Aliette de Bodard (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} aliettedb) wrote,@ 2008-05-08 00:22:00 |
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| Current mood: |  contemplative |
Villa Diodati Report
So, I did promise (well, imply at least) that there would be a Villa Diodati report at some point.
Villa Diodati is a workshop for English-language writers of speculative fiction who live in Europe. We rented a gîte (a country house) in the north of Paris, near Compiègne, which was very picturesque:
The gîte
There were 8 of us, coming from France, Spain, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands: Ruth Nestvold (specficrider), Floris Kleijne (florismk), Nancy Fulda (nancy_fulda), John Olsen (jpolsen), Sara Genge (artemisin), Jeff Spock (jeffspock), Stephen Gaskell (stvgskll), and me.
It was Spring, and everything around us was in flower (including a rather awesome cherry tree), so this was really nice. The gîte had a chimney, which provided us with a fire in the evening), a backyard (where we did lunches and brainstorming sessions, sitting lazily in the sun), and a number of rooms (unfortunately, not enough...).
Ah, the rooms... Better get the negatives out of the way first. The gîte was, as I had feared, a bit small for a concerted invasion of 8 people. We ended up sleeping all over the place: Steve in a very uncomfortable position on the gîte's sofa, Ruth under a well of light that obviously got a bit bothersome when the sun rose, Jeff on an air mattress in the living room, and I right under the edge of the roof, in a sort of large corridor that had the floor's only bathroom and restroom. (well, ok, I'm a heavy sleeper, and I never really woke up for the people who kept passing through my "room").
Also, the kitchen was what we French call American-style, which means it wasn't a separate room, but simply set in the living room behind a counter. Which means that there wasn't really any way to stay up late if the people in the living room had already gone to sleep.
Aside from that, it was just great. I knew mostly everyone, either from the last workshop or from online, and meeting (again) them was awesome. There's a sort of communion of minds going on there, which means I immediately felt at ease with everyone (which is SO not the case when I meet random people). It must be the writer's gene or something, but you just can't beat writerly talks around the chimney :-)
First Breakfast: Steve, Jeff, Ruth and Floris (behind Ruth)
What we actually did, apart from socialise and cooking (more on the cooking later), was a couple of activities carried over from the previous workshop: we had the critiquing of participants' stories, of course, but also less obvious activities such as collective brainstorming to help people write stories they were stuck on, and write-a-thon (which is exactly what it sounds like: we toss out ideas on the table, and everyone takes the ideas and writes as much as they can around them--in 3 hours). There was also much writing, much talking, and much fiddling around with the Internet router: we're all Internet addicts, but unfortunately the modem's wifi didn't work (it got renamed the "wiless" at some point), and everyone took turns plugging in a cable.
The crits were very good, giving me ideas on how to fix a story I had had lying in my trunk for the better part of the year; the discussions were fun and informative and just awesomely pleasant to be part of. As usual, this sort of thing always recharges my writing batteries (which have been severely depleted of late), and I came back from this with renewed determination. I didn't actually write a whole lot (wait, I'm sort of lying. I edited a lot, since I was going through the novel one final time before submitting, and I took lots of notes for short stories that I ought to write. I didn't actually start and finish anything, as I did last year at Diodati, but obviously that can't happen every time). Anyway, I can write anytime at home; the whole interest of this was the socialising with some great people.
Lunch in the backyard
Also, it's become obvious that Diodati is an excuse for people to show off their cooking abilities: on Saturday we had John's stupendous French dinner (soup, duck with calvados, and cake); on Sunday Ruth's wonderful chili; on Monday Jeff's tasty tajine (which was so big and so tasty it got recycled for the rest of the week); and on Tuesday Stephen cooked very good Thai green curry. We should totally do a Diodati cookbook :)
Ruth, Floris and Nancy left on Tuesday afternoon; John and Steve on Wednesday morning, leaving me and Sara alone with our computers. Upon which we wrote, of course :) Sara worked a bit on her short stories; I mostly shouldered novel revisions out of the way.
We did get to watch "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", which we mostly regretted, since the movie didn't really make any sense, and Sara and I spent time discussing how we would have shot it to make it better (and I bitched about the way the Hindu goddess Kali was represented in the movie, but that's because I'm a contrarian).
We had a very pleasant last few days, enriched by the arrival of the boyfriend, who helped us with brainstorming SF ideas (that's where being a physicist comes in handy...), and with finishing the huge pile of leftovers.
Finally, we dropped Sara off at Orly, and went home, concluding this iteration of Villa Diodati.
As an aside, there's obviously a curse on leaving the workshop, because Sara got stuck for 2 hours in Orly because of a strike, and Floris barely made it home after an encounter with a burning tyre... (oh, and Air France managed to lose Nancy's suitcase on the way from Germany to France, and to break it when shipping it back to her).
This was just awesome--many many thanks to everyone involved for making it such a pleasant time (and special thanks to jpolsen for managing the supplies). I'm signing up for workshop #3 :)
PS:more pictures on my flickr account, here
