A Fun Day

I talked about the upcoming Book Fair and Writing Workshop on May 10^th in last month’s blog. I’m delighted to say that it all went well. It wasn’t without its problems but overall, everyone who came enjoyed the day, much to the relief of all four of us on the organising committee.

We had a couple of authors contacting us asking to book a table at the very last minute, but we managed to squeeze them in and ended up with 23 authors on the day! When we started planning back at the end of last year, we had anticipated that we might be able to interest 10 to15 people to come and sell their books. At the beginning of April there was a sudden rush.

My role was to organise the tables and plan the layout. As we set out all the tables on the day before, it was evident that my plan to arrange all the tables around the outside of the room wasn’t going to work so we ended up having to put some tables down the centre – though that did allow us to agree to the two novelists who applied at the last minute joining us.

It’s always a worry when you organise an event for the first time that no one will turn up. I had a few sleepless nights at the start of May wondering if I’d only have a handful of people come to my Creative Writing Workshop even though it was free. It had taken me a good week’s work to put together a workshop using a series of pictures on a PowerPoint presentation. I wasn’t encouraged on Saturday morning when the numbers attending the Book Fair were disappointingly low.

I needn’t have worried. I ended up with 30 people. Not only that, I was amazed and delighted when even the beginner writers were happy to read out their short pieces from the four or five writing exercises that I’d set them. The quality of their writing was impressive. I was truly astounded. How could they possibly come up with such wonderful ideas and write so fluently and professionally in only the 5 minutes that I’d given them? They all went away pretty chuffed with themselves (that’s an expression for my American and Canadian subscribers to have to decipher!) and what they’d managed to achieve. Several attendees came up at the end to say they fully intended to turn one of the pieces into full length stories. Result! If I can inspire a love of writing in my audience, I can congratulate myself on a job well done.