Hi Lloyd! Really enjoyed your interview with Nikki. It reminded me of “The Italian Lesson,” which @MaryTrump is serializing here on Substack @BackstorySerial with @EJeanCarroll and @JenTaub. Good luck with the retreat. I’ve been fascinated by the role Italy has played in our cultural education every since reading “A Room With a View” in college. I just returned from my own personal writer’s retreat in the English Cotswolds, where my serialized novel, “The Summer we Said Goodbye,” is set. I’m going to keep an eye out for future retreats of yours. Cheers! @JackFitzgerald
Thanks, Jack! Sounds like your time in the Cotswolds was great. Would love to hear what you liked about the your time there and what could've been better.
Well, Lloyd, it was inspiring in a very real and granular way. My novel, “The Summer We Said Goodbye,” is based on a summer I spent working at a small village inn decades ago during college. I hadn’t been back since and had no plans to return anytime soon. But I was far enough along in the writing that once I started serializing on Substack, I was called. Visiting the locations that still haunt me provided a new perspective on the old, while the new places and people I met expanded my palette in exciting ways. My phone’s notes app is chocked full of new characters, scene possibilities, and bits of captured dialogue. I’m a documentary filmmaker by trade, and I learned long ago to shoot the film that’s already happening in front of you. It was like that. Throughout my very busy days, I would find myself on pause, sitting on whatever park bench or window sill was available when inspiration struck, pecking out the ideas happening around me. I would have loved to have had a companion or two up to the same kind of thing to share with at the end of the day. And I most definitely want to return for an extended period. Now that the long-awaited return has been executed, I’d like to go back and spend my days getting down to the business of writing in the place where it all happened.
Hi Lloyd! Really enjoyed your interview with Nikki. It reminded me of “The Italian Lesson,” which @MaryTrump is serializing here on Substack @BackstorySerial with @EJeanCarroll and @JenTaub. Good luck with the retreat. I’ve been fascinated by the role Italy has played in our cultural education every since reading “A Room With a View” in college. I just returned from my own personal writer’s retreat in the English Cotswolds, where my serialized novel, “The Summer we Said Goodbye,” is set. I’m going to keep an eye out for future retreats of yours. Cheers! @JackFitzgerald
Thanks, Jack! Sounds like your time in the Cotswolds was great. Would love to hear what you liked about the your time there and what could've been better.
Well, Lloyd, it was inspiring in a very real and granular way. My novel, “The Summer We Said Goodbye,” is based on a summer I spent working at a small village inn decades ago during college. I hadn’t been back since and had no plans to return anytime soon. But I was far enough along in the writing that once I started serializing on Substack, I was called. Visiting the locations that still haunt me provided a new perspective on the old, while the new places and people I met expanded my palette in exciting ways. My phone’s notes app is chocked full of new characters, scene possibilities, and bits of captured dialogue. I’m a documentary filmmaker by trade, and I learned long ago to shoot the film that’s already happening in front of you. It was like that. Throughout my very busy days, I would find myself on pause, sitting on whatever park bench or window sill was available when inspiration struck, pecking out the ideas happening around me. I would have loved to have had a companion or two up to the same kind of thing to share with at the end of the day. And I most definitely want to return for an extended period. Now that the long-awaited return has been executed, I’d like to go back and spend my days getting down to the business of writing in the place where it all happened.