View from the Cheltenham festival

I was taking part in several events, an afternoon workshop on how to get published, a weekend workshop on managing your life as a writer, and then the launch of our new book on parenting (with Gill Hines, It’s not fair! Parenting the bright and challenging child, Piatkus).

As part of my preparation, I went through the festival programme and worked out what I could fit around my own commitments, making tough choices (eg Mark Watson or Jack Dee, cruelly scheduled at the same time).

Looking at my programme now I am amused to see that some genetic throwback guided my notation system. As a child, I remember it used to irritate the family that before anyone else got to look at The Radio Times there would be a line, and maybe an asterisk – or even two – next to anything my father considered important viewing. Quite without thinking I have adopted just the same scoring system, although he has been dead for more than 20 years.

So this, on paper, was the structure of my weekend. As ever though, it is the chance interactions, the atmosphere of the time and the whole thing reviewed with hindsight that tend to dominate how you feel, and what gets consigned to memory. I remember my daughter showing me a diagram from her A-level psychology textbook demonstrating how some body parts have greater sensory response mechanisms than others. An illustration of my weekend would be similarly skewed.

The weekend workshop was requested quite late in the day, and when asked by artistic director Sarah Smyth for an outline and a bit of copy to go in the programme I drafted the following, in about five minutes flat:

Do you have a passionate desire to write but find stickability difficult? This workshop focuses on you the writer: what sustains you, how to create and support a work ethic and how to take yourself seriously. Particularly helpful advice on how to defend your writing habit to the wider world, bemused by an activity that consumes time but doesn’t earn – yet.

Maybe because I wrote from the heart, or maybe because spontaneity aided my brain, the bunch of people drawn by this simple bit of text were the most immensely well-matched group. And once there we grew together; exchanged confidences and hopes; confided our weaknesses; had a group photograph taken – and have already set up an online community so we can remain in touch. It was a fabulous experience, in the true sense of the word.

So often when engaged to deliver, you end up as the major beneficiary, and that was the case in Cheltenham this weekend. I am profoundly grateful.

Best wishes,

Alison Baverstock (author and trainer)

Read more about Alison, including her tips for new writers and getting feedback on your work, in our Insider Interviews section.

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