As ever, in among a mini-course, two workshops, a dozen one-to-one meetings and several dozen informal conversations, sober and otherwise, that made up my weekend at York, I mentioned a fair few blog posts that might be useful to someone.
If you want to get a flavour of this year's festival, veterans Debi Alper and Andrew Wille have posted about it, aspiring writer Jo Hogan has written very sapiently about what she learnt from her second festival, and this is a round-up of my impressions from past years.
But, really, York is all about writing better. So here are a few posts which might help, roughly grouped under the headings of my workshops, although, as you'll know now even if you didn't know it last Thursday, all roads tend to lead to psychic distance... If I've missed one that you'd like to read then drop me a comment on this post and I'll dig it up. And if you want to explore further, just click on The Tool-Kit here, or on the link up at the top on the right.
WRITING SEX
By the way, I forgot to recommend Elizabeth Benedict's classic, The Joy of Writing Sex, which is excellent on everything from first glance to last cigarette, taking in along the way condoms, perversions and true love. And since, as I was saying, writing sex is exactly the same as writing anything else, just more difficult, her book is also pretty darn' good as a general how-to-write book.
Ten Top Tips for writing Sex Scenes
The post that discusses writing sex when there's no sex showing, and the Gaudy Night quote.
HISTORICAL FICTION
What counts as Historical Fiction?
Is your project historical fiction, biography, or life writing?
My next few Historical Fiction courses and workshops, including full details of Harrogate History
SELF-EDITING
Showing and telling and, separately, How to Tell, but keep it Show-y
Filtering, Scaffolding and How to Perform an Explain-ectomy
Narrators and Viewpoint series
Ten Ways to Move Point of View (and don't let the self-appointed experts tell you otherwise)
Voice, and, separately, 17 Questions to help develop the voice of your story
Cold-blooded decisions when inspiration fails
Plot and Story, including a link to the Andrew Stanton TED talk "Story-Telling is Joke-Telling"
Getting from one scene to the next
The novel-planning grid (for taming your novel as well as getting started)
GETTING PUBLISHED
What's the difference between literary fiction and commercial fiction?
Making a living as a writer? Here are the ways it might work for you.
FESTIVAL FALL-OUT
Bewitched, boggled and now what?: where might you go from here?
That's all the posts I can think of, but, as I say, do shout if there's one you can't find and would like to read, and I'll dig it up!
Until next year at York!
