I’m choosing dates for my retreats in 2026. This will be the seventh year for Ridge Writing Retreats! So far, I’ve facilitated about 70 retreat days online and in person in Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Tampere and Säynätsalo, and a few hundred hours of Write on Wednesdays. I write well at all our venues, and that isContinue reading “When and where do you write best?”
Category Archives: human writing
Women writing about walking
Not that particular woman writing about walking who has been in the news recently. (I haven’t read that book, and now I don’t feel like it, though I enjoyed her two pages in this one.) Women have been writing about walking for hundreds of years. Way Makers: An Anthology of Women’s Writing about Walking bringsContinue reading “Women writing about walking”
Reclaim your brain
Did you start your own cyber cleanse yet? A few months ago, I almost quit Google and Meta. Not completely, because some groups I can’t live without still use GoogleDrive folders to cowrite or WhatsApp to get organized. Everything I run and write myself is now elsewhere, but it’s still hard to get bigger groupsContinue reading “Reclaim your brain”
Languages, dislocations, reorientations
Moving between languages can dislocate you, but creatively reorient you. I’ve been thinking about this with a group of philosophers and artists. At the final event of the HARMAA project, Disclocations, Irina Poleshchuk moderated a panel on language, experience, and art. Comics artist Sasha_D, project artist Pauliina Mäkelä, joined me as their translator and editor. WeContinue reading “Languages, dislocations, reorientations”
Starting a social writing group?
Are you based in Finland and want to set up or improve your own social writing group? Do you want to meet others who help writers put writing first, together? Your group could be a regular hour a week on Zoom, or a one-off writing retreat in person. You might invite people on your corridor,Continue reading “Starting a social writing group?”
Writing for Research and Academic Practice with the WRAP Network
What do you want from a place to write? I want quiet, a good desk, an armchair to read in, lots of natural light, space to move around, somewhere nice and green to go for a walk and listen to the birds. And a comfortable bed and lots of lovely veggie food to eat inContinue reading “Writing for Research and Academic Practice with the WRAP Network”
Prove you wrote it yourself
Recently, I had to prove that I’d written 300,000 words myself. Why? I’m now a qualified member of the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting (MITI) for all my three source languages: Finnish, German and Polish into English. If you translate into or out of the “big four” languages, or FIGS (French, Italian, German andContinue reading “Prove you wrote it yourself”
Cyborg writing
We are cyborg writers now. Can we write at all without machines? When my laptop broke, I felt bereft. I decided to write by hand. But how could I share it? Could anyone read it? Writing offline felt scary: it was clumsier, less secure, more precarious. While my laptop was being fixed, I started writingContinue reading “Cyborg writing”
Human versus artificial writing: wheat and chaff
So I finally tried ChatGPT. And this is how it went. I went through the hassle of setting up a new email address and played with the free version of OpenAI. I wanted it to get to do something it’s supposed to be good at. To digest what I had learned so far about largeContinue reading “Human versus artificial writing: wheat and chaff”
Ridge Writing Retreats 