Category Archives: Just James

Anything I feel like putting online that may or may not relate to anything.

Nottingham Writers’ Christmas party

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Photo by Tim Mossholder at Pexels. 

I attended my first ever writers’ Christmas party and I’m glad to report it was as debauched as any office party I’ve been to. Granted no-one was trying to shag each other on the stairs and there weren’t any drunken bouts of vocal honesty that could ruin your career, but there was plenty of drinking. The £80 budget went on wine and bottled lager with a random orange juice cartoon thrown in for aesthetic purposes. The food paid homage to a 70’s tuppaware party with peanuts and two flavours of crisp and a tray of mince pies. Perfect. The only thing missing was pigs in blankets or ‘pigs in duvets’ as I once mistakenly referred to them as – my ignorance born of a vegetarian diet.

As always Michael Eaton was on fine form, recalling earthy local stories from his childhood and then filtering in a couple of more high brow escapades. He’s a man who obsesses about which side of the river you were born on, which he believes can be detected in slight inflections of accent. Hearing him dissect up the city you’d think we were living in Derry. He should be made Mayor of Nottingham, with Al Needham as his trusty Depute. Michael will be giving a talk at Nottingham University soon as part of the Year of the Writer programme put forward by Writer-in-Residence Arthur Piper. I strongly urge readers attend this not only for the way he commands the stage but because he’s a man who underplays an amazing achievement in film and television with real Cowboy swagger.

The event was also used as a brief launch for Weathervane Press who have just published Make Less Strangers by twenty-something author Steven Wilcoxson. Steven is too shy to read his own work in public so Ian Collinson stepped in, but Steven was happy to answer any questions. It was quite a surreal, almost ventriloquist type experience, like watching a father nurturing his son. Unfortunately authors can no longer hide behind the written page. Marketing and self-promotion are deemed vital statistics and a necessary prerequisite if you are to survive in these murky waters. I enjoyed the written extract and it reminded me a little of Chris Killen in its precise, detached listing of events. As Steven is a local lad we won’t be allowing such modest mannerisms to thwart his career. We intend to kidnap him from his bedroom and drag him down to Stone Soup studios for a podcast and rid him of his stage nerves.

Weathervane also announced that they will be publishing Megan Taylor’s second novel The Dawning in January. This is great news as we announced in our last issue that they had a call for submissions for a female author and sure enough it has paid dividend. If you’re a female author and have a manuscript in the loft, get in touch with them now!

Watching Weathervane grow is one of the pleasures of being a member of the Nottingham Writers’ Studio as you get to see first hand the various complexities the industry throws out. For example, Weathervane’s second release by Marty Ross Aztec Love Song came out on Oct 1st which in the publishing industry is known as ‘Super Thursday’. This is when all the major publishers launch endless celeb autobiographies as potential stocking fillers, ensuring a Chav stampede down the aisles of Asda. The downside for Weathervane is it means review space gets gobbled up in the press which is of course the life blood of a small publisher. Luckily, (oh lucky, lucky) LeftLion was on hand to slip a review into our December issue, courtesy of Theatre Writing Partnership coordinator Bianca Winter. Bianca is a literature sadist who recently read the entire Booker longlist and now plans to do similar for previous years. She might even write us an article on her findings if we’re lucky. So watch this space.

Meeting people of a similar persuasion is a reason for joining the studio because it helps to dispel all the elitist myths about writers being all lardy da. Instead you have a group of normal people all trying to make a living from the thing that they love with exactly the same fears, hopes and dreams as you and I. Journalists discuss the merits of forming sub groups to share ideas with each other about emerging markets, scriptwriters ask for advice on locations for plays, poets tell you about performance tips and author’s such as Nicola Monaghan smile when they see their face on our Stg. Pepper mock up, alongside Bin Laden, Gary Glitter and the Fishman. I just hope that this hub of creativity is able to gain continued funding and that the wealth of talent inside – with peanuts wedged between the gaps of their teeth – are able to work together and create revenue streams that will enable it to become self sufficient.

This Friday (Dec 4th) WriteLion will be presenting an hour special at the Arts Organisation and introducing Hello Hubmarine. Entrance is free, bring your own bottle, peanuts not included.

The Writers’ Toolkit

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Author Sophie Hannah was one of the highlights at the conference.

Author Sophie Hannah was one of the highlights at the conference. Photo – press picture for the Writing Conference.

Rather than have to unpack the hundreds of boxes sitting in my new home, I decided instead to go to the Writers’ Toolkit – a writer networking conference in Birmingham. It was a good decision. The trip had been planned for a while and was a birthday present to my girlfriend, which suggests that my present buying has become more pragmatic with age or that I’ve finally found the right match. (If she accepts a night out at Lakeside for the arrows as her Christmas present, then she’s definitely the one.)

The conference was organised by Jonathan Davidson, who I’d met previously when interviewing Tommy Wieringa as part of the Go Dutch project, and involved four sessions. The choices I opted for were; De-mystifying the Digital for Writers, Pitching Ideas, Understanding Publishing and The Fine Art of Editing. To ensure we got our money’s worth, my girlfriend went for four separate sessions. These were then discussed afterwards in the mammoth queue leading out of the Bull Ring car park into the oncoming football traffic.

I’ll be reviewing the event for LeftLion so I won’t go into unnecessary depth about each of the sessions but instead pick out two highlights. The first was meeting Alex Pryce who is the brains behind Poetcasting and is only situated down the road in Leicester. This website showcases various poets performing readings so that you can listen before deciding whether to go and see them. A simple yet fantastic idea, especially as poetry lends itself more to the ear than the eye. But most surprisingly, or perhaps not considering what I am about to state, it turned out that we had a mutual friend- Eireean Lorsung. Eireean is a poet from Minneapolis who came to Nottingham to study and was shocked at how little poetry there was. Since then she’s set up her own poetry night and has ensured she is associated with just about every event, night or publication in the region. She’s a truly inspirational woman and a great asset to Nottingham. I’m also waiting for her to come up with a similarly great idea as poetcasting. Maybe prosecasting would be too simple a steal…

The other highlight was meeting the author Sophie Hannah. She was absolutely hilarious and gave a dark and comical insight into the world of publishing, reminding the audience to have the humility to accept criticism but the strength in their own convictions. A tough balance but certainly true. In addition to dispelling various myths and some very salient advice regarding selecting an agent, she also kindly offered to read the first three chapters of my book and give me some feedback. She offered to do this after I explained the unfortunate experience I’d had so far with two publishers and that I was unsure whether to go with a third and smaller publisher or opt for an agent. It’s such a nice feeling when authors like Sophie genuinely go out of their way to give you a little guidance and advice when they don’t have to. It made the perfect end to a perfect day. Let’s hope that the East Midlands Writing Conference in March 2010 is as well organised and with as humorous and helpful speakers. As it is my birthday in March I’ll be expecting my girlfriend to repay the pragmatic present buying, which shouldn’t be too difficult seeing as she is helping to coordinate the conference.