Hi-Way-Haven.com: A Place for Writers and Screenwriters in San Diego and Beyond, screenplay coverage, script analysis, screenwriting workshops, screenwriting teacher, movie scripts

A writer will do well to train her ear to hear the silence between words, to know that what goes unsaid can be far more revealing than anything that can be said. —Vera Caccioppoli

Vera Caccioppoli has written and published fiction, poetry, screenplays, newspaper and magazine articles, and personal essays since she was fourteen and received her first handwritten rejection letter from Michael Curtis, the fiction editor of The Atlantic Monthly. (It would be many years later, when playing poker with Mr. Curtis, that Vera would remind the editor of his rejection letter to her, quoting it verbatim from memory.)

A native of Cliffside Park, New Jersey, Vera earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the George Mason University writing program, where she was awarded a full fellowship and taught creative writing, literature, and composition for many years.

Her writing has earned the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award. Her short stories have been published in many literary journals, and her non-fiction has been featured in the Washington Post, Shape magazine, and has been broadcast on National Public Radio. Vera has recently optioned two screenplays to Hollywood and won numerous screenwriting awards at film festivals around the country, including a double win at the 2007 Houston International Film Festival for her screenplays Hi-Way Haven (drama) and Perfect Couple (romantic comedy).

In addition to her writing career, Vera is highly successful private writing coach with an international clientele of novelists and screenwriters.

Vera has been profiled and interviewed by local and national publications, including The San Diego Union-Tribune (Project Offers Haven for Writers).

[E Street Cafe] turned out to be just the right place to meet Encinitas screenwriter and writing teacher Vera Caccioppoli. Caccioppoli is the founder of Hi-Way Haven ... She focuses on coaching writers through their projects... helping writers take their best intentions and turn them into words on a screen.

“It could be fiction or nonfiction, a screenplay. The process is similar,” Caccioppoli says.

“We work out a schedule, and then the writer has to buy into it. One of the most important questions to ask is how much time do you have to devote to this project. If you have 45 minutes a day, we look at what can be done in that amount of time.

“At most jobs, if you don't show up for work, you are fired. Unless you get fired, you get paid. But when you're writing there's none of that. I hold the vision for the writer of what they want to accomplish.”
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From: SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

Project Offers Haven for Writers
by Lillian Cox
February 16, 2006
ENCINITAS – Dyslexia prevented Vera Caccioppoli from learning how to read until she was 9. But it didn't deter her from pursuing a writing career.

Today, Caccioppoli excels in various writing markets. Her screenplays have won honors at the Sundance, Austin and the WorldFest-Houston International film festivals. She is the recipient of the Dan Rudy and PEN Syndicated fiction awards. Her articles have been published in The Washington Post, as well as Self and Shape magazines.

Caccioppoli is founder of the Hi-Way Haven in Leucadia, where she mentors other writers by providing manuscript and screenplay analysis and coaching. On Wednesday nights, Caccioppoli hosts what she says is the only drop-in screenwriting class in San Diego County.

“Since I began, seven or eight people who hadn't written before have finished novels and screenplays,” she said. “That really means something to me.”
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A writer never knows where or when inspiration will strike. For Vera Caccioppoli, author, screenwriter, and former university professor, the muse struck as she was driving along Highway 101 in San Diego’s North County area. A “For Rent” sign on an old surfer’s motel in Leucadia caught her eye, so she pulled over to take a closer look. With young, school-age triplet sons at home, Caccioppoli had been looking for a quiet place to write. “It just really felt like a sign that I was supposed to do this,” she explains. “It was a serendipitous kind of thing.”

What originally was going to serve as a place for a stressed-out mom to hone her craft has blossomed into Hi-Way Haven, a creative hub for Southern California wordsmiths…

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"Not merlot.

Other than that, Vera Caccioppoli isn't sure what she's going to serve at the wine reception for novelist and screenwriter Rex Pickett next Sunday. Pickett, best known as the author of "Sideways," the novel (and now hit movie) about two sex-starved guys, two beautiful women and enough wine to give you a contact hangover just reading the first 20 pages, will be speaking and signing books at Hi-Way Haven in Leucadia."

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"Leucadia has long been an area known as an enclave for artists. Budding writers in North County may be able to find a ãhavenä there as well. [...] Started by Vera Caccioppili, a transplant from the East Coast who moved out west after she sold a screenplay, the little storefront in a former motel runs workshops and has a number of upcoming events related to books and writing."

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"For anyone who has tried to put pen to paper, writing anything -- from a short story to a feature-length screenplay -- is a lengthy and sometimes daunting process. In hopes of helping local writers overcome the challenges that come with their craft, Vera Caccioppoli opened Hi-Way Haven, a creative hub and literary emporium for writers..."

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"Hi-Way Haven in Leucadia offers one-on-one coaching and writing workshops for both experienced writers and those who are just getting started. Shop owner Vera Caccioppoli -- an East Coast transplant and former teach at George Mason and Marymount Universities who considers herself a writer first ... "really wanted to create, for North County, a centralized place where people could come if they wanted feedback or ... to get to know other writers ...I knew this was a very creative community."

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Talking about found art, how about found places and created spaces? Vera Caccioppoli was driving along Pacific Coast Highway 101 in Encinitas when she saw what used to be a surfers' motel built around 1940. She pulled over. There was a for rent sign on the door. She went inside. "It was like walking into my own screenplay, called Hi-Way Haven," Caccioppoli says. That screenplay is one of two Caccioppoli has sold and optioned. So what do you do with an MFA in fiction writing, 10 years experience teaching writing in universities, and after publishing short stories, poems, feature stories in magazines and a popular newspaper column? You pull over when you see a 1940s surf motel, rent the place, and call it Hi-Way Haven. Then you open your heart, and your door, to the world. "The Haven is a place for writers," Caccioppoli explains. "As opposed to cyberspace. We offer on-site resources, networking, writing workshops, open readings, book discussions." The Haven also has a reader's and writer's boutique. "There's a lot of fun stuff," Caccioppoli says. "Unusual writing journals, pens, new and used books, literary cards, software, and a few out there surprises. Our favorite surprise: the super-sized painting of a beaming Papa Hemingway on the back wall.