of the writers in attendance are likely to keep writing afterwards, and as one participant noted, “writing with a group in the weekend morning sunlight feels damn awesome!”