It was the first week in May 2005 and once again I was staying in Montclus in the South of France. The Lotus Tree is a wonderful place to stay being a sequence of lovely old buildings set in a magical garden on the side of a picturesque valley. Here there are nightingales, fireflies, the rich herbal scents of Provence and even views of a Floodlit castle. The guesthouse is run by two English guys, Lance and James, whose regular day jobs are working for the BBC and The Rough Guides publications respectively. This was the third year that they had organized a gay writer’s workshop at Montclus facilitated by the prolific author of gay novels Patrick Gale. and the third year that I had attended. I wasn’t the only ever present because, of’ the fourteen taking advantage of the workshop, four had been to both the previous events and for six others it was their second consecutive visit. Only four members of the group were completely new to The Lotus Tree. The group was not all from the U.K. either there being one American, one Swiss, and three others who although they were English were living and working in France. The common factor that we all had is that we were budding gay writers. Some of the guys were established writers in other fields who wreck gay and wanted to branch out into the genre of gay literature. The range of ages was quite big; the youngest being in his mid thirties and me being the eldest at seventy-four.

Although a couple of us arrived on the Saturday the majority arrived on the Sunday afternoon. Sunday evening was a welcome party and dinner giving everyone a chance to get to know each other or as it for many a renewing of friendships from previous years.

The workshop itself was split into five parts — one each on Monday to Friday. After breakfast each day we discussed one of the five books that were on the reading list given to us some weeks prior to the course. These included Mary Renault’s “ The King Must Die”, Colm Tobin’s “The Story Of The Night”, and the winner of the 2004 Booker prize Alan Holinghurst’s “The Line Of Beauty”. This took us to coffee break after which Patrick had devised a series of writing exercises for us to do to take us up to lunch time. When we had completed the exercise for the day and typed it up, our work, minus any personal identification, was put on the notice board for the entire group to read . Each succeeding days work was based on being given a  piece of another persons work and using it in that days writing exercise. It was great fun and very enjoyable

Afternoons were free to do holiday like things. Horse riding was available at the nearby stable and canoeing on the local river was also very popular.Although the most popular occupation for the afternoon was in or around the swimming pool as the weather was very good, the temperature being up in the mid twenties.  

Also in the afternoon Patrick was available for an hour's one-to -one session with anyone who wanted to discuss any work in progress or any other problems such as agents or publishers.

Dinner was taken on alternative nights at The Lotus Tree and in a local restaurant, the food being equally as good in both places. After dinner silly party games were played which, aided by a plentiful supply of excellent local wine, were entered into with great enthusiasm by one and all including mine hosts and Patrick.

It’s a great place to spend a week and it is so enjoyable that the work that one does doesn’t seem to be a chore at all. In fact I’m looking forward to next years gathering and have already made a provisional booking.

                                                         Story by     Alan Edwards                 Montclus   click here

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