The second significant turning point (for those of you
paying attention in the last post!) in getting started properly on this journey
was going to one day of the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School in the middle of
August.
I’d seen it advertised before but had pretty much ignored
it because, after all, I’m not really a “writer” yet! But then it came to my attention again a
couple of weeks beforehand and I thought, what the heck, it’s less than an hour
away at a venue I’m familiar with and my course tutor is doing a session on
Children’s and YA fiction, so I can learn more about it and meet him. Let’s give it a go!
What a great decision!
I went to 2 sessions delivered by a literary agent on how to get a
literary agent which will be invaluable when
I finally finish my manuscript, lol ;-)
I learnt a lot about myself in a right side brain creativity session,
which will also be a potentially good method to get to know my characters
better. In the YA session I realised
that Suzanne Collins is an incredibly skilled writer who packs a huge amount
into each chapter of the Hunger Games, rather than just someone who “got lucky”
with a clever novel idea.
But most of all, it was really inspiring and motivating
to be around lots of other people on their writing journeys – some published,
some not, in a wide variety of different areas of writing. I came away fired up but also wondering how
on earth I was going to be able to keep that motivation up on my own.
The answer, surprisingly, has come in the form of
Twitter. Meg Davis, the literary agent
at Swanwick, had mentioned that having a strong online presence was incredibly
useful for publishers when it comes to promoting an author and their
books. So, I figured that if I’m going
to get serious about writing then I may as well get my presence more
established on Twitter sooner rather than later.
I’ve had a Twitter account for 3 years already but done
very little on it (@melgreen73 if you're interested - I'm not very exciting...yet!). I’ve always preferred
Facebook as it’s a lot more personal and relational. That’s right, of course, but I’d also missed an
important point. Twitter is mainly about
information sharing and self-promotion (as well as being a great place to
practise writing more concisely – a skill I need to develop, lol!). It’s not better or worse than Facebook, it’s
just different, and is valuable and useful in ways I hadn’t previously considered.
The best thing about Twitter so far is that I’ve been
able to start following people who continue to inspire, inform and motivate me
to write on a daily basis. So, among
others, I follow Stephen Fry coz everybody does ;-) I follow Nicky Gumbel coz he’s wise and
insightful. I follow Bear
Grylls coz he’s fun and inspiring as well as pretty hot, lol! And I follow Bright Literary (literary
agents) coz they give me invaluable writing and publishing tips - the sort of
relevant and up-to-the-minute information you just couldn’t pay for. I punched the air in delight the day they
said they were hoping to find some humour for 7+ boys in their submissions pile
while they ate their lunch and vowed that I would send them some asap!!
So with all this on-going motivation and inspiration, I
have no excuse not to get writing, right?!
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