After being ferried by a particularly grumpy coach driver, we made our way. I napped part of the way home, crammed into my seat between my luggage and another passenger. At least I had a window. The latter part of the journey took in the scenic route, which was very soothing until the carriage filled with chattering scouts, fresh from a camping trip. Even less restful was the announcement that the train was going to sit in a particular station for fifteen minutes, and that there was another train leaving shortly going to where I was headed. This left me dashing across the station like a mad thing, getting to the platform just as the second train pulled in. It cut about half an hour off my journey, but it wasn't exactly restful. Next time I will avoid the scenic route!
It's not really a seventh day, since we have to be off site by 10am - and those of us getting the coach leave at 8.30am, which is when we normally have breakfast. As usual breakfast had a deflated feeling, with a lot of people having left already or simply not got out of bed, and everyone seemed to be tired. Friday is the morning when it all starts to catch up....
After being ferried by a particularly grumpy coach driver, we made our way. I napped part of the way home, crammed into my seat between my luggage and another passenger. At least I had a window. The latter part of the journey took in the scenic route, which was very soothing until the carriage filled with chattering scouts, fresh from a camping trip. Even less restful was the announcement that the train was going to sit in a particular station for fifteen minutes, and that there was another train leaving shortly going to where I was headed. This left me dashing across the station like a mad thing, getting to the platform just as the second train pulled in. It cut about half an hour off my journey, but it wasn't exactly restful. Next time I will avoid the scenic route! There were five short courses to choose from today: An Animated Journey into Fantasy and Horror; Crime Writing; How To Write a "How To" Book; Writing for Soaps; and Finding Your Inner Writer. I was originally going to go to the latter, but decided in the end it sounded too intense for first thing in the morning on the last day, so I went to Curtis Jobling's Animated Journey instead. He used anecdotes to show the importance of networking, putting yourself in the right place at the right time, and keeping lots of different work on the go. He also let us watch Curious Cow again. The last part of the poetry course covered revenge, guilt, and excuse poems. Which are not poems about these things, but rather embodiments of them. We all had fun writing excuse poems, my excuses being a list of reasons for not leaving Swanwick in the morning. Instead of a one hour/workshop session, we had the AGM. This is usually a pretty dry and quick affair to vote in the following year's committee, but this year took rather longer as we discussed (some with impassioned speeches) ways to raise funds for the school in future. We also had the auction for Curtis Jobling's signed doodles. All of the cats (Pilchard, Frankenstein's Cat, and Raa Raa) proved popular, and at one point we even had a husband and wife bidding against each other. The one that really set the floor on fire though was werewolf Bob the Builder On the timetable after the AGM is designated "Time for You", which I use to pack so that I don't have to do it later. I briefly swung into the dregs party before tea, and then an early start for the evening speaker Deborah Moggach, author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. She was very funny, and an excellent choice to round off the week.
I was tired, but it was the last night which meant the last night disco. I made the effort to stay up and dance the night away, although resisted the temptation to continue the party in the bar with friends. Getting up in the morning is enough of a problem, and Friday is always an early start. It was nearly 1am when I crawled into bed, and that was plenty late enough for me. Today we were back on the courses. Zoe Lambert, yesterday's speaker, took a course on Contemporary Short Stories, plus we had a drama workshop, The Art of Horror, and the Bish, Bash, Bosh Intro to Blogging. Since I already blog, and I'm not particularly into horror or drama, I went to the short story course. We each had to provide an item from our bags for others to use as a prompt, supplemented by a couple added by Zoe, then pick two and think about who might carry those items - who are they, what else do they carry, and where are they going? We were supposed to write a scene with that character; I mostly ended up with notes. It was a useful exercise though, and I ended up with something I can work on. In the poetry course we learned about love poems and praise poems, the rondelle, rondelet, and ghazal. For the second part of the short story course we were supposed to bring something ready to edit. I didn't have anything so gave it a miss and went looking for the Hayes escape tunnel instead. The conference centre was taken over to house prisoners of war, including "The One That Got Away". The final one hour session slot offered a choice of Poetry for Children, Boutique ePublishing, Characterisation, and Writers' Circles. I took Boutique ePublishing, to offer up an alternative viewpoint to the self-publishing course earlier in the week. It was very nearly a disaster - while we all sat there waiting for the tutor to turn up, he was sat in the room next door waiting for us. Whoever had set up the overhead projector had done it in the wrong room. There was a lot of information, slightly squished into the time due to our late start, but it was interesting. The evening speaker was Curtis Jobling, an animator and writer who has worked on Wallace and Gromit, designed Bob the Builder and invented Raa Raa the Noisy Lion. After introducing us to Curious Cow (a series of ten second shorts on Nickelodeon), he live-doodled a series of characters to demonstrate how figures from the same show are based on the same set of shapes, to give a unifying feel. He also kindly allowed the school to keep the doodles to auction off to raise funds, and signed them all. And then guess what happened. That's right, I had an early night!
Tuesday is the Swanwick "day off". Being smack in the middle of the week of classes, it offers an opportunity to rest, reflect, write up the ideas we've been too busy to work on, and catch up on sleep. It can only be very loosely called a day off, though. There are no classes, but there are plenty of other optional activities. This year saw the return of Write, Camera, Action! Writers, actors, and directors get together to work on previously selected plays by Swanwick delegates, ready to perform them during the evening. There was also the new Procrastination Free Day, which saw Alexa Radcliffe-Hart lock 15 writers in a room and not let them out except at lunchtime. The feedback seemed to be positive - everyone got a lot done - and I heard several suggestions for how to expand on it for next year to allow more people to take part. There was also a morning interview with Jon Wood of Orion. For some reason (possibly because he was sandwiched between last night's crime fiction speaker and the police panel) I got the impression this would be crimey, when it turned out to be publishey. I'm quite annoyed I missed it. After the interview, and an all-important coffee break, was the police panel. This was going to be crimey, so I gave this a miss as well. I had planned for Tuesday to be a proper day off, so I spent some time napping, reading, failing to write: there's little more demoralising being one of four people in a room, and the other three are all scribbling or clattering away. I also found another amusing sign to photograph. I also took a wander around the lake a couple of times, enjoying the peace and quiet of everyone else being busy. I paid a visit to the sinister willow, from last year's day three, but something had changed. It didn't have the same atmosphere, it was much more light and airy (lefthand picture). It took me a couple of minutes to realise this was because the trees on the other bank (shown in the other picture) had been cut down. Without them, the area seemed a lot less sinister and interesting. The evening speaker was Zoe Lambert, who has written a collection of war stories called The War Tour, who spoke about war tourism and voyeurism, and how war affects all parties involved.
I had planned to go to Write, Camera, Action! but I was tired (I was still recovering from two weeks of solid training at work) and went to bed early again. Day Three is Monday which, since classes started on Sunday, I spent thinking was Tuesday. The Short Courses on offer were Fashioning Fiction from Fact, taught by yesterday's speaker Syd Moore, Editing Your manuscript, Starting Your Novel, and Self-Publishing Erotica. While Syd Moore's course sounded fascinating, I opted for Self-Publishing Erotica - not for the naughty bits, but to pick up useful tips and hints on self-publishing. I came away with a list of useful links and information. In the poetry session we covered acrostics, and an exercise called The Garden of Panic (about halfway down the linked page). We also looked at short forms like haiku and tanka, and the gushi - a Chinese form which is a quatrain rhyming a-b-c-b, with the same syllable count in every line (this can be anything as long as it's consistent) and - here's the hard part - can only contain single syllable words. I haven't tried this yet. Duing the hour before lunch I went looking for an amusing sign I'd heard was somewhere in the main house. It seemed appropriate. During the tea break there was a Twitter meet up, in theory for those already tweeting. in practice we spent the time explaining how Twitter works to the uninitiated, before dispatching them to the Twitter 101 workshop session for some hands-on exploration of the site. The other workshops on offer were Writing for Short Story Competitions, NaNoWriMo, and Grave Inspirations (an exploration of facts and customs about death and funerals). It was a choice between competitions and Grave Inspiration for me, and I took the latter. It was very interesting, but I couldn't help feelling the competitions workshop would have been more useful, if less fun.
The evening speaker was Michael O'Byrne, to speak about criminal investigation and policing. I'm not really into crime fiction, so I gave it a miss. I'd have had (yet another) early night, except that the Poetry Open Mic was on at 10pm. I puttered around for a bit in my room and the bar, before heading off to listen to other people's offerings - I forgot to bring any poems of my own. The star of the show had to be Anuradha Gupta, who read from memory from her book. She said she'd never read her poetry to an audience before, but had got some tips from friends, and I have to say she's a natural. The following morning the last of her books sold in the book room before I could even get there! Another one to add to my Amazon wish list. After the poetry reading was the retro disco, but by that point I was tired from two days of paying attention, and went to bed instead where I lounged with a hot chocolate and a book. This was a recurring problem over Swanwick week, but I really struggled to get out of bed on day two - the first full day of classes. Unfortunately you need to be at breakfast for 8.30am if you want to get a decent seat, so a lie in was a no-no. The choice of Short Courses on Sunday was between Screenwriting (taught by yesterday's speaker James Moran), Stories for Women's Magazines, Business Skills, and Writing Autobiography. I opted for the Women's Magazine course, where we studied the kind of stories accepted, and requirements of, magazines like Woman's Weekly. I have to admit to buying a couple of issues of the fiction special earlier in the year for research, and now I'm hooked. This might have something with not being able to take a Kindle in the bath. After the first session is a coffee break, and I made a quick visit to the Book Room and picked up a couple of books: some poems by Alison Chisholm, and Public Speaking for Writers by Alison and Malcolm Chisholm. I also replaced last year's Swanwick pen. There were several other books I was interested in, including Anuraha Gupta's beautiful poetry collection New Moon Rising, and Elizabeth Hopkinson's historical novel Silver Hands. Having a limited amount of both cash and space in my luggage, I added the novel to my Amazon wish list for my Kindle, and decided to think about Anuradha's book. Being art as well as poetry, it's not the sort of thing an electronic version would do justice to. The Specialist Courses, which run all week, were on Poetry, Writing Young Fiction, Literary Fiction, and Making Money for Magazines. I was going to take the latter, but decided in the end it would be to dry to sustain my interest for an entire week and took the safe option doing poetry as the other two would take me well out of my comfort zone. It was taught by Debjani Chatterjee, and we discussed using the senses and memory to make poems real. We drafted poems about breakfast (a lot of people wrote about the porridge), and I also drafted a poem about a rocking horse, so it was time well spent. After lunch we had the second part of the short course sessions, which I skipped because we'd be looking at The People's Friend, which is not a market I intend to submit to. Then it was time for a tea break and I popped back to the Book Room, to see if any new books had arrived with the latecomers. Debjani had brought books with her when she arrived, and I picked up a gorgeous hand-crafted Indian edition of her book I Was That Woman. I also noticed that Linda Lewis' Writer's Treasury of Ideas was there, so picked up a copy as it's been on my Amazon wish list since last year's school. The hour-long workshop choices were Comedy Writing, Folk Tales, Promoting Your Work, and Begin Family History. I picked Promotion, and it turned into a lively discussion: the tutor favoured traditional methods over social media and blogging, and asked those of us who are online for our input. I'm not sure she was convinced by the end to join us! The evening speaker was ghost story writer Syd Moore, who shared the background of her novels The Drowning Pool and Witch Hunt. I'm a sucker for history and all things paranormal so it was fascinating. After the talk I had to resist buying one of her books to get it signed. I'd spent all my book money, so they went on the wish list too. Once again I went to bed early, and left others to sing the hours away at the Buskers' Night. It's become something of a tradition that I blog about Swanwick the week after I get back. Not only does it extend the Swanwick vibe by a week, but it also means I can enjoy my week without worrying about getting a blog post up every day - and that means I don't have to take my laptop.
As usual I arrived by train, and was surprised by how few people were waiting at Derby railway station. Normally we'd take over the frontage of two separate coffee shops (well we are writers), but this time we were all crammed around three tables. I found out afterwards that a lot less people booked to travel on the two coaches this year, but there had been a lot of arranging of lift shares on the Facebook group over the last few weeks, which probably had an impact. It's the first year we've had the facility to do it. The conference centre was strangely quiet when we got there, with a lot of people in their rooms unpacking and more still to arrive. I went to my room - the same as last year, and it's a good job I didn't request that because I'd misremembered the number - and unpacked while dancing around to Absolute 80s on the radio. Then I went to sit on the lawn and wait for friends to arrive. The evening speaker was James Moran, who's written for Spooks and Doctor Who, and also wrote the films Severance and Cockneys Vs Zombies. He told us about being inspired by a second-hand script book for Time Bandits, just how much rewriting goes into a screenplay, and also left us with the excellent quote "Every villain thinks they're the hero of their own story". He wrote the screenplay for Severance (which is very funny, by the way) while also working a full time job, and believes that if you really want to be a writer you'll make time for it. After the speaker there was the opportunity to go to the "What are you writing now?" and "Alternative Fairy Tale" icebreakers, but knowing how tiring the rest of the week can be, I opted for an early night instead. It occured to me I really should have been posting my Write 1 Sub 1 progress each month - not least so that I have a record of it!
For posterity, here's my update for the first six months: Jan - wrote 2 flash pieces and 5000 words of articles, submitted all but 1 flash. Feb - 6 poems written, 3 subbed. Mar - wrote and subbed some flash fiction, also wrote ahead for some of my month of blogging posts. Apr - wrote the rest of the blog posts for the month of blogging challenge, plus a writing sample for a company that never bothered to get back to me. Submissions = said writing sample, and a short story. May - wrote the first chapter of an ebook, and submitted a batch of poems. June - 9 reprints out the door to foreign markets, 1 new story written and submitted, and new versions of e-books up at Smashwords and Kobo. I haven't been keeping track of these particular rejections/acceptances, except in the general way I usually keep track. For next year I might refine it, and specify the writing has to consist of short stories and/or poems. This year I'm just happy to be writing at all. Here's a link I saw today, for an awesome post by Jenna Black on being responsible for your own writing career.
I have some free time at the moment, so I put together another ebook collection of previously published stories, Dark Ghosts and Flamingos and Other Stories. This one contains "A Celebration in Blue Silk", "Of Corn and Crows", "The Clay Men", and "Dark ghosts and Flamingos." It's three fantasy (one dark historical), and a science fiction, so a bit of an odd mix, but I don't write enough science fiction to give it its own collection. Two of the flash stories are already in A Primary Function and Other Flash Fiction, and the other ("This is the Way the World Begins") I don't have reprint rights back for yet. At some point I'll do a print collection through Lulu, but that's a while off yet. |
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