No Babylon 5 post this weekend, as I'm away at Swanwick Writers' Summer School and thought I'd post about what's on offer this year. As always there's a lot to choose from.

For fiction writers there a range of courses covering both novel writing and short stories. They might like to take either of the week-long specialist courses on How to Write Your First Novel, or Character Psychology, and there are short (2 hour) course covering Short Stories, and Setting on Thursday. The one hour slots include sessions on Writing For Competitions (this afternoon), Getting Readers in a Twist (twist endings, Monday), The Four Ps of Storytelling and NaNoWriMo (both Tuesday). If they have a particular genre interest there are specialist and short courses on crime writing, and short courses on fairy tales, and erotica. There's an open mike event later in the week for short pieces and extracts.

Poets aren't left out, with a specialist course running all week, and a short course on writing haiku. This evening there's a poetry open mike.

There are lot of more esoteric offerings. The specialist course Succeed Happier on Purpose covers psychology and how the brain works, to create a positive mindset. There's a short course for writers who want to get into Writing for Wellbeing, and hour sessions on Inspired Writing and The Natural Storyteller on Tuesday, and Yoga for Writers on Wednesday. Outside of courses, there are also meditation sessions in the morning and Unwind Your Mind today, Monday, and Wednesday in the afternoon. 

For those with an interest in scripts and acting, the specialist course on offer is Screenwriting, and in the short sessions there's a four-part course on Acting for Writers. Later today there's a session for casting actors and directors for the short plays of Page to Stage, with rehearsals Tuesday and Wednesday before performances Wednesday evening. 

There are also career-building courses: Promoting Your Work, Dream Author (on how to be your own dream author), Publishing Demystified, using Professional Development techniques to build your career, and Time Management are all short course options. In the one hour sessions there are courses on Social Media, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing, Blogging, and the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS).

Also on offer: courses on Writing for Radio, Gender Awareness, Photography, Writing Fillers, Creating Audio Books, and more.

In short, it's possible to put together a syllabus or, as I'm doing, cobble it together depending how you feel. The only problem is how to choose between the inevitable clashes...

​Today is the last day. As always the morning is busy, with the final part of the specialist courses and the last short courses. These were incredibly sensible today, with instruction on Scrivener, grammar, worldbuilding, and Succeeding on Purpose.

I took the latter, which was about setting goals and retraining the brain to look for opportunities instead of saying "I can't". The second half had about a third more people than the first, so word had obviously got around about how funny and engaging the first half was.

Instead of a one-hour course, Thursday always sees the AGM and appointment of next year's committee. The officers were standing unopposed, but there was a vote for the remaining committee positions. The following block on the timetable is labelled Time for You but might as well say Pack Now. After this short break, during which I pack and have a cup of tea, there's the Dregs Party where people unload the last of drinks and snacks they don't want to take home. This is officially held on the lawn but as I type looks in danger of being moved indoors.

Dinner is a three-course affair this evening, to celebrate the seventieth year, and after that is the farewell which includes drawing the raffle and possibly the committee humiliating themselves in the name of entertainment. They never reveal the entertainment in advance but i'm sure some old favorites will make an appearance.

The last night disco is back this year, although my disco buddy isn't here so I'll skip it. Although the programme officially ends around eleven, the bar shuts at twelve and no doubt there will be some who keep the Swanwick spirit going until the early hours.

​I'm posting this a day late as I didn't get a chance yesterday - a Swanwick friend was visiting for one day only so I took the opportunity to spend time with her instead.

Tuesday's speaker Simon nelson was excellent. He went over five-act structure, and how turning points happen at the mid-point of the story. We also looked at the beginnings of TV shows Happy Valley and The 4 O'clock Club to illustrate pacy, grabby openings. I took more notes than for any other evening speaker, more than for some courses!

Wednesday saw the return of the regular run of courses, with our crime investigation turning from preservation of the scene and forensics, to the actual investigation. We took a closer look at the crime scene in the corner, and ran a mock press conference.

The short courses included a look at "wild words", song writing, and editing, and I took the final parts of the Writing as a Business course, which was unusually running as two short courses instead of as a specialist course. We looked at project and time management, something I desperately need to do better at.

In the usual one hour course slot we had a birthday celebration for the school, with a "school photo" (the first since 1956) and birthday cake. 

The evening speaker was Sophie Snell, storyteller, singer, and folkorist. She also has a psychological thriller out in November, based on fairy tales. Something else to add to my wishlist!

I stayed up late in the bar for the first time this week, chatting to my friend. Thursday is the final day, featuring the last of the four part courses, and a mystery instead of a speaker since they never reveal what's going into the farewell.

​I skipped the speakers last night in favour of an early night, although those who went say it was excellent. Tuesday is generally a lighter day, although there was a change to the usual format this year as most of the one hour sessions have been moved to Tuesday slots to allow for celebratory events (Swanwick at 70 and a birthday party) during the 4pm slots on Monday and Wednesday. 

First up this morning were Acting for Writers, Dear Della (a session with writing agony aunt Della Galton), Niche Publishing, Writing for the Under Eights, and the course I took, Promoting Your Work with resident crime writer Val Penny. While I knew about Twitter and Facebook pages, I came away with a list of Facebook groups to check out, and a list of dos and don'ts which included DO write more, and DO be proud of your work, two things I always struggle with.

The second session offered courses on Erotica, Mind Mapping, being a Writer in Residence, Reviewing, and an excellent course on New Fairy Tales. Tutor Elizabeth Hopkinson is an enthusiast and I left not only with websites and Facebook groups to check out, but also a huge list of books to add to my wishlist.

I went for a nap at this point as I was feeling unwell, but emerged for the tea dance (although to watch, not participate).

This evening's speaker is Simon Nelson of the BBC's Writersroom, to speak about TV drama. I may go if I feel up to it.

​Yesterday's speaker AA Dhand was one of the best speakers I've seen at Swanwick, and told us of his journey from childhood cornershop to published author with a TV series in the works - via over a million words of failed drafts. It's always a mark of a successful speaker when you can hear their words repeated around the school the following day, and today was full of people telling each other to "change the narrative" or "fail early, fail often, fail forward".

First this morning was part two of the specialist courses. For those of us on the Making Crime Pay course this meant a not particularly after-breakfast-safe discussion of post mortems, and why you should never ask a pathologist how to kill someone and get away with it. 

Today's short courses were The Business of Writing, Creating Characters, Writing for Children, and Self Publishing. I did the business course, since it seemed like a useful thing to take (which it was). Unusually, this is actually a four-part course over two days instead of two hours over a single day. Parts three and four deal with setting up as a freelancer so I'm not sure whether or not I'll take those since I need to keep the day job.

This afternoon was Swanwick at 70, a celebration of how the school has changed over the years. The first ever programme, which includes a reminder to bring ration cards, can be seen on the website. It's changed immensely just over the eight years I've been attending, and some of the older delegates can be heard chatting about the long-gone swimming pool and Garden House, or the days when delegates shared rooms with each other - sometimes complete strangers.

This evening has a panel instead of a speaker, of Writing Magazine editor Jonathan Telfer, and prolific short story and novel writer Della Galton, hosted by frequent visitor and tutor Simon Hall. I may give this one a miss as I'm already flagging from classes and so much socialising, as well as waking up at 6am without the aid of either an alarm or my cats.

Further to last year's First Timer's Guide, here's a few more hints and tips to make the week easier for even seasoned Swanwickers. Because let's face it, we all forget this stuff.

1. Bring any writing-related books you no longer need - You can donate them to the school for sale in the Book Room, to raise funds for the school. Bringing them with you automatically frees up the space in your luggage and on your bookshelves for all the books you'll buy at Swanwick.
2. The Hayes gift shop is generally open during the tea and coffee breaks on the programme - You may rarely catch it outside these hours, but generally the tea and coffee breaks are the time to visit. I mention it because I spoke to a Swanwick regular last year who, not realising the opening hours, kept missing it.
3. There is a games room - There's also a giant outdoor chess set in the Quad. It you find yourself with nothing to do (it could happen!), you could play a game.
4. All floors in Lakeside are accessable from ground level - It just depends on which floor you're on and where in the building. As a general rule: rooms on the ground floor are accessible from the far right entrance; rooms on the first floor are accessible from the middle entrance (for the Alan Booth Centre); and rooms on the second floor are accessible from the lefthand entrance (past the Main Conference Hall). Of course, if your room is on the opposite side of the building it may be quicker to take the stairs.
5. The Hayes has at least two bookcases of books for sale - For the price of a donation in the charity tin, you can help yourself. One is opposite the shop, the other in the Lakeside foyer.
6. If you leave dinner at the last minute, you won't have time to get to the loo before the speaker - Seriously, if you're likely to need the toilet in the next hour and a half, leave dinner early. The queues are pretty much what you'd expect from a convention of writers who've been drinking coffee all day and have just started on the wine.
7. Pack layers - Typically for British summers it may or may not be sunny/rainy/stormy/snowing. Plus the Main Conference Hall and some of the other teaching rooms are freezing in the morning, but quickly heat up once they get full of people. You will ultimately be more comfortable if your wear layers so you can take some clothes off without scandalising anyone.
8. The coffee in the bar is better than the coffee in the rooms - If you plan on heading back to your room to get some writing done, take the coffee with you. If you want to get decent coffee in the mornings, leave a little early.
9. If you don't like coffee there are about eight different types of tea - So there's no need to bring teabags with you unless you're particularly fussy. They're in the bar area by the coffee machines and include decaff options (the rooms only have regular). If you're more of a tea drinker, think about taking some tea bags back to your room.
10. The noticeboard in the Vinery is a good place to plan extracurricular events - Last year, we had matchmaking for people who wanted to go on excursions, and an impromptu class on mindfulness. You can also speak to the committe about making an announcement.

While I was writing the other posts, I had some ideas that didn't fit anywhere else so here they are in the final post in the series.

Talk to Other Students
On a taught MA there would be other students to talk to, and online courses often have associated forums. You could join a local writing group or, if looking for something more specific to your interests, there are plenty of free online writing groups and forums based round specific genres. There are also organisations you could join and use to meet and network with like-minded writers, such as SCWBI for children's writer, although many of these aren't free and some have requirements like qualifying sales.

Set Yourself Homework
Although you'll probably have a main project, you might decide to start it after some initial reading or want some shorter exercises for a change of pace. There are many books out there that offer creative writing exercises, without having to get bogged down. Some I've seen recommended are Steering the Craft by Ursula LeGuin, Now Write! edited by Sherry Ellis, and The Creative Writing Coursebook edited by Julia Bell and Paul Magrs (full disclosure - I haven't tried these, although I do own all three).

Be Flexible
Life happens. You might find yourself faced with illness or moving house, and that can throw the best made plans into chaos. The beauty of setting your own timescales is you can park the study if needs be - without losing thousands of pounds in tuition fees! There's nothing to stop you shifting the emphasis onto reading for a month, or making notes for your project, or extending your timeline for an extra six weeks. There's nothing to stop you deciding you've made a wrong turn, and you don't want to write a short story collection retelling Bible stories from the point of view of rabbits after all. The important thing is to keep moving forward with your goals, however you can.

I was originally going to post about this first, but then it occurred to me that how long you need is likely to depend on what the subject matter is. Investigating all the myriad subgenres of speculative fiction is likely to take longer than if you're only interested in Steampunk.

There are three way you could go about picking a deadline.
1. Decide how long you want to spend on it, and pick your books and areas of study to fit the time available. It's all too easy to look at a genre from outside, or even one you're familiar with, and see so much to learn that it leads to being overwhelmed and choice paralysis. It's also easy to decide to do All The Things, make a reading list and to do pile that will take the rest of your life, and then make yourself miserable failing to do it. Setting yourself a deadline should help with this.
2. Decide on what you want to get done and set a timescale based on it. This is the NaNoWriMo approach - "I will write 50k in 30 days!" If you know you want to write a 70k novel and read X number of books, you can plan around how many words you can write and books you can read to figure out how long it should take.
3. Decide on what you want to do, but leave it open-ended. This is actually not an approach I'd recommend. Time is finite but procrastination is infinite. Picking an end date means that choices have to be made about where this thing is going, rather than just planning it forever and never actually starting. Or finishing.

The important thing is to work with the free time you have - a writer with a full time job and three kids is likely to have less free time than one with no kids and/or no full time job. Some days it's just not possible to write, because of work, family, or general life commitments. That's fine. Goals need to be realistic, and if it's not realistic for you to write every day, then don't. What's important is to make the space for writing every day, so if you can't write do something else - read, listen to a podcast, whatever. Just make it related to your goal.

There are several well-known events in the writing calendar that can fit in with your timeline. The obvious one is NaNoWriMo in November, but there's also Camp NaNoWriMo, a "virtual writer's retreat" that runs in April and July. Also running in April and November is the Poem a Day Challenge where a poetry prompt is posted every day for a month. There's also Story a Day in May, which does the same thing with short story prompts (although to be honest some of them seem more like exercises).

I've been posting these every two weeks, but it's actually Christmas Day two weeks today so I'm going to leave it three weeks until the next one of these.

Once you've chosen your subject matter, it's time to decide on some course content. On a taught MA this would involve a lot of reading, but there are other resources too.

Reading
This will broadly fall into three categories - books about writing what you want to write, books about the subject you want to write, and books of the type you want to write.

When picking the former it's important to choose books by authors with a track record of publication in that genre, in the same way you'd look for this in an MA tutor. Respected editors in the field can also be a good source of advice. This is also true of books in connected subjects, for example books about police procedure written by former policemen.

For the latter, I'd suggest choosing a mix of authors whose work you like, and those whose work if popular but you just can't work out why. For the former, read with an eye to why it works for you; for the latter, with an eye to why it doesn't work for you, but why it might for everyone else.

Do Some Outside Study
There are several websites offering free university-taught courses on creative writing. I particularly like Coursera, although it's difficult not to fall down the rabbit hole as there's a huge variety of courses. Some of the writing courses are more general (plot, character), and some are subject-specific (Writing for Young Readers). All are free if you select the option to audit (so you don't get marked or a certificate of completion). Another good site is FutureLearn, which is also a good source of courses on peripheral subjects (they ran a few on forensics last year).

Most of these courses take several weeks and run at set times, although some can be done at your own pace if you sign up before enrollment closes. There are a few that are self-guided so you can do them when you like.

Invite Guest Speakers
An MA course would likely have guest lecturers and there's no reason this can't be replicated at home. There's a wealth of writing-related podcasts about writing, that can fit in around pretty much anything. For example, commuting to work and doing chores are both activities where it's not possible to read or write (unless you like to dictate). There are also YouTube videos and TED talks that can fit into short lengths of time. There are also audiobooks, if you want to get some of your reading done this way (just be aware that some books are abridged).

Next time, deciding when to do it all.