Ridge Writing Retreats

Welcome to the Ridge

Write through summer

My writing wish list for summer 2023 is short (8 words): 1. Finish translating a book. 2. Take a month off. Do you have grand plans for your summer writing? Now is a good time to think what’s realistic, how you’re going to write it, and most importantly, when you’re going to rest. Out of…

Social writing – a guide in Finnish

I am delighted to see this book come into being. Johanna Isosävi’s and Camilla Lindholm’s Yhteisöllisen kirjoittamisen opas (Art House 2023) came out last month. It’s the first guide to social writing in Finnish. The book is both practical and inspirational; it packs a lot into a handy paperback. Lindholm and Isosävi run social writing…

Bodies, writing

We’ve been online and on screen too long. We need to get off, and get out. We know this, but we don’t do this. We need other people to help us do it, together. It’s three years since Covid-19 hit. I wrote about how it affected our writing then. Now, many things are back to…

The carrier bag theory of fiction

If you read one thing about writing this year, try this. It’s tiny – but transformative. Ursula Le Guin’s own writing is beautiful and she writes about writing wisely, from Words are my Matter to Steering the Craft. But here she goes back to the first stories at the dawn of time and forward to…

Write into 2023

Happy new year! Let’s write again, like we did last year… at two of your favourite venues and in a new social writing challenge. My new year’s writing resolutions are to write little and often, keeping Wednesday mornings for my own writing projects, and to write more in person with others in pairs as well…

Cover image: the ridge/harju in Jyväskylä. All photos (c) Kate Sotejeff-Wilson