Sacré Bleu! Bordeaux Writing Retreat May 18-24, 2025
And...Part 2: Geoff Little, Writer and Podcast Creator of The Attentionist
Two notes about submission opportunities before today’s post:
If you’re thinking of subscribing and/or submitting to Story Magazine, you can read the Autumn 2020 issue for free online. The print version sold out, and editor Michael Nye made it available on Story’s website. Submissions are currently open.
Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest (hat-tip to Erika Dreifus for this information): “This is a contest for flash fiction of no more than 350 words that’s both about Christmas (or any other winter holiday) and simultaneously weird. Exactly what that means is…up to you…[a]ll you have to do is make something about the Christmas season seem new and unsettling with a bit of that grinning like you’re not sure if it’s funny or creepy, and you make your fellow co-conspirators in this hell of existence a bit more bearable.” Check the guidelines for the prompts (which serve as categories). Deadline: December 1. 🌲
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A recent addition to the writing world, Foreword Retreats, offers week-long retreats in Chamonix, Bordeaux, and Arcachon. Next spring, May 18-24, I’ll be leading a retreat in Bordeaux, capped at 8 writers. Each morning I’ll host 3-hour writing sessions, and during that week, I’ll also meet with each writer for a one-on-one session. All genres—prose, poetry, plays, and scripts—and all levels of experience are welcome.
We’ll stay in a chateau in wine country outside of the city, an on-site chef preparing all meals. Each participant will have a well appointed bedroom with an en suite bathroom. There is the option to share a suite with another writer.
Registration deadline is January 10. I’d love to have you join me.
One note: it’s not a budget retreat. The accommodations and cuisine are topnotch, and I’ll likewise prepare rigorously for our daily writing and discussion sessions. We’ll aim for the flexible goal of creating three to five short, new vibrant works—either stand-alone or part of the same longer work—by the end of our week together.
It’s up to you what and how much you write, however. We’ll also discuss some of the business-related aspects of publishing and writing in our sessions.
More information is available here. Please share with anyone you think might be interested. 📗
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And now…the second half of the interview I conducted earlier this year with fellow Substack writer Geoffrey Little, who writes The Attentionist. (The first half is accessible here.)
CS: Who/what are some of your primary creative influences?
GL: The late comedic actor and writer Phil Hartman from Saturday Night Live (and the ‘90s show on NBC network Newsradio) showed me voices and silliness and zaniness as an impressionable young person that dazzled me. He was behind the original Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985). He was unstoppably creative and also looked like an insurance salesman in most everything he ever did, something like my own father who was an executive at a large organization. He remains a big influence; I keep a picture of him on my home studio wall.
Story and literature-wise, a few authors quickly come to mind: Steven Millhauser and his sense of intricacy and obsessiveness in his characters. The Southern gothic of Flannery O’Connor (a piece of mine, “Oleander,” attempted a nod to her oeuvre). I have a sci-fi and paranormal penchant.
A story of mine, “Engager: Time on Earth,” would not have been possible had I not read and/or watched film adaptations of many works by Stephen King and Philip K. Dick. Every movie writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has ever made has felt especially inspirational to me (okay, maybe not Inherent Vice). But years ago, Magnolia (1999) really fried my brain (in a good way) for what was possible character-wise.
CS: You have a full-time job at Vanderbilt University—certainly it requires a lot of your waking hours not to mention energy–both cerebral and corporeal. How do you find the time to make your stories?
GL: Oh man, this is definitely a struggle. Like a lot of artistic types, I piece time for creative work together when I can. I am fortunate to have time early in the mornings most days, maybe a solid 90 minutes of uninterrupted time sometime between 5:30 and 7:45 a.m. I wish I could say I usually hit this plan daily, but it’s usually not more than 3-4 mornings of the 5-day week. Nights seem trickier, but I definitely navigate this option, with my wife’s blessing.
Everything is a little more focused if I’m trying to make a deadline. Most weekends I make time to disappear to a quiet place for writing and creating. One thing about Vanderbilt, it is a giant and old university with a cavernous and quiet library system. Finding occasional space outside my home every few creative writing sessions is crucial. Otherwise, I feel too familiar and potentially distracted.
I *do* get to use my writing brain for a fair amount of my job [technical writing for Vanderbilt’s development/fundraising office], so that is a positive. And obtaining a paycheck from an educational and philanthropic mission is a pretty decent gig in today’s challenging world. I am forever looking at ways to maximize my truest self, of course. I’m the perfect age for a midlife crisis and abrupt career change. (We’ll see. I stay restless, my wife would attest ha ha.)
CS: Would you share with us a sample of a few of your desert-island films and albums/songs?
GL: I can’t help it, I know this band is totally overdone – but The Joshua Tree by U2 in 1987, and the 5-6 subsequent years of music releases/concerts/interviews from the band – these absolutely changed my life. I was a young high schooler through early college person when these things were happening. I think it was all of the big feelings in their music – along with a fair amount of intellectual rigor towards history, politics, art, ideas. So, throw a few of those records in the canoe if you would.
The Coen brothers’ movies. Some stand out more than others, but the storytelling beauty and fierce editing (I may love their editing above all) of so many titles, including Fargo, A Simple Man, O Brother, Where Art Thou to name a few. I go back to these over and over. Other movies that emotionally up-end me and feel like therapy sessions again and again: You Can Count On Me (2000, written/directed by Kenneth Lonergan), The Mission (1986, directed by Roland Joffe, stars Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons), The Tree of Life (2011, written/directed by Terrence Malick)
Thank you, Christine. So appreciate you and the Bookish community.