There are many things that I am good at and very many that I am really awful at. One of the latter is self-promotion. Yes, you heard, self-promotion. While I am a marketer's dream, for I sign up and buy everything under the sun and moon, I am a marketing guru's nightmare, for I set up all of my things to run beautifully and then forget about them. When I run workshops I usually end up printing the notes the day before because it only just occurs to me at the very last second that, hey, there's some enabling of creativity to be done tomorrow, woo hoo, have I got a copy for everyone?
I'm almost six months into The Creative Identity and not once have I mentioned the workshops. Only once have I mentioned the short story competition which closes at the end of this month.
So today I feel like I am high-jacking my own personal space in order to flag up a couple of very important things.
The Short Story Competition on Identity closes on 30 June. Enter now!
When I launched the competition in March I really didn't know what to expect. A few weeks in, and zero entries to speak of, I started wondering whether setting the same closing date as The Bridport Prize, but with only one-fiftieth of the prize money, was a little... ill-advised. Well, I needn't have worried because it's evident that you're all my sort of people, writers who leave everything to the last second and only get writing when absolutely necessary. June has evidently put the fire under many writing bums and I am enjoying the process of separating the entry forms from the stories immensely as I await the day when I will sit down and start reading them. You'll hear from me later in the summer.
Another two workshops coming up in Manchester!
So you all know about The Creative Identity Workshop, especially those of you who object to my living in England and why on earth am I not running this workshop on your own doorstep instead? As some of you know, I've been fending off the idea of running this as an online class for quite some time, mostly because I really, really, really love LIVE contact with people. I love it when I say, 'Shall we have a cuppa?', and we can all stand around with a biscuit and talk about where we hope our writing life will take us.
I like the personal contact because there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that allows a teacher to gauge how well (or not-so-well) she is doing better than looking at people's faces. I can always tell which people will go home walking on clouds of inspiration and which ones may feel that, well, maybe that wasn't so great. I've never had negative experiences to speak of, but my intuition is an extremely sharp weapon (brag, brag, brag. It's true though). Thousands of hours of ecourses cannot replace the development of a teacher in a live classroom environment, so now you know why I continue to work locally instead of jumping on the bandwagon that everyone is travelling on. A live workshop is developmental for you, but it is also extremely enriching for me.
This is all fine and fair but, as a friend of mine told me recently, I won't be able to turn people down for ever, and, of course, I must admit that the idea to conduct classes with participants from all over the place is extremely appealing in its own way. A multi-cultural classroom, albeit a virtual one, presents unique challenges and great rewards too. Autumn surely seems a good time to start.
Next month in Manchester I am also running the first Book Proposal Workshop which is really the very first I thought about last year. I am extremely keen on this one because at the core of my approach to writing there is great pragmatism. It's ok if you want to be an amateur for the rest of your life, but if you don't and have this great non-fiction project burning a hole in that drawer... how do you go about it?
I am always shocked by the number of non-fiction authors who tell me (this usually happens in the odd writing group I may visit) that they are just going to send in a sample and if it's good enough an agent will take it on anyway, no need for gimmicks. Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh. Spare yourself the wait, the wasted paper, ink and stamps!
A non-fiction project (and memoir, while being very similar to fiction, is in fact non-fiction) needs a proposal. You don't get a deal (or an agent) without a proposal. Do you know how to write a good concept and appeal, how to analyse market and competition, how effectively to present the syno into all of this, how to shape your project so that a potential buyer will want to snap it up immediately?
If you do, great, go forth and write. If you don't and are around my neck of the woods, come to the workshop. This one runs over two Saturdays and we break off for lunch at Pizza Express, so that I can keep harping on about the proposal while you eat. I mean, what's not to like?! I am looking forward to seeing you in July and the rest of you... I guess it will be online in September. Yes, I shall succumb.
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