The Dragons Prepare

They were very friendly, really quite lovely dragons. Held as part of the Headingley LitFest, the event was billed as a literary Dragon's Den, a chance for writers to pitch their book concept to a panel of publishing industry professionals, all in front of a paying audience. I have to admit that I'm rather fuzzy as to the circumstances around which I ended up appearing as a contestant, but there was no getting away from it. My name was on the running order.

I sometimes wonder if my writing self has a mind of its own. Actually, I often wonder that. I feel like a different person when I'm writing, or at least when I'm in the flow of writing. It's then that I just sit back and watch the words forming on the page. There are times, of course, when it doesn't flow at all and my writing self refuses to show up. I sit back and observe the blank page remaining stubbornly blank.

I've been writing in a bubble for some while now. I write in a notebook and pour words on to paper, drawing lines and circles on the page to make sense of it all, before copying it out in a more coherent form, still playing around with the words on the physical page. I then transcribe to the computer and play around some more. Hours and days and weeks disappear. The characters that emerge start to assume a life of their own.

One particular young woman kept making an appearance, in different settings, demanding her story to be told. I found her to have an insistent personality. A number of disconnected fragments started to join up, to the extent that I could discern a narrative arc, only vaguely at first, but then - prompted by the need to have something coherent to present at today's event - rather more clearly. An outline for a novel emerged.  

I had not shared this with anybody until today. I had every expectation of it landing like a lead balloon but it seems to have taken to the air. Against some accomplished competition, and coming as a totally wonderful surprise, I was selected on the night as the winner of the novel category!

There are no guarantees of anything, of course, but the promise of some feedback and some pointers is invaluable. I think most writers are full of insecurity about their art, so every little recognition that you might have something worth sharing with a wider audience is a big thing.

Many thanks then to the Headingley LitFest for the opportunity, to Alison Taft, chair of the panel, Jamie McGarry of Valley Press, and Anna Glendenning of And Other Stories.

Do check out that last link. And Other Stories is a CIC, just as we are here at Blipfoto. They are a small not-for-profit publishing house. I love their ethos.

Later edit: an account of the event on the LitFest Blog.