You have to be careful with language. What you say is not always what others hear, and words may not mean the same for them as they do for you.
On Thursday I went to a Writers Day organised by Swansea and Trinity Carmarthen Universities’ Creative Writing departments. I grabbed a free ticket when I saw it, and expected a programme to follow. I also expected something different to what I got. As I said to my friend, “The writers didn’t get to do any writing.”
With no advance programme, I had no idea what to expect. It was a day of interviews with writers, agents, editors and poets. Once I got over the initial disappointment that there would be no workshops, I actually enjoyed it very much. Here are a few snippets:
Jon Gower: Oblique Strategies is a set of cards developed to give writers a random idea to help when they get stuck. See Wikipedia for full explanation. They are now on a website here.
Gwen Davies, editor of the New Welsh Review, described editing as ‘extreme reading’ – that description appealed to me.
Philip Gross the poet: “The world is full of people trying to give us answers. We need writers to explore and expand on the questions.”