Feedback - Mr Jan Butter
When a blank page mocks your ambition and your ‘to do’ list is tugging at your sleeve, time spent writing can feel like more than just a waste. It can feel like a sin. Travelling to the Lake District to spend a few days doing nothing but talking about, indulging in and sharing the art of writing is just about a sinful as it gets. But, be assured, this sin isn't deadly - it's an absolute must.
When your very soul burns to put pen to paper and set the world alight with solid gold bon mots, being in a room with brother and sisters who feel exactly the same way is just /so liberating/. Like the first time you walked barefoot on fresh green grass, the words, 'please, read us what you've
written’ feels…so…right.
Your spouse, sibling or best friend will never understand what it’s like, that writing itch. Oh, they’ll try and help. They’ll buy you a new fountain pen or books on how to write a best selling novel.
Bless them.
But you’ll always meet with disappointment when you reach out to touch fingers stained royal blue with ink of a thousands biros and find squeaky clean digits.
On this course, for just a few days, you’ll meet with, eat with, and even – if it’s overbooked - share a room with folk who DO understand. Not just fellow scribblers who have fitful dreams of the day they’ll be signing book after book in their local WHSmith, but also real life authors. Almost god-like men and women who can reach up and pull their novel down off a bookstore shelf and tell you why, how, when they wrote it.
There are sessions on publishing your writing, character, structure, dialogue, pace and writing for particular markets,. There are sessions that show you how set your creative self free and let the words write themselves (almost).
And when you’re not writing, or talking about it, you’re standing lost for words gazing at the scenery around you, breathing in painfully clean air or sitting around eating food that makes Joe one of the finest chefs on God’s green earth.
For me, the biggest single lesson I learned was that it’s OK to write. It’s OK to put time aside to write; it’s OK to want to write and that I shouldn’t pay any heed to the gremlins in my head telling me I’m daft for even picking up a pen or switching on my laptop.
Sadly, the thing that stopped me from attending any subsequent courses was a job in post-tsunami Sri Lanka.
But what better place to set a novel…?
Mr Jan Butter
World Vision LTRT Communications Manager