Image Credits:- All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated with many created in Book Brush. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Many thanks to The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick, Gemma Owen-Kendall, Liz Pacey and Babs Trevitt for images from Swanwick which feature in my Chandler’s Ford Post this week.
Hope you’ve had a good week. I’ve spent some of it thinking back to what I was doing at Swanwick the previous week! Been lovely to get out and about with the dog and to go swimmimg again. Also, hooray, we’ve had some rain here and it is a lot cooler.
Next big event for me will be the book signing for Seeing The Other Side in Salisbury on 5th September and not long after that there will be a blog tour for the book. All good!
Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today
Now this was a post I’ve been looking forward to sharing. My post on Chandler’s Ford Today this week is Swanwick 2026 and Book Launch for Seeing The Other Side.
I celebrate both events in this post and I share a mini diary of what courses I went to on which day. That alone will show the wide variety of topics on offer and there were many more I could easily have chosen.
Plus I celebrate the thought of catching up with writing friends, which is the focus for many a Swanwicker when we get back to The Hayes again.
I look at the launch, the benefits of it being held at the school, and how taking part in Open Prose Mic Nights can help with book sales too, as well as being great fun to take part in and listen to.
Hope you enjoy the post.
Hope today has gone well. Was on the final leg of my journey home from Swanwick this time last week. (Thursday 13th August – one of the hottest days ever for travelling!).
Delighted to say Seeing The Other Side is now available through Waterstones. Just spotted it on there. Am also looking forward to my signing event at Salisbury URC on Saturday 5th September.
Writing wise, I’m also busy with editing work, as well as the writing. I may well try to draft something for a competition over the weekend. It’s time I put my hat in the ring for one of those again.
Writing Tip: Schedule as much as you can, it takes the pressure off. I use quieter periods during the week to draft future articles etc and, once done, get them scheduled. I put a note in my diary a week or so before it is due to go out to just run though the posts again. There are always little things to pick up and correct.
For fiction, use the quieter times to draft flash and short stories. The time away from them will help you see them again with fresh eyes and again should help you pick up errors. While you can’t schedule stories as such, you can do a lot of prep work which then frees up time for a thorough edit (rather than a rushed one) later.
Hope your day has gone well. Not bad here. Gentle swim earlier.
Will be sharing Swanwick 2026 and Book Launch for Seeing The Other Side on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Looking forward to sharing that as it is a celebratory post for both sides of that equation! See above.
Looking forward to seeing everyone at the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group next week. It was good there was a contingent from ACW at Swanwick.
Don’t forget it won’t be that long before my next author newsletter is out. Writing one of these is a sure fire way of spotting how quickly the year passes! To sign up head over to my landing page at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com
I share tips, news, story links and more here.
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
Having a quiet end to the week, which is proving soothing. Mind you, not that I allow my characters to have a soothing time of it, far from it. As well as loving creating characters, I do enjoy dropping them right in the mire and then finding out what they do to get out of it again. The best characters will find a way out.
Having said that, I don’t drop my characters in it for the sake of it. The situation they face is something well within the bounds of likelihood given who they are, where they are and so on. Everything should seem as if it could be true even if it is set in a galaxy or other world far far away etc.
It is the characters who have to be believable in terms of their attitudes, behaviours and their reactions.
Such fun to create, mind you!
Pleasant day and a quiet one. Was an idiot earlier in the week and had a fall. All okay but am feeling somewhat (a) bruised and (b) sorry for myself so am focusing on writing. It takes the mind off other matters. Writing is useful like that at times. It’s also nice not to have to go anywhere but I do wish there’d been a better reason behind it! I hope to resume things like swimming next week.
Plodding on (literally in my case!), am pleased to be resuming my normal writing routine. Sometimes after a break it can be hard to get back to normal again, but not this time. It’s like putting on the perfect pair of gloves – am straight back into what I’d usually do again. And a break can be useful to help recharge the batteries, inspire you (as was the case for me with Swanwick) and more. All of that can be used to help your writing for the longer term.
It helps a lot to think about your writing in the longer term. I’ve found it easier to cope with rejections by taking the longer term view, for one thing, because I know now something which is rejected today may, with work, be accepted by someone else later. That has happened to me a fair bit. It helps to know often rejections aren’t due to what’s wrong with your work but because the market has recently accepted something similar or they’ve gone off a certain theme for a while.
Mind you, after a break, it still pays you to look at the piece again. What can be done to improve it? What alternative markets could there be?
Good luck!
I have various ways into starting a piece of flash fiction. Sometimes I know the character first and therefore the kind of situation which would suit them best. Sometimes I know the theme and then work out what kind of character would best suit it.
Sometimes, of course, I’m giving a topic to write to so I list what could come from that and then go with the one which makes me really want to write the tale up. I use prompts of all kinds.
My focus though is on the character. For me they make or break a story. If I’m gripped by them, I’ll read on no matter who or what they are, where they are based, how many claws they have etc.
Creating characters has always been a great love of mine and in short form fiction, you get to do this a lot. Match made in heaven I’d say.
Fairytales With Bite – A Fairytale Event
What would characters in your magical setting consider to be a fairytale event? What would the fairies themselves consider to be worthy of note, given the magical business is their daily bread and butter, so to speak?
What one character would consider to be a fairytale event would be thought of in opposite terms for another character. So why the opposing views and which one would be right given they can’t both be?
Now I’ve just returned from what I consider to be a fairytale event, The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick which was made even more special this year given I had the launch there for my third flash fiction collection, Seeing The Other Side. These moments stand out in a writing life because you know they happen every so often. They cannot by their nature be everyday things.
So what would be magical moments for your characters and why do they feel this way? Was it something they’ve had to work for or has someone else helped them? (In my case it was both. I wrote the book obviously but the school organising launches was a real blessing for me and the other eleven authors who had launches there this year).
How often could these magical moments happen for your characters or are they always one-offs? Also, is there someone who wants to crash the party here? There’s always a jealous one somewhere in the fairytales. Good source for story ideas though.
This World and Others – Events in the Magical Realms
What events would your magical realm hold? Are they similar to events held elsewhere – on magical worlds or not – or are the events you share in your setting unique to that setting? What do your characters make of the events? Is it compulsory for all to go to these things and, if so, how is that enforced, given there is bound to be a rebel or two somewhere?
Are there historical connections to the events your world holds? We have things like Remembrance Sunday. What would your world want to commemorate? What would it definitely want to forget?
Would your characters take part in your world’s equivalent of re-enactments? The best ones of those are spectacularly good and do bring history home to people so what would your world do to ensure the “right message” got through here.
And when the events are over, and folk are returning to their normal life, do they ever consider what the events meant to them or are they just glad the whole thing is over?
Not everybody likes a show and there are story ideas there too.
