Self reconnection through writing in Southern Brittany

Writing is not learned, but is taught and transmitted. A writing workshop is always the place for the transmission of a creative experience, which respects the uniqueness of each participant. A writing workshop is always intimately linked to the place in which it takes place. You don’t write the same in the privacy of your home office, as you would at your place of work or study, the same applies to writing in a bustling café or placed in front of the vastness of nature. One does not write the same because the sensations are not the same and therefore neither is the gesture of writing. One doesn’t use the same words or the same images, much less the same melodies.

Offering a writing workshop in the “Entre Sel et Sable” villa requires taking into account the location, the potential it opens up, especially in terms of its landscapes. As its name suggests, the villa is a place at the interface between the blue of the sea and the green and yellow of the salt marshes. It is a cocooning place, a place of refuge from the wind that can sometimes beat the rocky and steep coast. It is a place where you can smell the sea breeze and salt.

These landscapes, the strength and the tranquility that emanates from them, many writers have drawn from this to produce their texts. In the 19th century, Balzac, Zola, Flaubert and even Alphonse Daudet made several trips to the Guérande peninsula, in Batz-sur-Mer in particular. Closer to us, Julien Gracq but also Anna Gavalda came here to recharge their artistic batteries.

It is on the alliance of the villa and its environment that the differentiating criterion of such a writing workshop is based. For many in France, writing workshops are often austere. While some stand out by calling on authors’ already published material as a guarantee of “quality”, the majority of workshops take place in small rooms and indoors. This proposal is meant to be different by combining place and meaning, to make the writing workshop at the villa a real experience, as much sensory as personal and literary.

Objective – Take pleasure in writing and reading your texts – Reconnect with yourself and your environment through writing – Start or develop a literary project by confronting it with the eyes of others

Format 2 half-days (3h) to be divided between Saturday morning, afternoon and Sunday morning

An optional half-day for themes 2 and 3

Plume speaker and author, Anne Pédron-Moinard has a wealth of experience in writing and transmission. Aggregated in her knowledge of history and her time spent as a highschool teacher and university professor in Science-Po, she was also the pen of an elected official and chairs the Guilde des Plumes, the first French-speaking network of feathers of elected officials and managers of major accounts. . Writing for oneself and writing for others are the two facets of her activity. This background and  personality have given Anne the ability to sense things and  read people. Thus helping them to write what they want and express. She runs a writing workshop at Les Mots School in Paris as well as online philosophical discussion workshops to help formulate her thinking through words and language.

Number of participants From 6 to 14 participants

Themes

1.Walk between salt and sand: reconnect with yourself by writing about the sea and nature

2.Family history (s): write from family memories

3.Portrait (s): telling oneself through faces

4.The Bride Wore Black: building a novel (Si-Fi, comedy, romantic …) around love with several hands (bachelorette party)

5.Personalized workshop on request

Process

Half-day 1: -Presentation and introduction of the workshop (15 ’) -Writing games to untie one’s pen (40’) -Exploratory outing around the theme (1h30) –

Half-day 2: -Short writing time from exit (15 ‘) -Reading and discussion -Long writing time on instructions (45’) -Reading and discussions – [Reading tips to go further] –

Half-day 3: -Exchange around writing projects (45 ’) -Long writing time on personalized instructions (1h) -Reading and discussions (45’) -Reading tips to go further