Writing Residency in Greece

Writing prompts, notes, and a touch of the dramatic

Me in front of the water in Marmaras

I’m sitting on a front porch of a cute house in Nikiti, Greece, overlooking the Aegean Sea. The Wi-Fi is spotty or non-existent in most places, and except for trying to publish this or edit any online documents, it’s been helpful for focusing and being present. We write with pen in a paper notebook.

What I share here is an amalgamation of my written responses to writing prompts, notes I’ve taken from Stephanie Foo, and some of my personal experience with the attendees.

Writing Prompts

On the first day, or the second if you don’t count our night of arrival, a group of ladies pile into a bus and head to Marmaras. We walk around the little shops and then settle in an outdoor dining area, order some wine, and start to write. Or not. Mostly, the activity devolves into chatter.

Greece

I walked down to the water

Soft. Clear. Gentle.

The sound is soothing.

But it lies. Or it doesn’t. Perhaps it counters expectations. The beach is dirty. There’s plastic trash on the rough sand and floating in the water. The air smells like shit. Business is slow.

Name dropping. Advice. Vaping.

Wine. Sauvignon Blanc.

Headphones. That was a good idea. Except I want to hear the ocean, which is getting louder as the clouds roll in. The clouds. I wonder if they provide a buffering, a sort of sound studio for the Aegean Sea.

A roar of a Vespa in background. The loud slapping of the water in the midground while chatter still monopolizes the foreground.

More wine please.

I’m not wanting. I’m not craving. I’m receptive and needing quiet.

A modern bar with a dilapidated brick second story.

A shop in Marmaras that is more modern on the first floor than on the second.

A reverse metaphor for my life → build under crap instead of building on it.

Thank God for wine.

Wine and this slappy dirty ocean. Grounding me in a reverse way under the mundanity of name, acronym, and term dropping. And opinions. Obviously.

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“I want you to try writing place as character,” our facilitator urged. “Look at this tree. What can you tell me about this tree? Imagine what it’s like, how it feels. Describe this to me.”

Tree

It’s been pruned. Limbs cut off close to the core. A house, yard, property built around it, but more likely, it’s been replanted here, made to look like it belongs.

I hate this exercise. Hate.

“Okay, let’s have a few people share.”

I read mine, the third to go, then blurt out, “I think we’re all projecting onto the tree a little bit, yeah?” A couple of people giggle.

“Alright, go find a place to sit and practice really describing a place as a character. Lean into it and see if you can even write about a place that might be hard to write about.” The crowd takes her words and shuffles off in all directions.

I stay in my chair, frustrated and feeling full of piss and vinegar.

This place is everything I’m not. It’s lush. It’s full of life. It’s quiet, peaceful, and serene.

And yet I look out on a sea that has infamously been the backdrop of so much war.

Everyone tells me New Mexico is beautiful. They know of the sky lit with glowing hot air balloons in October, of the turquoise jewelry, arrowheads, and white sands. They may know of the ski resorts in Taos, the museums in Santa Fe, the Opera House, the World’s Longest Tram. They’ve heard of the aliens in Roswell, the delicious aroma of roasted Hatch green chilis that floats on the air. Perhaps they’ve been moved by the majestic peaks of the Sandia Mountains, the rare rush of the Rio Grand, or the magic of luminarias that line the streets during the holiday season.

What they don’t know is the brittle crack of clay solids after the rain has glued the dirt together in jagged little riverbeds. They don’t know the sharp pebbles that pop your bicycle tires so you can never ride for more than fifteen minutes. They don’t know about the merciless goat heads that stick to the soles of your shoes, the cuff of your pants, your socks, the fur of any animal. They don’t know about the dirt devils that tear through the mountainside, flipping over camper trailers, emptying trash bins, and bathing cars and outdoor chairs with a fine layer of soft red-brown dust. They don’t know about the snow drifts that are so high that you have to lean your whole body weight against the door to escape the confines of a trailer without insulation.

They don’t know about the coyotes, the bears, the mountain lions, the owls, the rattlesnakes, the stink bugs, all of which accompany you—before you, beside you, behind you—as you walk deeper into the mountain to get home. They don’t know about the rampant alcoholism that keeps drunk driving a leading cause of death. Or the methamphetamines that made Albuquerque Breaking Bad famous but stole my brother from his ability to father his children. My God, they don’t know about the food desert in the desert.

They don’t know of the 505, Burque, Zia tattoos that signal allegiance to groups that fundamentally hate other groups that live on the same block. They don’t know that the beautiful, native adobe will tear the fuck out of your skin if you fall against it.

I feel better now. I feel relief when I get the ugly truth down on paper.

Notes:

Day 1:

Rule #1 of writing workshop: Don’t write about the workshop

Rule #2 of writing workshop: Do Not Write About Workshop

Day 2:

• Place as character

• Write a vibrant scene you’ve been afraid to touch

• You cannot protect your reader

Day 3 through 5:

Rule #1 of writing workshop: Don’t write about the workshop

Rule #2 of writing workshop: Do Not Write About Workshop

Day 6:

• Follow the Hero’s Journey through the 5Cs:

  • Characters (main one needs some massive change)

  • Conflict

  • Consequences (the stakes)

  • Complexity (nuance)

  • Change (see above: MASSIVE)

• Non-Cs:

  • Plot events → Climax

  • A twist

  • Emotion: Make me laugh and cry

• Conflict:

  • Like a film—set up conflict very quickly. What is each chapter (and scene) trying to tell/show us?

  • Be a master storyteller first.

  • Transom→ start with drama, end with it.

• Avoid tropes:

  • Anything that reinforces stereotypes.

  • Relying too much on sex/vulgarity.

Pitch

• Differentiate yourself from the crowd

• Load pitch with juicy details about why we should fall in love with your character.

• Gives confidence if you know what your story’s weaknesses are.

• Forms of twist

  • Your plot points should be unexpected.

  • Events + Reflections should be surprising (HUH!?)

  • What you’re taking away is what makes us want to read it.

  • Lead us into one path, then veer quickly!

  • The REAL twist should be the reflections on what you THOUGHT was the twist.

• Craft story arch → logically

  • Beginning → Middle → End

• Mapping from a healed place rather than from a triggered place.

  • We can’t feel the feels the WHOLE time.

  • Do this on a day you feel good! Look from a logic-only perspective.

What is the most dramatic part of my story?

• Be systematic → intentional about crafting this.

Journal while writing. For yourself.

• Ask, “Will this take care of my reader?”

• Keep your whole audience in mind the whole time.

• Come to your story from a healed place.

  • Healed: when you don’t feel shame about IT anymore.

She didn’t set limits on her writing. She played video games, watched shows [The Good Place], cooked, ate good food, to take care of herself.

Exercise:

Dialogue → More of this!

Micro-expressions in scenes → how to write yourself.

• Record yourself chatting with a friend, then write that scene. Transcribe. Then, when you are overlapping with the other person, what can you tell about this scene?

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Q&A

Read “Gather Me” by Glory Edim and “What My Bones Know” by Stephanie Foo

• Have a Waste-Not file for all the darlings you kill

Have your audience right off the bat (gives a clear path forward)

• Where is a void where I can serve an audience who is not being served?

• The care of your audience

• Have members of your target audience be beta readers

“Surviving something and not having anyone to be a model.” My audience is me. A letter to myself. Is this also for my kids?

• Be rigorous: Revise, revise, revise

• Go to where the editor is the best.

• Your book is not a diary entry. It’s a conversation with your audience.

• Stick to your values.

Query Letters

• Have your manuscript CLEAN

  Sara Jessica Parker is a publisher? Guess so: SJP

• Have 3 solid chapters and a robust proposal

  • Have to have a BUSINESS PLAN before even writing the manuscript.

    • This is why the book doesn’t exist yet

    • This is why they need it.

    • Have to have a following (I have friends who will help me publicize)

      • Ballantine is one of the “Big 5.” Glory is with them.

    • Platform could be many different things.

    • Don’t let business take you away from craft.

      • “Greywolf” is a publishing company that is high-literary

    • Don’t count off very small audiences and how they are reached

      Who is this for me?!

Most writers have other professions

Hire someone on Reedsy.

Day 7:

Rule #1 of Workshop: Tell people they need to sit down and calm down so you can get what you came here for.

For each scene:

• Characters

• Relationships

• Conflict

Read “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion

Have a thesis statement:

Scene → Idea → Scene → Idea → Scene

• If a good enough hook gets you invested with a twist, you don’t need to set up the stakes right away.

• Write one scene on each index card.

• Organize by sections of book (3 parts)

  • Keep the big picture (beginning, middle, end)

• What is the general order of what you need to know?

• What do all of these scenes DO to further the narrative?

Arch → Chapter → Scene

• The character must start off naïve. The reader will follow their learning.

• DON’T GET AHEAD

Set the mood

Steph’s process:

Read “A Child Called It” by Dave Pelzer—but don’t write like him.

• She tried to separate herself in every category:

  • cPTSD (memoir) / Asian American (San Jose, not the usual Asian American narrative) / Trauma (funny + hopeful + mostly about adulthood).

Do NOT end as having a man as your salvation.

Relatedly: Your dream guy is just a normal woman

• Sharpening this focus helps with arc.

• She did a lot of research → get in touch with scientists, ask them for 2 names of others to talk to.

• Get rid of your ego

• Get the most recent research

  For me, don’t insert research until about 1/2 to 1/3 of the way through my book

• Journal about your experience while doing the research. How I feel receiving the information.

• Own your subjective, main character role. Make it another scene.

• Get in front of what you DON’T have answers to.

• Humanize through history → focus on community.

• Specificity → each statistic needs to have an emotional element.

  It’s OKAY to be the bad guy. Acknowledge that it was dumb, what you did. Or that other people told you it was stupid.

Scenes: Show not tell. Overload the scene, then check for slow pacing.

Emotions are universal, even if experiences aren’t.

• Journal, Journal, Journal!!

• Set a comfortable time to write. Pick a time that fits.

• Get in front of what you feel like you’re hiding. You can actually state your boundaries to your reader. Be intentional about this and the more you do this, the more your reader will trust you.

• Have people read my book (sensitivity readers).

  • Send book or excerpts to people you interview. They will also help with promotion.

  • You can ask them if you want to give talks, etc.

Working through criticism

• Make it clear this is your OWN story. Get in front of privilege. (I’m white, American, educated, working). I’m trying to pull up others in my work. Don’t play Oppression Olympics.

• Have self-awareness → What are you hiding from?

  What if I haven’t arrived yet? ← This is what I’m hiding from. In case that wasn’t clear.

KNOW YOUR GOAL AND YOUR VALUES

• You have to be ruthless with your scenes.

“I thought I had to prove how bad it was” —Stephanie Foo, 10/20/25, personal communication in workshop

Business plan:

• Very audience based.

• Academic institutions, advocates, women’s groups.

• Who will help me plan?

• Put the research into the proposal.

• How many copies of your comps sold? (If I sell this percentage, it’s still this much…)

• Here’s how I’m different.

• Here is my network (universities?)

• Name drop. [I’ve taken workshops with Stephanie Foo and Cheryl Strayed]

• Submit to the Guardian, NYT, The Post

  • I got this many views from this article

• Plop that juicy hook in there. This is why it’s important (X, Y, Z). Pin it to a news story. (Surviving Christmas with cPTSD; impact on Mother’s Day)

• I’m a badass and here’s why. Look at my accomplishments!

• “Publisher’s Marketplace” + “Publisher’s Lunch”

  • Know all your questions up front before you pay so you don’t pay for long.

• Email journalists from their bios and ask for acquisition person’s info.

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Touch of the Dramatic