Scottish Association of Writers Conference

What a great SAW weekend conference I attended from Friday until Sunday afternoon, an annual highlight of my year. Full of workshops, competitions, guest speakers, great accommodation, food and company, what's not to like! This year was the 50th anniversary which made it even more special. Isn't this a fabulous cake that was made for the special conference?

This time, I was adjudicating the Pitlochry Award for a romance novel (first 15,000 words plus synopsis) and very enjoyable it was too. I absolutely loved the winning entry and really hope the author finishes and submits it to a publisher. On the Saturday, I delivered a PowerPoint presentation on 'From Idea to Novel' in my workshop slot, which seemed to go down well.

Over the weekend, I attended an excellent workshop on poetry where Sandra Ireland had us creating our own poems (or ideas) from an object and a piece of text. On the Sunday, I sat engrossed at the fascinating seminar from delightful Robin Cutler of Ingram Spark. She had come all the way from America to join us, and was taking the chance to visit some of Scotland for the first time.

I had been looking forward to this, since the rights to most of my novels reverted to me and I'm deciding on whether to make them available only on Amazon, or to use Ingram Spark for their wide distribution. One of the most important changes they will be making soon is to offer authors an easier template in which to upload their books. Think I need to have a serious discussion with husband about the way forward, as you do have to buy your own ISBNs.

The weekend wasn't all work and competition results, however. On the Friday evening after dinner we had 'Bookaversity Challenge' where four teams competed in a University Challenge-type quiz all about books - with great hilarity at the not very loud buzzer on each table and shouts of 'we answered first'! Afterwards, those who could go the pace, went up to the clubhouse to hear the various talent on offer. Whisper... I rashly decided to sing one song. Fortunately it was a great, informal atmosphere and we had plenty of variety. More than half the delegates had also gone to bed by that time - or the bar.

With my writer daughter!

On the Saturday after the gala dinner, we had the presentation of all the competition awards. After that, we listened to an inspiring speaker (crime writer Alex Gray) whose serious writing career had begun at the SAW many years ago. The highlight of the evening was a fabulously funny drama: Carry on Sleuthing (an hour long), performed by four amazing writers who took the various parts, complete with accents and silly costumes.

Most of them are crime writers so we were given time at the end to come up with the solution to 'who was to blame for the murder on the ship and how was it committed'. Some guessed part of it correctly but there was even a twist at the end! What a great way to end the evening.

Roll on next year.
Rosemary