The short courses for the day were Simon Hall's crime writing course, children's/YA fiction with Steve Hartley, marketing e-books, or the astro-characterisation course of my train-buddy Judy Hall. I'd decided early on that I was taking the marketing course, although by Thursday breakfast I was starting to lean in favour of crime writing. In the end common sense won out - after all, I don't write crime fiction - and I went to the potentially more useful course.
It turned out to be the only course all week that I regretted taking. We started out by discussing finding a niche, which is all very well and good but sometimes there just isn't a new one worth digging into - or if there is it might not be something you want to write in. I felt it was getting into write for the market and not for yourself territory, which was completely at odds with what I'd been learning on the Ways of Seeing course. It also happens to be at odds with what I believe in. The next thing we learned was that you should offer free stuff on your website to harvest email addresses and send a newsletter even if the topic ("I have a novel out!") is nothing to do with the reason they signed up in the first place. Since I hate spam emails and being advertised at, I decided this was very much not for me and not to bother with the second part of the course.
In the final part of Ways of Seeing, I realised I'd forgotten to do my homework. We discussed blocks to creative, and how to work through them. Fear seemed to be a large part of this, which made me wonder what it is that I'm afraid of that's got me blocked currently. Certainly I'm finding it difficult to sit down and work on anything. Maybe I need to add having another chat with my inspiration and inner critic to my timeline!
Instead of the marketing course, I went to part two of the crime writing course. As expected, it was fantastic. I figured out a short version of what I'd missed in part one (the importance of first impressions, place, and characters with motivations and backstory), and learned about plot and the importance of persistence.
I wandered away despondent, as it was the last course on offer. After a quick tea break it was back to the hall for the AGM, where I failed to win a free place in the raffle. The following slot on the programme is labelled Time For You, and is my traditional time to pack - since I don't want to do it after the disco or early the following morning.
There was no speaker on the final evening, instead we had a version of "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" which revealed that no one at Swanwick had a clue how to play the kazoo. After that was the traditional last night disco, which kept a number of us up until just after midnight. When the music stopped that was the signal that Swanwick was truly over for another year, with nothing between me and the trip home but not enough sleep and a hurried breakfast.