Switzerland – Valeria Vescina

Starting something ‘from scratches’? Not ‘from scratch’? For a split second, the sentence jarred. But its author, Iwona Fluda of Creative Switzerland (see her post, where she kindly mentions my writing retreats – thank you, Iwona!), had not made a mistake: perfectly aware of the correct idiomatic expression, she was being joyously playful with language.

That freedom to take apart idioms and clichés, to view them with new eyes, may come easier to non-native speakers of a language. Foreign students of English soon discover that ‘a pretty kettle of fish’ isn’t, actually, a good thing (no, not even if you love fish); that people can ‘fly off the handle’ (really? how?); and that you can ‘go Dutch’, whatever your nationality. You see what I’m getting at: taken literally, expressions we use every day can be a source of amusement, bemusement, discoveries, reflection… The same is true of single words: in my first novel, the protagonist deconstructs ‘nostalgia’, so that for him it means not the yearning to return home, but pain at that prospect.

The world around us offers countless sparks for our creativity. They’re everywhere: in landscapes, objects, fellow passengers on a train, overheard conversations in a café, a piece of music… And they’re ‘inside’ language(s), too, as Iwona highlighted. The trick is in spotting all these creative prompts hiding in plain sight, and transforming them into fruitful writing material. We can train our capacity to do that.

But how? An effective way is to attend creative-writing workshops. In the ones I teach, I combine prompts with the transmission of specific skills, so that participants may continue practising and perfecting them autonomously afterwards. For example, I’ll show you how to extract ideas for a story from a small object, in the context of how to create a three-dimensional character; or how to develop an engaging plot structure from a photo. You can free up your creativity and cover key elements of writing (characterisation, sense of place, etc.) on the retreat I’m running from 9 to 15 October 2022. Click here if you’d like to find out more about the venue, schedule, etc.

If you’re curious about what writing retreats are, what to look for, and how they might benefit you, here’s an article I wrote for Writing.ie Resources.

Any questions? Just get in touch via this short contact form or email me on mvaleriavw [at] outlook [dot] com.

Image credits:

‘Journaling over Coffee’ by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash.

The Swiss Riveter

Review of Pascale Kramer’s “Autopsy of a Father”

Recently the European Literature Network published The Swiss Riveter, a compendium of writing about contemporary fiction, poetry and memoir from Switzerland. It contains essays on Swiss literature’s richness and diversity, as well as reviews and extracts, including an exclusive English excerpt of Peter Stamm’s The Gentle Indifference of the World (to be published this year in Michael Hoffman’s translation) and an essay by Swiss-British writer Alain de Botton.

My review of Pascale Kramer’s Autopsy of a Father (Bellevue Literary Press, 2017) appears on pp. 56-57. Kramer won the Grand Prix Suisse de Littérature in 2017 for her oeuvre. Autopsy of a Father is a powerful novel for our times: it tackles xenophobia, racism and nationalism. You can access the review here.

The European Literature Network promotes literature in translation. The Swiss Riveter was produced with support from Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council, the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK, Arts Council England and ELit Literature House Europe. Sections of it are now available also in digital form here.

This is the fifth of the European Literature Network’s Riveters. The first was devoted to literature from Poland, on the occasion of the 2017 London Book Fair’s Polish focus. The second, on literature from Russia, coincided with ELNet’s Russian events at the British Library. In The Nordic Riveter of October 2017, five countries were represented: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. The fourth covered the Baltics, the focus of the 2018 London Book Fair.