York Festival of Writing 2011

Going to the York Festival of Writing on Friday was an oddly exhilarating experience, rather like emerging into the light from a narrow, grimly-lit tunnel.

 I'd been living alone in a remote cottage on the edge of the North Yorks Moors during the week beforehand, writing the first 25,000 words of a new novel, so had enjoyed little contact with anyone - bar a few hours when my iPhone suddenly decided it had a signal, and I was able to send and receive tweets and a few Facebook messages.

But on the Friday, I left my rural retreat and drove through York - a lively, crowded city with many attractions - and on to the university campus, where the Festival of Writing was taking place.

I met so many industry people, it's hard to explain just how enormously useful this particular festival has become for writers.

I was a speaker - talking about my other incarnation as a romance editor at Embrace Books - and also took some pitches from writers. So I met plenty of interesting people that way, and hopefully gave my best pointers on writing romance in my talk.

But it was in the informal interactions - at meal or break-times, or in the long glamorous evenings at the bar - that the Festival really came into its own. We all had name badges, and soon knew most of each other's names, despite there being several hundred people there.

Which was a good thing, as it's embarrassing to be forever peering at your neighbour's breasts.

Those who made a big impact on me are too numerous to mention, but a good starting list would include Philippa Pride, who is Stephen King's editor and also a renowned Book Doctor; Lorella Belli, a London agent and incredibly glamorous, besides being a great conversationalist; Donna Condon, commissioning editor at Piatkus; Patrick Janson-Smith, formerly MD at Transworld, now at HarperCollins with the Blue Door imprint; Ashley Pharoah, the utterly gorgeous creator of cult TV series like Life on Mars, and an extremely funny man; Carole Blake, brilliant literary agent; and writers Jean Fullerton, Debi Alper, Kate Allan, Jane Lovering, Tim Murgatroyd, Louise Allen, Toby Frost, Julie Cohen, and many, many other wonderful authors, agents and editors who wandered in and out of my conversations all weekend, handed me manuscripts at meal-times, in the ladies' toilets or during seminars, and even stood me numerous drinks at the bar when I was looking thirsty.

Such a hard life, being an editor ...

I would heartily recommend the York Festival of Writing to anyone thinking of getting into writing, or improving their lot there, for such a stellar cast would be hard to better.

"Didn't we have a luverly time the day we went to Bangor?"

Off to Bangor in North Wales this afternoon, to pick up my second eldest from university ... along with all her bags and general rubbish.

It's a long trip, but I shall be driving along with several happy thoughts in my mind:

• How I'm going to open the next intrigue-ridden chapter in my historical Tudor novel

• That I now have a most excellent literary agent to represent me in fiction.
  

We were in rainy Folkestone over the weekend, visiting my father and his sister's family down there in Kent. Tonight I'll be staying in a hotel near - hopefully sunny - Rhyl. On Friday and Saturday, Steve and I will be in Hayle for his daughter's birthday party, staying in a caravan near the sea, not many miles from Land's End.

That's three coastlines in one week. Not bad going, for someone who lives at the dead centre of England.

Literary agents, celebrity spotting, and surprisingly small toilets

I went into London today. To the infamous Ivy Club in the West End, which is for members only - no, I'm not a member, but the literary agent I was meeting does enjoy that distinction, which is apparently by 'invitation only' - and having dismissed tales I'd heard of dot-to-dot celebrities hanging out there, was actually rather astonished to find that it was no exaggeration.

I had a lovely conversation in the ladies toilet there - just the one rather small toilet, albeit with beautiful decor, as they obviously expect even celebrities to queue - with someone whose face I recognised instantly. But the name, of course ... well, it will come to me, but she's a well-known actress ... or maybe presenter ... or ...

I obviously need to start reading Hello magazine or something. I'm useless at celebrity-spotting. Should get my head out of a book and watch more telly.

Anyway, following my hour-long conversation with this chap, which was tremendously jolly and involved words like 'exciting' and 'excellent' being applied to my latest writing project, I can now announce that I have a literary agent again.

Some revisions to do, then I may have further good news. For now, it's enough to note that I am a very happy bunny.

By the way, I read somewhere that entering the Ivy Club is like stepping inside a giant iPod. It is. Though an iPod with a very hushed and elegant atmosphere. If it's possible to imagine that.

Is Blogging another form of Blocking?

Poets On Fire is now on MySpace!

Blogging versus Writing Poetry

I seem to spend inordinate amounts of time online these days, mostly blogging - not here on Raw Light, which as you've no doubt noticed rarely gets updated, but generally on Poets On Fire, where I tend to post something up every single day. Sometimes more than one event per day. Sometimes as many as five or six, in fact. Which is a time-consuming business and does effectively mean that I'm not writing as much as I could be if I didn't run Poets On Fire.

But, of course, if I didn't have all these tiring nooks and crannies on the net, and run a resource like Poets On Fire, which is visited by many thousands of poetry-interested people every month, would I have as high a profile in poetry as I do now?

When I was first starting out in poetry, as an ex-snooker player with almost no knowledge of the British poetry scene, or multiple British scenes in fact, the quickest way I could see of getting my name known and actually discovering something about the process of writing and editing poetry was to run a small magazine myself. Which I did, for nearly four years, and its name was Blade.

Now I don't have time to run a magazine, and frankly wouldn't have the patience nor the energy for such a vast undertaking. Complicated and emotionally fraught stuff like dealing with masses of poetry mail every day and putting a 60-odd page magazine to bed every few months seemed easy and fun in my late twenties and early thirties. Hard work, yes. But still fun and not so difficult to do.

In those days I had two daughters around the 10 - 12 years mark. Now I have three young children at home every day, being home schooled, and I just don't have the same levels of energy as I did when I was younger and fitter. So running a magazine is out of the question.

But writing up a few blogs in the wee small hours when all the kids are in bed seems like a fair sacrifice of my time if I get useful publicity in return, and perhaps the odd offer of a reading. After all, there's little point writing poetry all day in your lonesome garret if no one is ever going to hear of your work or offer you a paid spot at their local guest poetry night or literary festival.

Besides, it amuses me to post up all these strange and dynamic live poetry events all over the country, knowing that people actually visit and read the Poets On Fire blog every day, and that most of them will take some sort of useful information away with them. And it pleases me to think I'm providing a free service for other people like myself. Even if I'm sometimes a bit too weary and over-run with kids to provide it until quite late on in the evening.

So blogging probably is another way of blocking the creative outlet. But since buying a laptop recently, I've discovered that I can now write up my hand-scribbled poems on that in another room - even in bed, sometimes! - and not be tempted to go online and start blogging when I should be writing. Then I transfer them back to my Mac via a USB pen at some more convenient time.

Once a Novelist, Always a Novelist ... ?

Poems, blogging, all that is going well at the moment. But when a good friend of mine was recently surprised to hear that I was also a novelist, once published by Sceptre - seven years ago - it struck me that I have done very little by way of pursuing my fiction-writing career lately.

This is not through laziness - I have three full-length manuscripts lurking in dusty computer files, written over the past six or seven years - but simply through feeling very despondent about EVER getting an agent. I send these things off periodically and they come back with a 'No thanks' every time. It's hard not to give up and stick to writing the sort of things I know will get published.

But my friend was right. It's time to push harder at the prose, get back to my roots as a fiction writer.

Onward and upward!