{"id":14,"date":"2008-08-02T14:58:20","date_gmt":"2008-08-02T14:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mitziszereto.wordpress.com\/?p=14"},"modified":"2012-04-02T03:21:41","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T02:21:41","slug":"erotic-writing-in-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/erotic-writing-in-wales\/","title":{"rendered":"Erotic Writing in Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it was\u00a0yet another\u00a0lovely week at the University of Wales\u00a0in Caerleon<\/a> – my third time at the Writers’ Conference.\u00a0My erotic writing workshop attracted a diverse group of men and women of all ages and persuasions,\u00a0and a surprising amount of talent.\u00a0Some excellent work was produced in a short amount of time, ranging from the poignant to the downright hilarious.\u00a0I don’t want to play favourites by mentioning specific pieces, but\u00a0yes, I did find myself moved by several of the\u00a0works presented\u00a0on the final morning of the\u00a0course. What is always rewarding to me is when people tell me how I’ve changed their perspective on erotic writing and that I\u00a0got them to do something they never believed they could do – and to be comfortable in doing it.\u00a0One participant even wrote a charming little ditty about me and Teddy<\/a> (my bear, if you’ve not figured that out yet!). And yes, it’s suitable for those of a more delicate persuasion. I should add that this wasn’t part of the homework I’d assigned, but rather a … well…\u00a0dare I say, “tribute”?<\/p>\n

One great thing about the conference is that I got fed and fed and fed some more (I don’t like to cook). I\u00a0partook of two desserts a day; anything with cream was fair game – and I was prepared to fight till death for it too! Of course, having\u00a0Teddy\u00a0with me tended to put anyone off\u00a0violence\u00a0at the dessert section. I doubt I gained any weight though; the\u00a0region is extremely hilly and after schlepping back and forth to the village enough times (no one in Wales seems to\u00a0know what “schlep” means), not to mention on the campus itself, I probably\u00a0ended up losing\u00a0weight. And yes, everyone kept asking me where I put it. I do\u00a0hope they were referring to the dessert.<\/p>\n

On Monday evening, Teddy and I went along\u00a0on the\u00a0pub crawl (though I’d already been in my favourite pub the night before – The Hanbury Arms – where Alfred Lord Tennyson apparently went on the piss and where I had my toes bitten – and I’ll leave you\u00a0to ponder that one). On Tuesday\u00a0I paid yet another visit to the Roman ruins, which has the remains of an amphitheatre. It was a perfect day, the clouds were threatening overhead, a drizzle had begun, and I stood in the centre of the arena no doubt looking very peculiar. I also wrote something on a stone (using another stone as pen), but I’m not going to tell you what it was. It’s personal.\u00a0On Wednesday afternoon I\u00a0went on\u00a0the excursion to Hay on Wye. Well, if you’re really into mouldy musty\u00a0old books, this is your Mecca. Everyone ran off to\u00a0find their treasures; as for me, I found some ice cream and a pair of one-of-a-kind earrings in\u00a0an artsy little shop. Or at least I think they’re one-of-a-kind. Our coach driver was a roly-poly fellow from Brecon who made a lot of sheep jokes. All I know is, I’ve been to Wales many times, and I’ve yet to see any kind of dodgy activity with sheep. Mind you, I did\u00a0notice a cow walking a bit funny.<\/p>\n

Moving on from the profane to the sacred, the highlight of the week was definitely\u00a0the Thursday evening appearance of the Cwmbach Male Choir<\/a>, a cheeky bunch of Welshmen who performed for us and then as is customary each year, continued in the bar for another two hours till midnight, downing pints and singing everything from Elvis\u00a0to weepy Irish ballads. When they left (threatening to kidnap both me and Teddy), a disco ensued, but it featured so much Abba<\/a> that I was finally forced to seek refuge in the computer room to check messages and\u00a0return pokes\u00a0on Facebook<\/a>. (I don’t care what anyone says: I am NOT going to see “Mama Mia.”)<\/p>\n

Sadly, I couldn’t stay forever in that lovely land and had to return to London right at the Friday\u00a0evening rush hour. The tube quickly jolted me out of my Welsh\u00a0tranquility with its delayed trains, trains that didn’t stop where I needed to stop, and trains that just sat there because there was a backlog of trains. One can’t help but wonder how Britain actually ran an empire when they can’t even run a\u00a0transportation system. But I’m not going to get all political here. I\u00a0probably should\u00a0stick to writing fiction<\/a>. It’s easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it was\u00a0yet another\u00a0lovely week at the University of Wales\u00a0in Caerleon – my third time at the Writers’ Conference.\u00a0My erotic writing workshop attracted a diverse group of men and women of all ages and persuasions,\u00a0and a surprising amount of talent.\u00a0Some excellent work was produced in a short amount of time, ranging from the poignant to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1782,1780,1781],"tags":[9,15,1024,33,834,69,74,76,81,82,1025,108,1026,114,1027,1036,150,153,159,160,723,1028,170,214,1029,1038,780,230,1030,270,292,579,716,341,1031,344,1039,358,1032,645,1037,580,827,433,1033,772,461,1034,833,475,489,490,1035,491,1603,1735],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artsandentertainment-2","category-travelandplaces-2","category-writingandpublishing","tag-abba","tag-alfred-lord-tennyson","tag-alfredlordtennyson","tag-authors","tag-bloggers","tag-books","tag-brecon","tag-britain","tag-caerleon","tag-caerleon-writers-holiday","tag-caerleonwritersholiday","tag-creative-writing","tag-creativewriting","tag-cwnbach-male-choir","tag-cwnbachmalechoir","tag-education","tag-elvis","tag-erotic-fiction","tag-erotic-writing","tag-erotic-writing-workshop","tag-eroticwriting","tag-eroticwritingworkshop","tag-facebook","tag-hay-on-wye","tag-hayonwye","tag-holidays","tag-humor","tag-irish-ballads","tag-irishballads","tag-london","tag-mitzi-szereto","tag-mitzi-tv","tag-mitziszereto","tag-pub-crawl","tag-pubcrawl","tag-public-transportation","tag-publictransportation","tag-roman-ruins","tag-romanruins","tag-sex-writing","tag-sexwriting","tag-teddy-tedaloo","tag-teddytedaloo","tag-the-hanbury-arms","tag-thehanburyarms","tag-travel-and-places","tag-university-of-wales","tag-universityofwales","tag-vloggers","tag-wales","tag-writers","tag-writers-conference","tag-writersconference","tag-writing","tag-writing-courses","tag-writingcourses"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6937,"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/6937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}