Vietnam writing retreat

HOORAY FOR HEAVENLY HOI AN 2025!

/ Edwina Shaw / 4 Comments

Yes, we really had a fun time!

RETREAT COMPLETE!

Alongside my local Queensland Relax and Write Retreats, I also run Transformational Writing Retreats in beautiful locations with my dear friend and writing buddy, Kerstin Pilz, author of Loving My Lying Dying Cheating Husband.

Just heading home after a wonderful week of writing, yoga, feasting and fun in the company of our lovely Hoi An retreaters 2025. With participants ranging from those developing a journalling practice to published authors with PhDs in creative writing, we had an accomplished and interesting group to inspire us all to greater heights. From sci-fi, to tragic romance, to feminist lit-fic, to a memoir about working in palliative care, a YA novel that enters others worlds, to the hilarious Black Beatles and writing for healing, we had it all.

It’s always a delight to meet writers from around Australia and the world, and to watch them connect over shared stories. No small talk for us! When you share your stories you go straight to the heart – a wonderful place to start.

This year’s smaller group was a joy, so kind and gentle and supportive of each other as we delved deep into our projects over the retreat week. With workshops ranging from Writing in Scenes, to Character Creation to Developing Your Premise, Structure and Publishing Pathways, we cram as much information into our retreats as we can, catering for each individual as much as possible. With fewer participants this year we were able to really get to know each writer’s project and help them to develop a clearer idea of how to move forward with their writing with confidence.

Let’s just say Hoi An put on great weather for writers and ducks for most of the week, making our escape from the Southern summer turn chilly and wet, sending us all on the search for socks and scarves! Good weather for staying in, rugged up, writing up a storm!

Fortunately, the sun came out perfectly for our outings.

On Wednesday we visited Tra Que Vegetable Village and cooking school where we dressed up as Vietnamese farmers with cone hats and smocks, and helped to dig, fertilise and plant a small veggie patch. Jeanelle and Angelina were shoo-ins for the best diggers! I had a go at swinging the double buckets to water the plants, and I wasn’t too bad (not too good either). Those things are heavy!

We carved vegetable flowers and made scrumptious spring rolls, then learned to make special Vietnamese yellow rice pancakes – YUM! Beverley definitely won the prize for best pancake flipper. I think I was even worse than last year.

We had a fun and silly day and laughed a lot.  On the way home, Lee wasn’t feeling well, and the driver of our electric shuttle bus gently rested his hand on her back, then pulled over to rub tiger balm on her temples. These moments are what make Vietnam so special. The kindness and care of the people is genuine and heart-warming.

We had to fiddle with our program to line up with the sun so we could enjoy our new outing to the beach at An Bang where we did tarot readings and had drinkies and beach walks and chats by the sea under a blue sky. YAY! A beautiful afternoon topped off with a ceremonial fire, leaving behind what no longer serves us and sending our wishes to heaven. Hope it worked! We’ll all be best-selling sensations by the end of the year. Ha! After an evening walk along the beach and through the meandering alleyways of AnBang, to our seafood feast at AnBang Beach Village Restaurant. Yummy!

We feasted the whole week, with dessert at every meal. Yes, even breakfast. They spoil us at A Villa. Fresh fish and rice paper rolls, green papaya salad, special soups, herbal teas made fresh, tropical fruit and crepes with chocolate. All made with love – fresh, colourful and delicious – by the smiling women in the kitchen.

Participants teamed up and explored the Old Town and visited the giant Quan Yin statue and bonsai gardens in Danang, and took a night boat ride in Hoi An complete with lanterns.

I love helping people to connect and share experiences and we make sure there’s plenty of free time in the afternoons for traveling adventures.

Tailors made lots of fancy new clothes for our guests, and the massages, which you can get in your room, were “the best of our lives!”. Near An Villa was a spa where they gave organic facials with herbs from their own garden which Jess, our resident make-up artist expert and tragic romance writer, highly recommended.

We finished our week with readings over breakfast and a wonderful mini-belly dancing class with Jeanelle. She made it all look easy.

A full week of workshops and yoga and excursions and feasting and fun. And then, just as we’re all starting to get into the swing of things, suddenly the retreat ends and we all head in different directions. But I will be taking a little of each participant with me. Shari’s kindness and care, Jeanelle’s swaying hips, Ange’s infectious laugh, Carol’s sweetness, Harry’s deep thoughts, Jess’s stories of Spain, Bev’s giggle and deep wisdom, Brenda’s fortune cookies and fun, and Lee’s fabulous Feral Cheryl and her smile and nod during workshops that encouraged us to keep going. THANK YOU to our wonderful guests who make these retreats so special. 

Kerstin and I come out the other end of retreats ready for silent retreats of our own. After a week of talking our way through yoga classes and workshops, and listening and engaging and reflecting and planning and arranging and caring for our guests, we’re ready for a little lie down. 

But you know what? It’s the best job in the world! 

We get to share our love of writing and yoga and travel with fascinating people who always inspire and uplift us, and each other.

Come along and join us on retreat! Italy in October still has rooms available. Can’t wait for that one in our glorious palazzo! All the info here. Blissful Bali 2025 is now sold out!

Lots of love,

Edwina 🙂 xx

THE COURAGE TO CREATE

/ Edwina Shaw / Leave a comment

Starting to write takes guts.

In ancient cultures, creativity was a part of everyday life for all people, shaping new objects to use, but also making them beautiful, art for art’s sake. These days creativity is seen as something separate, apart from the busy lives we lead, busy making money to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. Art making is viewed as an optional “extra”, a hobby, a self-indulgence, a privilege and not a right, so that to consciously and continually pursue an art form like writing is an act of rebellion. 

Great courage is needed to step outside the norm and say, “I am a creator. What I have to say is important. My ideas are worth sharing. My stories need to be told.” 

Be that crazy kid who breaks the mould!

I am a firm believer that creativity is a powerful healing tool. Through crafting a work of beauty from our emotional pain, a new vision or version of the past is made, and we are freed from much of the burden of carrying that pain. Through creativity, in whatever form that takes, we express our tender hearts and release the stories we tell ourselves onto the page, the canvas, the dancefloor, the instrument. Through our courage to do so, others see their own stories and hearts reflected and know that they are not alone, that others also bleed, that we are all in this human mess together. 

This work is important. So much of the modern world ignores the emotional lives we all share, yet we are feeling beings, shaped by our emotions, thoughts and sensations. We are not machines. As the poet Samuel Hurley says in his poem, “AI vs The Poet” – “A thing that cannot grieve has no right to poetry”. 

As machines are taking over so many of our roles, we need to protect our very human right to create, our expression of what it is to live and our attempts to understand it. Is creativity the last castle of humanity?

Don’t hide in the shadows! Assert your human right to create!

How do we protect our right to creation?

By creating! By writing or drawing or dancing or sculpting or sewing or weaving or cooking or performing or singing. Without fear. By having the courage to continue to create in the face of technological advances and commercially focused marketplaces. By refusing to become an unthinking working machine but instead choosing to live fully and bravely and to express ourselves through the arts.

So put that pen to paper, open a new document and type without looking at the words. Paint for the joy of the colours. Dance for the bliss of movement. Sing for the magic of sound.

Life is not just about paying bills and doing what has to be done.

Life is to be grasped with both hands, to be savoured and enjoyed through the senses, to be shared through creative expression, to be fully lived.

It takes great courage to step into the ring as a practising artist, knowing what we create may never be seen and may never be rewarded financially. But still we create. 

We continue to create in the face of all those sensible folk around us who remind us our income is below the poverty line, that we have no superannuation, that we’re wasting our time. 

For we know the opposite is true. We who choose a life of creativity are making the very best use of our brief voyage through a human life. We are expressing what it is to be, and to be us. Unique, intriguing, wonderful.

And after our work has been knocked back—invalidated, unseen, unheard, it takes guts to continue, to stagger back up from the mat after the thirtieth knockout blow. Rocky has nothing on artists.

I once heard a writer say, “Writing may not make you rich, but it will enrich your life.”

In the years since then, I’ve learnt the truth of her words. What riches a life of observing, creating, refining and learning holds! Anything less is poor in comparison. I wouldn’t swap my writing life for all the handsome superannuation portfolios in the world.

Have courage, my dear writing friends, for we are the tellers of tales, the sharers of secrets, the wise and the wonderful. 

Are you yearning to create? Just start. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It won’t be perfect, it never is. 

But it will be you, on a page. And no one will ever be able to take that away. 

With lots of love

Edwina xx

PS. If you’re in need of a little en-COURAGE-ment on your writing journey, why not come along and join us in Vietnam in February 2025 in Heavenly Hoi An. Connect with other like-minded writing folk, immerse yourself in an exotic culture, explore the ancient town and your own creative heart, relax with yoga, and be encouraged, inspired and uplifted by writing workshops guaranteed to get you writing! All the info and to book HERE 15% now off all bookings for Heavenly Hoi An 2025!!