Lessons From A Writing Festival
Reflections on the Bournemouth Writing Festival.
At the end of April, I spent some time at the Bournemouth Writing Festival, attending some of the talks, networking events and evening shows. I did this to learn more about the creative talent that existed around me physically, as well as to pick up a few ideas on how best my own written works can reach the people that would benefit from them.
It was an enlightening event which provided some key insights into the state of the publishing industry and how writers are finding success (or not!) with their craft. I’ve been reviewing some of the notes I made during the event and, in doing so, I think I’ve found a number of valuable lessons. Some of these, unsurprisingly, will be noteworthy for writers specifically, but I think there’s a few things that anyone reading this article may find interesting, even if they aren’t writing themselves. I’m going to be sharing some of those with you today, with a few extras at the end of this piece exclusively for my paid subscribers.
Without further ado, let’s dive in:
Working with publishers is challenging.
One of the talks I learnt the most at over the weekend was at (no relation!)
‘s talk on how he makes a success of self-publishing. Something he alluded to is how much publishers are willing to change elements of a story for various reasons. For example, he spoke about publishers changing characters in a friend’s novel in order to ‘increase the diversity’ of the characters included, despite having no relevance to the plot or narrative. At another talk, Tracy Baines also mentioned that numerous aspects of her books had been changed to make the book more similar to other books that were selling well at the time.This may not come as a surprise to those within the industry, or indeed those who are aware of the kind of agendas that public entertainment providers include in works that pass through them. I find this interesting at a time when even the publishers themselves are admitting they are on the brink of extinction, as
covers below:
It certainly seems that, more and more, self-publishing is the way to go for anyone looking to get longer pieces of written work to the public. Publishers will likely require an author to compromise their creative vision in order to be accepted for publication. Then, they take hefty cuts of a book’s sales, while still expecting the author to do almost all of the marketing themselves.
Self-publishing bypasses those gatekeepers, and it has never been easier or cheaper to self-publish. Services like Lulu (which is what I use) or IngramSpark allow anyone to self-publish their books, with these services simply taking a percentage of each sale to cover printing costs, their own overheads, and fees for the platforms they have connections with - which includes Amazon and many of the major bookstores.
All that said, there is still a great advantage in being able to get a good editor or other people to proofread drafts for errors and improvements, and something Matt Shaw still recommended highly.
Start small before starting big - and finish it!
This is a bit of advice that often gets thrown around, and part of what shifted me away from trying to work on a novel and, instead, on poetry. But it was definitely reinforced for me by a few of the talks, including Matt Shaw’s.
Not only can shorter-form pieces be a great way of getting stuff out into the world so people have an idea of what you write, but it can also be a great means of teaching skills. For instance, a “drabble” is a story in exactly 100 words that forces a writer to get good at plotting and pacing. This is a key skill to learn for any length of narrative project, but a drabble is just one means of honing this.
Similarly, shorter forms of poetry like haikus or sijos can force poets to get good at packing meaning in-between the lines, as well as working within the constraints of syllable length per line. In addition, certain forms also carry cultural context as to the themes that they may be expected to contain, such as nature for haikus, or love for sonnets. This is something I was reminded of in the very first talk of the festival, “Who The Hell Is Edgar?”, and also something I discussed in a previous essay, available for my paid subscribers below.
Beyond the applications for written works, though, I can see the “finish something small first” approach as being something that can apply to all forms of work or life. In breaking a bigger project down into smaller constituent parts, and reminding ourselves that something doesn’t need to be absolutely perfect, we can work with our brain’s reward mechanisms and give us a boost of motivation and confidence through completing smaller tasks, and build in the habits to go for bigger and bigger tasks. I find Dr K to be an illuminating source on this, and I’ll link one of his videos below.
Getting online networking right is essential.
Another big take-away from Matt’s talk is the power of Facebook for online networking in the writing world. I’m someone who has generally avoided Facebook, both due to moral concerns and because I’ve not seen a need to. However, one thing I had never considered is that there is no platform that comes anywhere close to Facebook in terms of connecting with groups of people who may be interested in our works. This not only includes fans of the genres or styles we might wish to write for, but also with other authors, editors, cover designers, translators and others who it may be useful to collaborate with. Local history and research groups can also be invaluable for anyone looking to add some realism to whatever genre they’re working on - something Tracy Baines also highlighted.
This is something I hadn’t considered before, and is certainly making me reconsider that Facebook might sadly be a necessary evil in this regard. Either that, or I try and brush off my programming skills I last employed in 2017 and create a new platform that can do Facebook groups better, without the ethically dubious practises. Something tells me I’ll be far more successful writing, though.
Breaking blocks with alternate realities.
Here’s a technique that came out of Tracy Baines’ talk on breaking writer’s blocks. If you’re at a particular point in a story that you can’t see any further paths, try and bullet point all the alternate scenarios that could have happened up to that moment. We worked through the example of Cinderella during the talk: what would have happened if the slipper fit someone else’s shoe? What if funding for the prince to track down Cinderella was pulled by the King in order to fund a war? What if Cinderella fell in love with another man? Simply exploring these alternate realities might bring up an idea or theme that can translate into the reality of the story that you’re working with.
A part of me also wonders if we can use a similar technique in assessing the stories of our own lives and finding areas where there may be a purpose or calling for us to pursue, quelling some of our deep discomforts and insecurities in the process. Are we telling ourselves a version of our story that is keeping us in a victim narrative, unable to find a way to move forward with our work and our relationships? I look forward to exploring if there’s a wider application to this idea in more detail.
Every language has its boundaries.
Here’s something that came out of both the very first talk I went to recounting a history of poetry from Milie Fiirgaard and Tom Masters. Many of the structures that, for example, ancient Greek societies adopted as a means of recounting folklore through epic poetry, are highly suited for ancient Greek, but do not fit well in English. To be more specific, lots of Greek poetry uses a dactylic hexameter as its meter, which isn’t as smooth to say in English when compared to, for example, the much more natural iambic pentameter that Shakespeare is well-known for. Another example emerging from the talk was in how “terza rima” was a favourite amongst classical Italian poets due to the large number of end rhymes available to the Italian language. This makes translations into English, which has comparatively fewer words that make for good rhymes, difficult.
However, it was through Liam R. Findlay’s workshop on the use of smell as a descriptive tool that this idea rounded out further. Not only English, but a vast majority of the most widely-spoken languages around the world have very few words to describe smells, despite our sense of smell being one of our most ancient senses anthropologically-speaking. There are a small handful of Tribal languages that have an extraordinary amount of uniquely smell-based descriptors, like Jahai, but these tend to be exceptions rather than the rule.
All of this, combined with my own efforts re-translating Metropolis from German to English, makes me appreciate how any one language has both strengths and weaknesses. As a poet who wants to communicate something of humanity and the human experience, which people from a range of cultures should be able to recognise in some capacity, it highlights the challenge of using a specific language to get across those ideas. In some way, perhaps it also helps elucidate why we can appreciate all manner of written works that contain more meaning in-between the lines than they might do in the individual words themselves. It also speaks to the fact that ‘being human’ is more than just the written word that we use - it is in our behaviour, our mannerisms, our pursuits and interests and more. Written works are at their finest when they speak to the non-written parts of our existence. At least, in my view.
Those are some of the key thoughts I’ve had circulating as a result of the Bournemouth Writing Festival, and I’m keen to keep working with them and see what emerges for me as a result. Let me know how some of these ideas landed for you in the comments below.
With gratitude,
Tom
