To Marrakech…

I am off to Marrakech!! I’m looking forward to doing nothing other than wander the souks and gardens of this extraordinary city. Of course I will be taking my camera but the only writing I will be doing is making lists in my notebook – lists like artists’ sketches make brilliant starting points for writing both prose and poetry. After this long winter I’m hungry for Morocco’s vibrant colour and its heat.

Yesterday at our RoomToWrite day the heat was turned up as we sat under glass in the elegant conservatory at Whitworth, looking out onto the  snowdrops and deer. It was a beautiful morning – the sun shone for us once again – there is some kind of magic at work here I feel-  and there was magic in the conversations, the intense and complex discussions and in the writing that continues to grow and develop. There was great comaraderie too and we were delighted to welcome Colleen all the way from Chicago via London, and we were sad to miss Erica and Anne – hope we will see you in November.

So much good writing – some of which will appear on our website in April, so make sure you take a look. I leave you with something I like a lot from Kate Mosse:

There’s only one difference between published and unpublished writers and it is this – the first group see their work in print on the shelves of Waterstone’s or Tesco or online at Amazon; the second group are yet to have physical evidence of the hours, weeks, years spent fashioning words into their patterns. You are already a writer.