A workshop with a getaway attached

I host small Workshop Getaways for Writers in Kei Mouth, designed for writers who want practical help with their writing but who would also like to get out of the house for a few days. These aren’t literary conferences, or a wellness retreat, or a weekend of inspirational speeches about believing in yourself. (Although there is a spa in the small village, and you’ll definitely believe in yourself once you’ve looked at yourself in a different setting.)

Why Kei Mouth?

Kei Mouth is an unusually good place to interrupt the routine.

The Great Kei River meets the sea here, and the surrounding area offers exactly the sort of landscape that can provide a writer with useful distractions: beaches, river walks, the historic Pont, coastal trails, birdwatching, golf, fishing, paddling, horse riding, waterfalls, mountain biking, local history and the cliffs and coastline around Morgan Bay. The Great Kei Municipality tourism information provides a useful introduction to the area and its attractions.

There is also the Kei Mouth Guest Lodge Collection, with local accommodation and information about things to do in the area. And this is where the idea becomes slightly different from the conventional writer’s retreat. You don’t have to spend the whole weekend in the workshop.

In fact, I don’t want you to.

I have a theory that writers occasionally need to be injected with something completely outside their manuscript. So we might have an afternoon injection to go and walk along the beach together and talk about Chekhov’s gun, or take the ferry across the river into the old Transkei. You can choose to spend the afternoon looking at rare shells in a shell museum. Or stare at classic motorcycles in the Bike Museum.

You might prefer a modest self-catering cottage where nobody will disturb your late-night writing, or a room in a guest house with breakfast supplied before you venture out every day.

You might come with another writer and share an authentic old beach house with the tide coming right to your doorstep.

You might bring a partner and make a proper weekend of it in one of the luxury accommodations on offer.

You choose. Go birdwatching. Take a horse ride. Walk the cliffs. Sit somewhere and watch the weather. Go fishing. Find lunch. Take a camera.

We, during your workshop syllabus, might have a campfire session while we analyse your murder mystery plot holes.

The point is to change the material coming into your head. A writer who has spent three days looking at the same four walls has been receiving the same information for three days.

What we actually do in the workshop

The idea that “you can’t teach creative writing” is a famous sentiment echoed by various writers and fictional characters—such as the TV character Hank Moody on Goodreads, who famously said that anyone who claims they can teach you how to write is “full of shit.”

The Core Debate

· The Untouchable Gift: Many authors, like Lee Child, argue that the fundamental spark or talent of storytelling is innate. You either have the inner voice and vision or you do not; a classroom cannot inject talent into someone who lacks it.

· The Teachable Craft: Other writers and instructors argue the opposite. Novelist Chuck Wendig slammed the “you can’t teach writing” notion on Terrible Minds, calling it a pretentious myth used by authors to gatekeep their skills.

What Can vs.Cannot Be Taught

· What cannot be taught: The raw imagination, the internal drive, and the unique perspective an individual brings to a blank page.

What can be taught:

Technical mechanics, narrative structure, pacing, editing, and discipline. As author Madeleine L’Engle noted, a workshop can teach technique, which eventually allows a writer’s innate voice to function properly.

I’m deliberately developing several formats rather than one enormous, expensive, all-inclusive retreat. Examples below, but each writer will have a specific list of needs, and together we can come to an agreement on the correct cost commitment for you.

THE DAY

A concentrated one-day workshop for writers who live within reasonable travelling distance or are already staying in the area. You arrange your own transport and, if you want to stay overnight, your own accommodation.

The day is about the work you want to do.

THE WEEKEND

This is the Workshop Getaway for individuals or groups.

Arrive in Kei Mouth, settle into whatever accommodation you’ve chosen, and join the workshop programme.

There will be structured workshop sessions with theory and practical exercises/writing time. Accommodation and transport are arranged separately by participants.

THE WEEK

For the writer with a larger project — a novel, memoir, collection or manuscript that needs sustained attention — there will be a longer residential option.

This will for individuals or much smaller groups, with considerably more individual editorial input.

There will be workshops, but also actual manuscript time.

We can diagnose the problem, work on it, step away from it, return to it and work out what happens next. Again, accommodation and transport are separate. If you want a week’s holiday accommodation, you arrange that. If you want a week of my professional time working on your manuscript, that is what you are paying me for.

Why I am separating the costs

I think writers should be able to choose their own version of the getaway.

I don’t want to sell you a compulsory accommodation package, and I don’t have time to faff around with how you’d like your breakfast eggs cooked. I don’t want to decide whether you need a single room or are happy to share. I don’t want to add transport to the price simply because a retreat is expected to provide a shuttle. And, chiefly, I don’t want the cost of your room to obscure the actual value of the workshop.

So the arrangement is simple:

You book your accommodation.

You arrange your transport.

You pay the workshop fee directly to me, in advance.

That means your money pays for my time and the thing I am actually providing: my time, preparation, teaching, editorial knowledge and attention to your writing.

It also means you can use the excellent local accommodation and tourism infrastructure already available in Kei Mouth.

For accommodation options, start with the Kei Mouth accommodation information and local letting listings, and then choose the place that suits your pocket and your idea of a getaway.

This isn’t about escaping the writing

There is a temptation to think that a writing retreat means going somewhere beautiful and spending three days avoiding the manuscript.

I’m interested in the opposite.

We go somewhere beautiful so that we can return to the manuscript differently.

You may arrive with 20,000 words and leave knowing what the next 20,000 need to do.

You may bring one troublesome chapter and discover that the problem is actually three chapters earlier.

You may arrive convinced that you need help with dialogue and discover that your real problem is character.

You may simply need somebody with an editorial eye to say:

“Yes. That’s the book. Now let’s get rid of everything that isn’t it.”

Or you may discover that what you need most is three uninterrupted days in which somebody else is cooking breakfast and nobody knows where you are.

All are legitimate writing problems.

WORKSHOP GETAWAYS FOR WRITERS

Kei Mouth, Eastern Cape

Day workshops | Weekend getaways | Manuscript weeks

Workshop fees announced with each individual date.

Accommodation and transport arranged independently by participants.

For information about Kei Mouth and the wider Great Kei area, see the Great Kei Municipality tourism information.

For local accommodation and visitor information, see the Kei Mouth Guest Lodge Collection.

I also offer online workshops.

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