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!)

Matt Shaw

‘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

The Elysian

covers below:

No one buys books

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.

Videogames, Consciousness and Poetic Form

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.

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That’s it for some of my more general ‘lessons learnt’ from the festival, but my paid subscribers can keep scrolling for a few extra things that I picked up.