Hello!
There is SO MUCH TO SAY that I cannot possibly say it all. So, what I think I’ll do is focus on the more immediate logistical bits (telling) today and the lessons learned (showing) in coming editions.
Perhaps the most widely shared (and hotly contested) advice in writing is to “show, don’t tell.” We don’t tell you the breeze was blowing, for example; we show you a crumpled up piece of paper rustling along the pavement or Lucinda’s hair tickling her face. There is so much to tell you today - but no one has time to read 10,000 words that could be summarized in 1000 (and even that’s a little long). So today I just tell you about the breeze. I hope you’ll forgive me for prioritizing laying out the rough outline and key takeaways before tucking more into the folds of the story and showing you the breeze’s effect in future weeks.
I’m back!
I know, you heard from me last week and you’re hearing from me this week and it might not seem like I’ve been gone at all. But gone I was, and I have nothing and everything to show for it.
Let me say first, in case I haven’t said it before, that my passport mostly collects dust. I’ve traveled vertically within North and Central America and the Caribbean, but the farthest into the Atlantic I’d been before last week is ankle-deep at the beach in Cape Cod. So, spending three days with a collection (anthology? compilation?) of other writers wasn’t the only thing that had me excited about my trip.
I left my house at 3:45 on Thursday morning and arrived at my hotel in London just before 8:00 in the evening. That gave me about 14 hours before I had to catch my train, during which time I slept a little but mostly rolled my suitcase around Coal Drops Yard, had a beer (in the evening) and a coffee (in the morning), and spent some quiet time writing and breathing in the sameness and difference of this place.
Then a long train ride and a short taxi ride and I was being dropped off on a large and sprawling campus (with a lake in the middle!) into a queue, stretching out of one building and practically into another, full of wide-eyed and giddy people like me, standing with their suitcases and backpacks and duffel bags and pillows, waiting to get their room assignments. I’d shared my taxi with a fellow attendee, and we found our nametags and programs before splitting off for the welcome address. I met a half-dozen folks whose faces and names I’d only ever seen on webinars and emails and who were just lovely in person.
There were hundreds of us there, and mealtimes put that on full display - huge dining hall with dozens of full tables and long lines to get surprisingly tasty food.
I took six classes, ranging from one to three hours each: one on short stories, two on character development, one on finding your book’s sales pitch, one on screenwriting, and another I won’t mention but which wasn’t right for me, because I could have taught it myself. I spoke with two agents (for a whole ten minutes each 😵), one commissioning editor, and a book coach, all of whom gave me some pretty actionable and mostly positive feedback, though their personalities landed on a sliding scale from “warm and loving” to “a bit prickly and definitely not the right fit.”
The most important book news I got out of the Festival is that (a) there does seem to be a market for this kind of novel, (b) I was STILL selling it wrong, and (c) one of the agents asked to see more of it. I liked her, and not just because of that - it was clear we were a personality fit, and she was able to tell me the themes of the book without my having to explain them. In all, even if this particular agent ends up turning down the manuscript (which of course I sent to her that very evening), our conversation helped me nail the genre, and the session on the sales pitch helped me nail the way I want to sell it. This week, while work is slow, I’ll be sending out some more submissions to some US agents. Next week I’ll start building a timeline for self-publishing. That way, if these submissions don’t work out, I will still have a plan to get my book into readers’ hands.
I met a ton of awesome writers and formed some hopefully lasting friendships. Teachers and lawyers and techies and TV writers, all of us just trying to find a way to tell the best story we possibly can. Of course, most of them were from the UK, but the internet has made the world more global than ever and I probably see most of my local friends with about the same frequency I’d see my friends from across the Atlantic. That’s what messaging apps are for, after all.
Hearing the way other people play with words and story mechanics is always fascinating, too. The way Steve could convey humor by contrasting an iron spike with the hand holding it (that of a 60-year-old woman tromping through a cemetery). Poppy’s choice to have a house be the narrator of the story of two women. Caleb’s idea of using a refugee crisis between Earth and Mars to start or continue the conversation about events that are happening in different parts of our world right now. By the time the Festival was over, I was back to seeing stories everywhere I looked.
On Sunday afternoon, I took a bus to the train station with one of my new writer friends and hustled to catch the train before it pulled out of the station. Three days in York, and I got to see precious little of it - but what I did see reminded me of the bowels of old Boston with its wedge-shaped buildings and twisty-turns.
I stayed the night in Manchester, wandering through Chinatown and St. Peter’s Square, enjoying an enormous glass of rose over a book in the corner of a pub before bed and a long, languid latte at an outside table when I “woke up” (air quotes because when your room is right next to the elevator and access door, you don’t actually get to sleep) and then exploring Gay Village for over an hour before I finally had to give in to the clock and find a taxi to the airport.
I was home on Monday evening, just in time to put the baby to bed.
One thing’s for sure: England hasn’t seen the last of me - and neither has the writing world.
What’s Entertaining Me
Honestly, Paul McVeigh is pretty damn entertaining. He was one of the presenters at the Festival of Writing, and in addition to being hilarious he is also a wealth of information.
On the plane, I finished Top Gun, and, my oh my, the ending was suspenseful. I also watched 100 días con la Tata, a sweet and tender Spanish movie about a filmmaker who spent 100 days of quarantine with his 97-year-old grandmother and made her a viral Instagram sensation.
And I watched Call Me By Your Name on the way back. Despite the fact that the movie was about 50% sex and should have never been allowed to be shown on an airplane, I did enjoy it. I think I’ll read the book, as I hear it’s beautiful.
What’s Enlightening Me
I’m going to cop out of this one again this week. I have a lot swirling around my brain, but not a lot of it is fully formed and I’ve already taken enough of your time telling (not showing) you about a trip you didn’t take. 🤣 More next week.
Until then…thank you for your support. You’re fab.
Talk soon,
Welcome back, and thanks for telling us a little bit about the adventure!