These are the events I know about, either because I'm involved in them or because I helped arrange them. They fall within a strand called the Writing Business and are designed to be very practical. A workshop is 1.5 hours; the others are talks which till focus on the practicalities of the topic, and last one hour:
How to make a living as a writer (workshop) - Keith Charters
Writing non-fiction (workshop) - Angus Konstam
Self-publishing (workshop) - Keith Charters
Writing in a Recession - Mark Le Fanu (Gen Sec of SoA), chaired by me
Writing crime fiction (workshop) - Lin Anderson
Contracts workshop (workshop) - SoA staff
How to structure a story - Lin Anderson
How to make a publisher say Yes - me
Blogging - Caroline Dunford and Helen Fowler
Fight for your rights as a writer - me
Writing fantasy - Alan Campbell
Writing the perfect submission (workshop) - me
Publishing Scotland panel on trends in publishing - me on panel, don't know who with
Ghost writing - ?
Can you learn to write and if so how? - Sam Kelly, Lin Anderson, Caroline Dunford, chaired by me
Creativity (workshop) - Caroline Dunford
Self-publishing - Keith Charters
Dealing with rejection (workshop) - Caroline Dunford
Writing for teenagers (workshop) - Keith Gray
Writing for children and teenagers - Viv French and me
Writing short stories (workshop) - Susie Maguire
Writing for young children (workshop) - Linda Strachan
Creating a series - Aline Templeton
Writing for theatre - Zinnie Harris
Writing biography (workshop) - Angus Konstam
Writing romance (workshop) - Eileen Ramsay
Even if you can't come to an event, do come to the book festival. I am there most days and would love to meet you. Know me by my shoes, as usual (except when it's raining). The book festival have got rain down to a fine art - last time there were plastic ducks on the accidental ponds and the sculptures depicted sheds and things semi-submerged in mud. And ice-cream still rocks in the rain.
Maybe we should have a blog picnic .... Hmm, I could be tempted. I have organised a picnic in the book festival for ther last three years and every year it has rained; on the other hand, every year I have blagged a marquee. Yay for bribery.
Here is a fab pic that Tim Duncan has just sent me of the above-mentioned ducks. Is that a hippo lurking?
