This year, as always, began with a lengthy train journey. In an odd coincidence I ended up sitting next to first-time Swanwicker Judy Hall, who was teaching our Thursday course on Astro-Characterisation (using astrology to create characters). We alternated between chatting, reading, and drinking coffee, before arriving at Derby station and grabbing yet more coffee and hanging out with other early-arrivals while we waited for the coach.
My Swanwick routine begins with locating my room and unpacking my case. I like to think it signals to my brain that I'm settling in for the week. I managed to time it extremely badly this year, as I emerged to find I was supposed to have been at the Chairman's Welcome fifteen minutes previously. Instead I waited in the bar area until it had finished and I could catch up with old friends.
The evening speaker was the historian Christopher Lee, who gave the advice that poetry should be told not recited. This applies to stories as well. There were various events on afterwards, but after a day of travel I was tired and called it a night.
Sunday is the first full day of Swanwick. There was a choice of short courses in writing for competitions, playwriting, novel editing, and creating fantasy worlds. I went to the latter, where there was lively debate on examples of worldbuilding, from J.R.R. Tolkien to G.R.R. Martin, and we were given a handy list of things we might want to consider when creating our own worlds.
I'd chosen to do the novel-writing course Ways of Seeing as my specialist course option, since I'm not into writing scripts or memoirs, and I took the poetry course the last two years. The other option was a short story course run by Della Galton, which was a definite contender for my time. In the end I went for the novel course as it promised a deeper look at what makes writers writers - a similar short course has been run by tutor Xanthe Wells most of the other years I've been, but it's always clashed with something else. This year I decided to take the hint and get on with it.
During the first session we covered the iceberg of publishing/professional skills/practical skills, which is the bit you can see, and the "personal wealth" of creativity, confidence, intuition, and the subconscious, which are the parts of the writer that lie below the waterline. The course overall was about getting those parts to work for you, and not always fighting against them, which is something I need to figure out.
After the second part of the short course (and a much needed tea break) there were workshops, new on the programme for this year. I had meant to go to the one of Scrivener, but I was still tired from travel so I used the gap until dinner to nap instead.
Got talking at dinner and missed the start of the evening speaker, but I'd arranged to play a roleplaying game called Fiasco with some friends after so we ended up setting that up instead. We played until 1am, when the game was resolved with only one of our characters coming out of it well. I went to bed dreading how I was going to feel in the morning after only 6 hours' sleep...