I'm feeling like Piglet after he escaped from Kanga's house: not yet my own, nice, comfortable colour again, and not at all sure what's just happened. Since rolling all the way home in the dust wasn't an option on a train from York which was so full that moving my foot to relieve my backache required carefully planning, I'm going to do my thinking aloud here. What was last weekend's Festival of Writing all about?

At the obvious level, in my case it was about giving eight hours of workshops, solo and with others, and eighteen one-to-one meetings with writers to discuss their work. Also innumerable casual encounters with: aspiring writers; agents/editors/authors; friends old and new; ducks; drinks; my books; interesting, intelligent questions; good food (they had the sense not to serve duck...); echoes of my own undergraduate days. But what was it really about, I'm asking myself, in the tone of voice that my agent (who was also there) uses when she's trying to get me to sort out my latest novel. Her next question is usually, 'What's at stake?', and now I come to think of it, that's a more interesting way to think that the usual tales of triumph and/or disaster. So what was at stake?

As a author, you're hugely dependent on the organisers of any event, just as actors are on technicians and backstage crew. Whether you're teaching or reading or just signing books, it's a kind of performance, and you can't do it well if you have to sort out glitches, or cope with muddles. At the very least you're distracted: at the worse you look like an idiot. That there were remarkably few problems in York is a tribute to the swan-like skills of the team at Writer's Workshop and York Conferences, who were paddling furiously underneath the surface (we don't seem to be able to get away from wildfowl, do we?) so that the festival as a whole could glide smoothly along in the sunshine (which no doubt they also arranged specially). It isn't always thus, as all authors know.

One aspiring writer, new to this odd world, said that she was disconcerted by the undertow (or overtone) of desperation in so many writers - even in the air of the festival itself. I know what she means, though I think on the whole it's balanced by the amount of hope (of writing better; understanding more of craft, art and industry; finding fellow-writers) which is genuinely on offer, as opposed to the delusional hopes that vanity publishers and some kinds of writing course offer.

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Friday 9th April

Today I drove for five hours to reach York University by one thirty, the designated time for registration at the 2010 Festival of Writing run by the Writer's Workshop. As I write these words, it’s late at night. I’ve already met some really interesting new people at a Literary Speed Networking session; caught up with some writer buddies; attended a workshop with Harry Bingham and the lovely Helen Corner; watched a live Authonomy session that rivalled the best of the X Factor, and drank one too many glasses of cheap Chardonnay. Actually looking at the single mattress (pvc lined?!) in my student room, the alcohol may indeed aid my night’s sleep. That is if I can ignore the geese clacking (do geese ‘clack’?? Is there even a verb to clack??) I’m rambling. But it’s allegedly mating season and they make loud lovers those geese...


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Hello friends. Things here at Bennett Towers aren't happening particularly fast of late but they are happening. I've been hard at work on the agent's editorial notes for the work-in-progress and I reckon I'm into the gloaming of this project now. I hope so, because much as I love the story, I have been working on it for almost 4 years now and am keen to start something new, particularly the sequel.

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How I went down the pub and learnt how to read again.

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I have finally finished the third draft of my novel. All is left to do is yet more spell-checking and another read-through. And then I will have to release it into the wild and send it off to agents. It feels strange, I have been working towards this and yet there is something of an anti-climax about it. I already have ideas and a big pile of research books to get through, so it’s not that I’ll have nothing to be working on. I can’t put it into words, it just feels odd. I’ve written first drafts before, but maybe because this is the only one I’ve bothered to edit that it feels different.



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When I emigrated to Australia with my partner and two young children, I had in mind that we would give it two years before taking stock. Back then, the idea of two years away from home didn’t seem like a big deal simply because it felt bonkers, unreal. I went along with it
as if I were a character in a novel about a family emigrating.
That character was the mother of two half-Aussies, who joked about making them take elocution lessons rather than develop an accent; she was a born-and-bred Londoner who could never understand why people moaned about the place so much; she liked rain and was slightly too curmudgeonly for her age. She was a Brit; she was an author; a British author.
It was such a new experience, being an alien; both thrilling and terrifying. On my blog I talked about being mocked for wearing Ugg boots outside, for not knowing what a rashie is, or for being an anti-social Victoria Meldrew compared to my Ramsey Street neighbours. All good fun. What I neglected to share were the darker times; the times I’ve stood in the park, tears streaming down behind my sunglasses as I observed other mums so at ease with each other and feared I would never find a real friend; or the weeks around Christmas when I was so depressed to be away from home I could barely get out of bed and function properly (the famous Brit stiff-upper-lip has come in handy on many occasions).


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With Peter Hall directing, this entertaining tranfer from Kingston Rose Theatre was slick but not quite settled in on the night I attended. The younger couples seem a tad dated, the silly newly-weds like the Catherine Tate couple who laugh like drains when they get out of the lift at the wrong floor. Kate (Finty Williams) is bouncy and Nick (Tony Gardener) not quite hapless enough.Slipped-disc Malcolm (Daniel Betts) does a great slow-motion fall out of bed when he drops his book, and Jan (Sara Crowe) deftly portrays the wife whose patience is wearing thin.

My favourites, then as now, are parents Delia (Jenny Seagrove) and Ernest (David Horovitch) the actors as comfortable on stage as they are with their stereotype middle class marriage, mildly amused that eating pilchards in bed makes it 'smell like a fishing boat.'



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The Strictly Writing Award

Cash prize for the winning story.

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