One of the most prestigious residencies in Europe, the Marseille Writing Residency invites 13 writers from across the continent to join Professor Rich’s writer’s room.
You directly feel that an organization cares for the writers when they fly you all the way from Boston, pay for your stay plus expenses for the whole week… And that’s how Marseille Writing Residence has started. Thirteen writers from all over Europe all expenses paid, invited to be in the writer’s room of Professor Rich for four days of intense work to perfect their pitch and ultimately present it to the producers who are attending the Pitch Sessions.
I have to admit it was challenging… Not only being in the spotlight and pitching is a b*tch for us writers but being in a room with twelve other extremely smart storytellers and make your story bulletproof to their questions required more work than I’ve anticipated. But in the end it was all worth it since after a whole week I have found myself feeling very confident about my pitch.
The other interesting part of the Residence was the panels… We’ve attended truly interesting talks with Frank Spotnitz, the showrunner of the hit series the Man in the High Castle and Anthony Horowitz, the author of the last James Bond novel. I always find these panels with established industry writers very interesting, since more often than not when you get into a conversation with them you realize that they went through the exact same troubles that you as a writer go through everyday and it always helps me to hear that from people that I look up to.
Lastly I want to mention a couple of things about the city… Every city that I visit have a character, a motto or something that they identify themselves with and in Marseille that was multi-culturalism. As a port city located in the South of France, Marseille apparently has always been the place where cultures meet and live together. And you can feel that diversity everywhere around the city; in the streets, in the architecture and in their approach to everything.
Overall one week in Marseille in Professor Rich’s writing room was genuinely one of a kind experience. I perfected my pitch for my new series, met with some of the greatest writers of my generation plus we also had the chance to be part of the biggest web festival of Europe, Marseille Web Fest.
So thank you Professor, thank you Jean-Michel Albert and thank you @marswebfest for this great honor! I will remember this forever.