{"id":5250,"date":"2012-11-06T16:48:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T05:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zenashapter.com\/blog\/?p=5250"},"modified":"2021-08-30T16:36:05","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T06:36:05","slug":"a-writing-weekend-in-sydney-ewfsyd-gcoz-exquisite-exhaustion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/a-writing-weekend-in-sydney-ewfsyd-gcoz-exquisite-exhaustion\/","title":{"rendered":"A Writing Weekend In Sydney #EWFSYD & #GCoz \u2013 Exquisite Exhaustion"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know when you\u2019ve been to the gym, or you\u2019ve gone for that extra long walk, and your muscles are throbbing? You\u2019re exhausted, yet feel good for it? Well, that\u2019s how my writery mind feels today. This is what my weekend entailed\u2026<\/p>\n

Friday night \u2013 GenreCon cocktail party<\/span><\/h3>\n

Main activity: catching up with familiar writing buddies and meeting new ones. Drinking champagne.<\/p>\n

Saturday day \u2013 NSW Writers\u2019 Centre: Emerging Writers\u2019 Festival<\/span><\/h3>\n

Main activity: teaching a creative writing bootcamp I call \u2018saturating wordage with vividness and voice\u2019.<\/p>\n

Sunday day \u2013 continued GenreCon festivities<\/span><\/h3>\n

Main activity: catching up with familiar writing buddies and meeting new ones. More champagne.<\/p>\n

Did I see much of my family this weekend? Nah.<\/p>\n

Did I do much writing? Nope.<\/p>\n

But did I have a good weekend? H*ll yeah!<\/p>\n

Writing is such an isolated profession\u2026 I\u2019m sure that the vast majority of my friends can tell when they\u2019re the only person I\u2019ve spoken to all day! I do tend to let my chitchat out in one go.<\/p>\n

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A room full of writers at the Emerging Writers’ Festival, held at the NSW Writers’ Centre.<\/p><\/div>\n

So when there\u2019s a writing conference, festival or convention on nearby, I simply have to attend \u2013 if only for the sake of my friends! I don\u2019t drive (yes, I know, my bad), so the travel was a little elongated for someone who actually lives in Sydney (12hours on public transport in total \u2013 what fun!). But it was so worth it.<\/p>\n

Writers are lovely fascinating people, and I feel privileged to mingle among them.<\/p>\n

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Me teaching writers how to saturate their wordage with vividness and voice.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Plus, I got to teach some of my creative writing exercises to a workshop group full of enthusiastic writers AND one of them said afterwards:<\/p>\n

\u201cI learnt more in that hour than I have the whole festival!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thank you, Nick Dickinson. Given the awesome panels at the festival, your compliment was clearly an exaggeration. However, it was one I much appreciated.<\/p>\n

For those who missed both the EWF and GenreCon, here are some highlights…<\/p>\n

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Sam Twyford-Moore introduces the panel (left to right): Mark Dapin, Jane Gleeson-White, Charlotte Wood & Lisa Dempster.<\/p><\/div>\n

The \u2018Seven Enviable Lines\u2019 session with Charlotte Wood<\/a>, Jane Gleeson-White<\/a> and Mark Dapin<\/a> was an inspirational start to the EWF. Writers were encouraged to follow their passions and not get put off by rejection, edit others and be edited, get organised, take days off, read off-genre, avoid clich\u00e9, decide to be confident but don\u2019t live too much inside your brain and, perhaps most importantly, pay super!<\/p>\n

There were a few discussions throughout the day about social media. Given that I\u2019ll be teaching writers at the NSW Writers\u2019 Centre<\/a> all about social media next year (watch out for my \u2018Social Media for Writers\u2019 seminar), these discussions interested me greatly.<\/p>\n

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David Henley & Jennifer Wilson chatting about digital epublishing.<\/p><\/div>\n

David Henley suggested in \u2018Exploring the Digital Space\u2019 that writers and readers were being distracted by interactivity. He values well-told stories, good solid content he doesn\u2019t need to think too much about when reading. Whereas Jennifer Wilson argued that readers today live an interactive life, and writers should conceive interactive alternate plot lines for their epublications to give them greater complexity, and thus appeal to puzzle-craving brains.<\/p>\n

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Left to right: Tim Sinclair<\/a>, Pip Smith & James Bradley<\/a> discussing form.<\/p><\/div>\n

Later, however, in the session on \u2018What Shape Must It Take\u2019, James Bradley<\/a> called interactive forms within a novel format gimmicks, weird artificial add-ons that don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

The session that attracted the biggest crowd, however, was \u2018The Pitch\u2019. Representatives from Harper Collins, Random House, Allen Unwin, Hachette and Eureka Street gave writers advice on how best to submit and also how not to submit.<\/p>\n

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A plethora of publishers advise aspiring authors!<\/p><\/div>\n

The best \u2018how to\u2019 advice was from Michael at Eureka Street<\/a>, who advised writers to include \u201ca kind word for your editor\u201d in covering letters.<\/p>\n

The best \u2018how not to\u2019 advice was from Mel at Harper Collins<\/a>, who assured writers that it really wasn\u2019t a good idea to send your manuscript:<\/p>\n