So on Day 2, I had 3 events planned, one of which was a writing workshop. But my first event wasn't until 2pm again so I could have a lie in - well best made plans and all...I slept really badly unfortunately so was up quite early. I managed to procrastinate a fair amount once I was up though. But I still decided to leave much earlier than necessary so I could have a further wander around - plus I needed to find the venue for my workshop.
I managed to spend more money this day also, but part of it was on a planned Christmas present for my family so it can't be bad :-) and a book on how to write Science fiction and Fantasy. I found the Church very easily so I decided to go and get lunch - in a different Caffe Nero this time and I spent a good long while in there, eating, but also doing some writing and reading and searching online for a variety of things.
The writing workshop was on Writing Convincing Characters with Diana Souhami, which was 3 hours long. I did enjoy the workshop and especially liked that Diana didn't make you read out your work from the exercises she gave us, if you didn't want to and just asked for volunteers - of which there were plenty I can tell you. some people definitely love others out there to know they can write and feel the need to be validated in this, to hear people say, oh yes that was good. Of course all writers want to be published but there are maybe more subtle ways to advertise this? I dunno, maybe I'm the weird one who doesn't let anyone read anything?
The only thing i didn't really like about the workshop was that it didn't seem to have a strong structure and consisted mostly of people asking questions - some very good ones of course, but it felt a bit like we (or rather the people who actually asked questions) were leading it rather than the guest speaker.
After this, I spent a lovely hour in a cupcake cafe, eating a cupcake of course, and also having a read of my newly purchased book of the day. Following this, I went to the talk of the Myths of Ancient Egypt, which was definitely my favourite talk of them all and I really enjoyed it, it was fascinating and I considered buying her book also, but it was £25!!! and was convinced I could probably find it cheaper online and a quick search on Amazon proved me right- it was £14.49 on there; bit of a difference! The speaker was a lady who teaches the subject of Ancient Egypt in Manchester University and she chose just a few myths but they were all very interesting and I'd like to read more on the subject.
My final talk of the day wasn't until 9pm, so I took myself to Bella Italia for dinner, which was a slightly odd experience on my own, but I've eaten alone in restaurants before, it's not so bad and I didn't really have time to feel alone as they brought my food very quickly.
This final talk of the day was called Horror Stories and there were 2 horror authors there talking generally about the appeal of horror stories and obviously spoke about their own books they'd written and both read a piece from their latest book. Strangely enough, when they said who the authors were, I recognised one of them as being the author of my book, How to write science fiction and fantasy so that was an interesting plot twist :-) so I got her to sign it for me.
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