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Tuesday 17 September 2013

Riding High On Words! Post-York reflections.

The weekend of 13th-15th September was the annual Festival of Writing in York, run by the Writers' Workshop. Three days of mini-courses, workshops, keynote speakers, one-to-one sessions with agents and book doctors, competitions and a gala dinner, attended by writers and publishing professionals from around the UK and beyond. There are no words to describe just how incredible this experience is. 

I feel like my whole attitude to writing has turned around this weekend. I've had a big dip recently, but I'm finally back to the stage where I spend my day excited about writing later on, planning what I'm going to add to my chapters. There are so many things I can blog about, so I'll save a lot of the big things for future posts, but I wanted to do a quick blog this week while I'm still getting my head round everything. So here are a few things I've learnt this weekend:

  • Published and unpublished writers have a lot more in common than I realised.
  • It's really not that hard to walk across a room and talk to someone.
  • If you keep working at it, you will undoubtedly improve, provided you listen to advice.
  • Sometimes all you need is one other person to look over your work to figure out the improvements that are required.
  • I'm not as rubbish at characterisation as I thought, but I do need to put time and effort into making my characters engaging.
  • Writer friends are some of the best friends I will ever make.
  • Every Pixar film is a trail of tears with excellent story structure.
  • At the Gala dinner, the best table to sit at is the #funtable. 
More to come!

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