Last night, for the first time in ages, I appeared at a book festival. I rarely do book festivals anymore, mainly because I don’t get invited to them.
Anyway, the Folkestone Book Festival is far from the biggest or most prestigious on the circuit, but it was lovely to be there in front of an audience of 50 or so. The subject of the talk was how to write a novel, and centred partly on my book ‘Yes! No! But Wait! The One Thing You Need To Know To Write A Novel’. I shared the platform with Lucy Caldwell, another novelist and writing teacher.
Lucy and I shared many of the same views. That writing without an understanding of craft leads to messy work. That your first ‘dirty’ draft of your novel should be written without too many second thoughts - just get it down on the page, you can worry about making it good later.
We slightly differed,however, about the usefulness of writing groups. Lucy is a fan I’m not so sure. I like writing groups, they are sociable and fun. But are they actually any use to anybody? I wonder sometimes.
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