Five Things to Love about the Swanwick Writers' Summer School

I'm just back from the Swanwick Writers' Summer School. Anything that survives 66 years entirely through voluntary effort must have magic ingredients. Magic, as you know, disappears quickly in a puff of smoke, so I resolved to write down what makes Swanwick unique while it was still fresh in my mind. In the event, I had to wait until the power of movement was restored to my body and a semblance of coherent thought returned to my brain. The last afternoon's 'Dregs Party'* on the Hayes Conference Centre lawn, and the unaccustomed exercise of the last night disco, has delayed this post slightly. But here goes:

1. Dancing with a lion. I was relaxing with a small whisky (okay, a large one) after a hard day's workshopping, when the bar began to fill with characters from the Wizard of Oz. Dorothys, Tin Men, Straw Men, the Wizard himself. The people I was chatting with didn't bat an eyelid. I consulted the programme, and saw that 10.45pm was scheduled for the 'Fancy Dress Disco'. I am full of admiration for people who study their programme carefully enough to arrive prepared with a Wicked Witch of the West outfit, a Dorothy wig, or a full lion suit amongst their changes of clothes. Having initially made excuses about my need for an early night, midnight found me twirling the lion around the dance-floor. It was a new experience for me, but then I've led a sheltered life.
2. Heritage puddings. The Hayes Conference Centre provides a marvelous venue, deriving charm from its history, ornamental gardens, and traditional dining facilities. Be careful not to sit at the end of a table, or you may end up trying to serve lunch from tureens and platters to people who are in the middle of a detailed description of the underlying themes of their work-in-progress. But oh, the crumble and custard! The food is a comforting, freshly-cooked reminder of a bygone age. Best not to weigh yourself when you get home.
3. White Badgers. No, not more animal costumes, just a means of identifying guinea-pigs new to the school through the colour of their badge. Not in order to play tricks on them, but so that seasoned Swanickers can be friendly and rescue any lost souls in search of a workshop room. The Summer School also subsidises a number of young writers to attend the school for the first time. Like other first-timers, or White Badgers as they are known, they spend the first day or two wondering if they've made a terrible mistake and hiding away in dark corners. Later in the week, they are to be found improvising plays, sharing their creativity, joining in with the buskers, and providing fresh legs on the disco dance floor.
4. Technology. The Centre has a number of modern workshop and conference rooms, equipped with the latest presentation aids. Xanthe Wells's carefully prepared slides for her first session describing a creative approach to novel writing failed to appear on the screen, despite the intervention of a series of clever people applying a rational approach to problem solving. Xanthe, undaunted, showed us the way to access the hidden, creative, two-thirds of our mind iceberg; the part, in other words, which needs no Powerpoint slides. Later in the week, Robin de Jongh gave a workshop on how to market ebooks. He got our attention by frightening us with some big numbers; the thousands of ebooks being published each week, and the billions of webpages out there trying to attract attention. He did provide reassurance in the form of a cunning formula which I will share with you. Sales = Audience / Competition. The secret is to write about something so unique and obscure that you won't be lost in the depths of page two hundred of a Google search.
5. The age range. Nearly three hundred people attend the school, the youngest being nineteen, and the oldest being ninety or thereabouts. I strayed into the lively birthday party of a young eighty-eight year old called Ravey in a lobby. Imagine the comic potential of a group of around fifty such summer schoolers trying to understand Twitter. Enormous respect to children's writer Karin Backmann who boldly attempted to cross the technology age divide and get Swanickers tweeting each other. The trouble is, someone always asks, "What's it for?" And that's like asking, "What is the meaning of life?" A one hour workshop is insufficient to cover such philosophical questions. This was my second time at Swanwick and again I came away having learnt invaluable lessons from people who have been writing for at least a decade longer than I have. The secret to a long writing life? Keep getting the words down, then edit them carefully. David Hough shared his self-editing method in the most useful two hours of my writing education. I was sure he was speaking just to me, and I suspect everyone in the room felt the same. (Please feel free to point out the errors in this piece through the 'Comments' section below. They are all placed deliberately to test you. I wish.)

Did I say five things to love? There must be at least fifty. I haven't mentioned the opportunities for lakeside meditation; the entertaining evening speakers; the poetry, script writing, and storytelling; or crime writer Simon Hall on stage with only a guitar to preserve his modesty. Next year's Writers Summer School is between the 8th and 15th of August. If you are a writer, young, old, aspiring or experienced, put it in your diary now. A week spent in the company of other writers provides a rich diet of inspiration and a cloak of friendship which will last a whole year of being chained to your writing desk or table.

* The Dregs Party is a means for participants to avoid lugging home half-consumed bottles of wine, whisky, gin etc. Some come to Swanwick well prepared. I'm told the Wicked Witch of the West brought her fridge.

The Holiday Diary

Caroline is back from kite surfing in California and wanted to tell me all about it. She said Cresta Wave, the woman running the course was amazing. She was a Scottish Duchess or a Dame who had given up her title to follow a spiritual path. Caroline said that Cresta reminded her of Regina, except that Regina wasn't a full-on lesbian. Cresta believed kite surfing was the perfect expression of freedom and a way to connect with The Big One.
"I know Regina was a deluded, power hungry egomaniac, but there was a kernel of truth in her animist beliefs. Especially the stuff about the orgasm. I think you should make it into another book, Robert."

"Did you connect with The Big One in California?" I asked, ignoring her suggestion. The last book had caused so much trouble.
"Not this time," said Caroline. "I had too many bruises." She lifted up the skirt of her dress to reveal centre-forward legs. "I loved it though. We all got really close, living in tents on the beach. I spent the whole week in a bikini. I will definitely do it again. I'm really brown, look." She hitched up the skirt again and pulled her knickers up over a butt cheek to demonstrate the contrast in skin tones. "How was your week?"

I said the Swanwick Writers' Summer School was very like kite surfing, only without the sea, surf, sunshine and women in bikinis. I said a woman called Alexa Radcliffe-Hart had taught me how to write a literary novel, at least in theory. Caroline's suggestion set me thinking.

"Are you serious?" I said, wondering if what C and I referred to as  The Scottish Affair between ourselves could be the basis for a ground-breaking literary novel. "Serious about publicising the events that led to you nearly losing your job and me being almost barred from the bar? You were dead set against it a week ago."

"I had a revelation," said Caroline. "When I finally achieved lift-off and was flying over the waves at fifty miles an hour wondering how to achieve a soft landing, I realised that life is short. I thought it might be very short indeed. I decided it was no good letting the Regina's of this world steal all the limelight. I want people to know." She looked at me hesitantly, almost shyly. "I want you to know, too."
"Know what?"

Caroline reached behind her and picked a notebook up off the kitchen table. She handed it to me.
"Before you read it, I need to explain something. Otherwise you'll get the wrong idea." I took the notebook. It had a hard cover and good quality paper. I opened it at random, and there was Caroline's loopy script in flowing felt-tip pen, different colours for different paragraphs, smudged here and there with drops of sea water.

"It started as a diary of the holiday," she said. "But then I started thinking about the spirit guides and Regina's orgatron regime. I know I was stupid to get sucked into it, but it did do something for me. You must have noticed." I had noticed; sex with my wife had been amazing since Scotland.
"So promise you won't hold it against me when you read how I went to the wrong address in Soho? I misheard what Xena said. It honestly was a genuine mistake."

I turned to the beginning of the notebook, intrigued, and wondering if the lady did protest too much.



Summer School (Part Two)

When I left you I was on my way to a two part workshop with the winning title 'Self-Publishing Erotica.' Autumn Barlow, the presenter, generously shared her hard won, down to earth, and totally practical insights into getting erotica and erotic romance out to the hungry readers. It was so professional the hecklers at the back who had come prepared from breakfast with apples and bananas left their fruit unwaved.

The next day was the turn of crime fiction. Add together romance and crime and that's a huge proportion of what is being read today. Sex and violence. Some enterprising authors manage to tread delicate lines and combine the two. How interesting that in this age of complex societies and technological wizardry our main leisure preoccupations are still fear of attack and the fun bit of procreation. It's like we were still sitting round a camp fire hoping the wolves, bears and neighbouring tribes stay away long enough for a good shag on the fur skins.

The Swanwick Writers tribe are nomads who meet up for an annual festival every August. There is no camp fire as such, but the School does have some tribal features. The tribe leader, Diana Wimbs, leads a group of elders who work their fingers to the bone all year so that tribe members can sit around making up and telling stories. There aren't many disputes for the elders to resolve; any problems or outlandish behaviour are just seen as material for the next novel or short story.

Ajay, the eAgent who was midwife to Shameless Ambition, is here at Swanwick with me to make sure I don't drink too much whiskey and say the wrong thing. Unbelievably, he was asked to run a workshop on the Boutique ePublishing Phenomenon. I didn't go myself, but someone who did go said it was a piece of shameless promotion. "Brilliant," I thought, "that's the perfect title for the fourth book in the series."

I asked Ajay how the workshop went.
"It nearly didn't go at all," said Ajay. "John lent me a laptop and set everything up in the lecture theatre. The appointed hour arrived, but no participants. Oh well, I thought, no one is interested in ePublishing. I confess I was a little disappointed. As I was leaving the room, notes under my arm, a man came in. 'Oh well,' I said, 'it's just you and me.' He shook his wise head and pointed to a door on the other side of the corridor.

'We're all in there,' he said. I looked into the other lecture room, and there were rows of expectant faces, wondering where the bloody hell their workshop leader had got to. I had set up in the wrong room. So they nearly didn't get to hear about Caroline's exploits in Frankfurt."

That evening, I got some funny looks from people who came up to me and said, "Oh, so you're Robert Fanshaw..." Fortunately I met another barrister who drinks gin, writes books and didn't look down on me with pity.

The finale, apart from the 'dregs party' and the last night disco (sadly, the pictures are not of sufficient quality) was provided by Deborah Moggach, she of Tulip Fever and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel fame. She told us about her adventures in the screen trade, and how her milkman almost stared in an aborted adaptation of Tulip Fever.

Now there's an idea! In the film of Shameless Ambition, who would you cast in the role of Caroline, or Melody, or Sid, or Von Wolfswinkle? Caroline's already decided the suave lawyer will be played by George C., even though he's considerably older than me.

Suggestions?