Jaffa Cakes & Mini Eggs (AKA My First Ever Creative Writing Workshop)

On Tuesday night, I ran my first ever proper workshop session at Chesterfield Library. It was for a group of young writers called the Write Here Group, which is run by River Wolton – a recent Derbyshire Poet Laureate and workshop wizard extraordinaire, who I’ve worked with before and who will be chairing the panel discussion I’m taking part in for the Derbyshire Literature Festival next month. I'd been asked to talk about getting published and how to write believable fiction that's set in the future.

Was I nervous? Definitely. I’ve been running a small writing group at the library where I work for several years now, so I wasn’t quite as terrified as I might have been if I was going into this cold, but it was still a slightly scary prospect. What if no-one turned up? What if they thought I was boring? What if they thought the exercises I was going to do with them were crap? I even had an anxiety dream the night before, where I had to meet the group at a party in the hallway of a large, posh house. Everyone was talking so loudly I couldn’t make myself heard, even when I shouted. Then I realised I’d forgotten all the worksheets I’d so painstakingly put together and printed out. NIGHTMARE.

Thankfully, the reality was completely different. When I arrived at the library, I was met by River, and when we got down to the meeting room, two of the group were already there. I chatted to them about the novels they’re currently working on, which sound amazing. There were chocolate mini eggs, and grapes to snack on, and when the rest of the group arrived someone had even brought a box of Jaffa cakes with them.

So far, so good.

We kicked off by talking about how I got my agent, and how to look for an agent that represents your genre (look at the Writers and Artist’s Yearbook, and find out who represents the authors you like to read in your genre – which is how I found mine). Then we did an exercise about how to make up believable future names, which resulted in creating a character biography, then writing a scene featuring that character on the theme of ‘most frightening/exciting day in their life’.

After that we did a more general exercise about worldbuilding, and then I had the opportunity to answer more questions about writing and getting published. Before I knew it, the two hours were up. And I’d loved every minute of it! The group were awesome – friendly and talented, and the quality of their writing just blew me away. It was an honour to be asked to speak to them. 

A huge thank you to the Write Here group and River for making me feel so welcome!