Having attended the annual Scottish Association of Writers’ Conference, I am excited and filled with confidence and inspiration.
The conference itself is, in most part, an awards ceremony and this, I would advise all first time attendants who haven’t entered, is the majority of the event itself (I imagine it s much more exciting being entered).
The adjudications were, however, interesting for the feedback and I caught upon some great tit-bits that I would not have thought about. This feed-back also opened up genre and writing I had not previously thought about before: writing for the under sevens for example and the possibilities of verse, repeated verse at the end of each page, the importance of a good illustrator, the learning potential, not adding unneeded explanations and so forth. I mention all this simply because I had never considered writing for this market but the advice has caught my interest for not only writing for this group but reading it!
I also enjoyed listening to the winners’ pieces and meeting new people. Rosemary Gemmell was exceptionally generous with her advice and Katie Grant was eminently listenable-to; her favourite opening line was amusing… just for giggles, here’s mine: ‘Marianne had sharp, cold eyes and she was spiteful but her father loved her.’ Thank you Angela Carter.
I also enjoyed, in this seminar, coming up with a new Novel idea:
A story of a heroine – Sarah (a woman in her 30s)
A hero – Lord James
Time and place – an ocean liner in the 1920s
He said – what the hell are you doing here?
She said – But I’ve already put the poison in
Consequence – They were both arrested for gross indecency.
I took the opportunity to get some writing done also, and had two lovely quiet early nights with a G and T, which I also enjoyed!
Thanks all for a lovely, welcoming introduction to SAW.
Karen