Image Credits:-
One image created in Book Brush using images taken by me, Allison Symes and from Chapeltown Books and The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick. AI images avoided. Many thanks to The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick and to Gemma Owen-Kendall for the pictures of my book launch for Seeing The Other Side. Other images of Swanwick were taken by me, Allison Symes. Many thanks to Babs Trevitt for taking the image of me reading at the Open Prose Mic Night. Also many thanks to Liz Pacey for the photo of the members of the Association of Christian Writers who were at Swanwick.
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of Chandler’s Ford Today I (a) went to The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick and (b) had a fabulous time there. Having said that, this year’s school was especially meaningful for me. Why?
Firstly, I had my book launch at the school for Seeing The Other Side.
Secondly, I sold two-thirds of my stock of the book at the launch.
Thirdly, by Tuesday, I sold the rest of Seeing The Other Side and some copies of From Light to Dark and Back Again and Tripping The Flash Fantastic. For the first time ever, I sold out on one of my books. I am beyond thrilled at this as you can imagine.
But what else was I up to at this year’s school?
Catching Up with Writer Friends
This is the first priority with practically every Swanwicker. Many of us stay in contact for the rest of the year via Zoom and or the Swanwick Facebook page and both of those are lovely. But there is something special about getting together in person, especially when you get to chat during breaks and over a convivial glass or two.
Courses and Workshops
Although Swanwick started on 8th August, the courses start from the Sunday. Saturday night is spent in catching up with friends and enjoying listening to the opening night guest speaker. This year that opening speech was given by a fellow Swanwicker, Joy Wood, whom I’ve interviewed here. She has since gone on to win the Romantic Thriller Award from the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Her talk was called From Bedpan to Pen as she was a nurse for the first part of her career. Her author career is effectively her second one. It was a great warm and humorous talk which went down well with all.
There is usually an icebreaker event after the talk. This year that was called Lingo Bingo and was good fun. I was pleased to see flash fiction get a mention on the bingo cards – the word is getting out about what a fantastic format of writing it is!
9th August
There were plenty of ideas sparking from Julia Pattison’s Lift Up Your Pens session first thing. There are two pre-breakfast items – Lift Up Your Pens and Lift Up Your Hearts. The Pens one is on a topic with writing exercises set and is led by different people. I’ve led some in the past. Great fun to do.
The Hearts one is a short devotional time which is led by different people. I find these inspiring and reflective and a lovely time of calm ahead of a busy but fun day. I led the Hearts one on the Monday. I was only sorry not to get to the church service at the chapel at The Hayes on the Sunday as I was having my book launch at the same time. The chapel is a lovely building. I only wish I could get to both Pens and Hearts but I usually manage one Pens session and stick with Hearts for the rest of the week.
After breakfast, I loved Viv Brown’s writing for print magazine course. More to come on that later in the week. I plan to immerse myself in world building with Francesca Tyer in the afternoon (who is published through Authors Reach – see the link at https://www.authorsreach.com/books) and later to look at real life humour in stories with Ian Fisermanis. Enjoyed both of these.
10th August
The Simon Hall course on AI For Authors was intriguing and insightful. Found it cleared misconceptions for one thing. So glad I went to this one. AI is unlikely to go away and will continue to be the biggest issue for all writers for years. Every writing competition I’ve come across bars its use in creating work (and rightly so too) but the course did show ways authors could use it if they wanted and without losing creative control. The creativity must always come from you.
In the afternoon I went back to Viv Brown’s course on Writing for UK Magazines. AI is an issue here too. One woman’s magazine is effectively switching over to stories produced that way. It’s not a popular decision by any means and I fear it will mean story quality will go down.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the captions on social media reels and the like. The captions are produced by AI and it can be good for a giggle when you spot the mistakes. There are some classic ones out there. But it isn’t so funny when stories aren’t produced by real life humans any more. I think readers will eventually reject this. They won’t want shoddily produced stories and rightly so.
I have no issues with tools which can help me improve my writing. I definitely don’t want the tools to do the writing for me.
I think, long term, a balance will be struck here. So far and no further for AI…. It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out.
11th August
Enjoyed a great session before and after tea break time about submitting non-fiction work to traditional publishers. This was led by Dr Jacqueline Jeynes. I do have a non-fiction project on the go so this course was timely too.
I enjoyed Liz Pacey’s session on Reading, Writing and Absolutely No ‘Rithmetic. It was a lovely discussion combined with a quiz about children’s books. It was a lovely way to finish the afternoon’s writing sessions. Liz, like me, is a member of the Association of Christian Writers.
12th August
Found Simon Whaley’s The Business of Writing session informative and useful. Likewise, the two part course run by Bettina von Cossell on writing non-fiction books.
You will see from just the courses I went to there is a wide variety of topics. There were many more available. The biggest regret I think most delegates have is in not being able to go to everything which might be of use. Simply not enough time in the day.
But where Swanwick is great is after the school, delegates will be able to download notes from the courses they went to and the ones they didn’t. Swanwick remains the only place I can think of where this happens and it is appreciated. It is good of the tutors to do it and I had the privilege of uploading my editing notes when I ran a course at Swanwick a couple of years ago.
The other nice thing here is delegates do not have to decide in advance which course they go to, you can literally decide last minute and if, say, you plan to go a two part one and the first half doesn’t seem to suit you, nobody worries if you decide not to go back for the second half. Indeed some delegates deliberately “mix and match” here to get a flavour for as many of the courses as possible.
Writers do share information with each other. No one writer can know it all. I’ve found what I might not need now will come into my sphere later.
Book Launch For Seeing The Other Side
Gemma Owen-Kendall, a Swanwick Committee member, organised book launches for twelve authors at the school this year, including my one. All appreciated this. She set up the book table. She took photos on the author’s phones so we can share them on social media and websites (I use them here) and on her phone, which the school will use for their publicity.
This is an admirable arrangement! One of the tricky bits of having any kind of event is arranging for someone to take photos of you and your books while you’re busy talking to potential readers, sharing stories from the book etc.
Prior to the school, a poster was prepared and set up in the Information Room. I was able to use it for publicity purposes ahead of going to Derbyshire, which was great.
At the school, sales go through them so what will happen later is I will receive the money for my sales minus a percentage for the school. They are effectively acting as my agent here and thanks to the school, I can show my book to far more people than I could on my own. It is such a wonderful opportunity just for that alone.
I was thrilled to sell two-thirds of my copies of Seeing The Other Side at the launch. They were seemingly flying off the table which was amazing and humbling too. You never can know how these things will go. It is a bit of a gamble on the author’s part so to see the support coming in like that is moving and, of course, a wonderful validation of your work.
On the Monday, I took part in the Open Prose Mic Night where I read a few stories from my new book. On the Tuesday when I went to the Book Room as I wanted to make purchases, I discovered the remaining copies of Seeing The Other Side had been sold. I also sold copies of From Light to Dark and Back Again and Tripping The Flash Fantastic.
A huge thank you to all who supported me here and to the school for setting up launches like this. The support is amazing.
Conclusion
I had an unexpected advertising opportunity on the way home from Waterloo. I was talking to a lady opposite me and some youngsters who were off to the Winchester Festival. They asked about my journey and I told them I’d been at Swanwick and had my book launch there. That led to questions about what I do, Seeing The Other Side, and one of them took my updated business card! It was encouraging, regardless of whether anything comes from it. Why?
Books still matter to people and that’s how it should be.
Can’t wait for Swanwick 2027. Maybe see you there.
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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