Taste Every Word
Do you love writing, travel and food?
Are you eager to grow your craft and learn more about the publishing industry?
Let’s combine all of these in a fabulous walk and talk around Florence.
Taste Every Word is an intimate five hour private writing experience.
Together with instructional workshops and private lectures, we’ll walk and talk around Florence.
Each session is designed specifically to help you gather your Sense of Place. We’ll write strong description and great dialogue, all while using one of Italy’s most beautiful cities as our backdrop.
This private writing experience is personalised to your writing needs. We’ll start with a one hour class over a traditional Tuscan breakfast and focus on your writing problems. Writer’s block? Trouble with story structure? First five pages aren’t dynamic enough? Whatever you’re having the hardest time with, we’ll focus on YOU and YOUR writing.
Then, we’ll set out for the star sites and backstreets of Florence, and learn first-hand how to create setting and imagery.
Your story will thank you for it.
09:30
BREAKFAST + WORKSHOP
Learn How to Drive A Story Forward
We’ll meet for a traditional Florentine breakfast of cappuccino and cornetto, while discussing my best tips and techniques on how to drive your story forward. This 60 minute instructional workshop covers your personal writing issues as well as how to write compelling stories.
10:30
TOUR + LECTURE
Learn How to Create A Sense of Place
Together, we’ll walk and talk through my favourite ‘Sense of Place’ Florence backstreets. Gain insight into how to write amazing description and find out my greatest character building techniques. We’ll also visit many stunning Florence highlights: the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo, Piazza della Signoria. Plus, some of the best cafes to write in like the funky Ditta Artigianale on the Oltrarno and the timelessly elegant Café Rivoire. Learn how to observe and write charming atmosphere while immersed in the ambience and flavour of Florence.
12:30
TOUR + LECTURE
Walk Through Florence Food Markets
Immerse yourself in deeper observation, while we walk and talk through Florence San Lorenzo market. Take notes and photos. Experience it, feel it, write it. Together, we’ll go over how to add texture and colour through taste, smell and voice. Your readers will experience your words on a physical level as well as intellectual level.
13:00
LUNCH + WORKSHOP
Food in Writing: Create An Emotional Palette.
My goal is to fuel your imagination, resourcefulness and creativity when writing about every aspect of food and character. Cooking and eating evokes powerful memories. Let’s trigger them! How can you use food in your story?
Questions? Ask me anything.
Why You Should Give Yourself Permission to Learn
After 38 years in Italy and four books set in Florence, rural Tuscany and Naples it’s safe to say I love what I do. I absolutely adore sharing my hard earned writing tips. Frankly, there’s nothing I’d rather do than share a morning walking you around my Florence, helping you polish your prose. My work is published by Pan Macmillan and Penguin, so let’s get you inspired by what and how you really can write. Having won the Australian Illustrated Book of the Year Award as well as the Victorian Premiers Award on Writing about Italians, there is much I can teach you.
Taste Every Word is perfect for anyone who wants to improve their writing skills. This packed morning and lunch is adjusted to beginner, emerging or established writers. As well as Bloggers, journalists and fans of journaling. Those who hope to become travel writers and magazine contributors will adore this experience. Avid readers would very much enjoy a morning walking and talking about writing and books too.
Let’s walk, write and learn in Florence together!
A Sydney Morning Herald Top Ten Best Seller
Lisa Clifford was sixteen when she arrived in Florence for the first time, keen to experience life beyond her Australian convent-school and work out what she wanted to do with her future. Falling in love with a local called Paolo was not part of the plan…
The Promise is the story of Lisa’s love affair with Paolo, and of her love for Florence and the Tuscan mountains – the landscapes, the people and the food. But far from settling into a contented life in Italy, Lisa soon realised that being an independent and ambitious Australian girl made it difficult to fit in with the age-old traditions of an Italian family. She was torn between her desire to stay with Paolo, and her need to return home – to her family, to the relaxed Australian way of a life, and to a career. Should she stay, or should she go?
Written with humour and passion, The Promise is about loss and heartache and growing up. Above all, it is a story that proves love does find a way – and that some promises are made to be broken.
Reading Material
Winner of the Victorian Premiers Award for Writing About Italians
When Australian author and journalist Lisa Clifford moved to Florence to be with her Italian husband, an unsolved murder in his family became part of her life. The more Lisa found out about it, the more intrigued she became – so much so that she was driven to investigate the tragic events of a century ago. In her article A quest for the truth: Solving a true Tuscan mystery, she describes the process of unravelling the secrets behind Artemio Bruni’s death.
Death in the Mountains is Lisa’s brilliant recreation of the life and death of Artemio Bruni, and an evocation of the world of the Tuscan mountains in the early 20th century. It is both a murder mystery and a beautifully observed picture of a lost Italy. It was reviewed by The Sydney Morning Herald and Australia’s The Age.
Winner of Australian Illustrated Book of the Year. Shortlisted for the Australian Book Designers Association.
Join Lisa and photographer Carla Coulson on this intimate and magical journey through one of the oldest cities in the world. Naples, A Way of Love takes us away from the tourist traps and into the heart and soul of the city, a mystical paradise of hidden cobblestoned alleyways, shrines to the saints, ancient crypts filled with skulls, street art, fishermen’s quarters, and some of the most breathtaking architecture in the world.
Through Carla’s intimate portraits and stunning atmospheric shots coupled with Lisa’s touching and honest reportage we meet the people and places behind this fascinating city. Captured vibrantly in words and pictures this is the Naples Carla and Lisa know so well. Learn how to order coffee the traditional way, walk inside the Conservatory of Music, meet Antonio the mandolin man and, of course, taste the pizza for which the city is famous.
If your manuscript isn’t ready, don’t worry. We can get it ready together.
Let’s work together to prepare your manuscript for agents and publishers.
Appraisal Services
Editing Services
Mentorship
I love your heart for us Lisa! We need you. You encouraged me no end when I had almost given up. You ‘saw’ me, heard my heart and helped me focus, A thousand thank yous.
My favourite experience in Florence was my ‘Sense of Place’ day.
So inspiring!
Magical Florence was the perfect backdrop to finding my writer’s voice.
I will never forget our walk around Florence with Lisa. This Sense of Place class was just what I needed.
I loved my writing discussions with Lisa.
Our Sense of Place lecture and the follow-on walk around Florence was a moment I will never forget.