A writer's look at the writing industry and the Internet.

Some time ago I came to the realisation that attending events in the writing community would be a fun and educational way to spend time, would spur me on to do more writing, all while potentially generating friendships and contacts. A local literature festival was to be my first attempt at this last year, but two events clashing made that a non-starter.

To make up for that, I’ve decided to go for one of the big events of the publishing calendar: the London Book Fair. It takes place 19-21 April 2010 at Earls Court, and its website describes it as follows:

The London Book Fair is the global marketplace for rights negotiation and the sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels.

Taking place every spring in the world’s premier publishing and cultural capital, it is a unique opportunity to explore, understand and capitalise on the innovations shaping the publishing world. The London Book Fair brings you direct access to customers, content and emerging markets.

Makes me wish I had something notably pitch-worthy, providing me the dilemma of negotiating rights, sale and distribution…

So to be clear, it is not a literary festival where people leisurely read books and chat with authors and like-minded bibliophiles in between said authors giving talks about their new books, worlds or styles of writing. It is definitely an industry fair that helps determine the course of the publishing industry over the coming year, with wheeling and dealing happening all over the place.

In addition to the main Fair taking place from Monday to Wednesday, the weekend beforehand (17-18th) is when a number of seminars take place. And most of them are free.

It’s this combination of a ‘look inside the industry’ and seminars is precisely why I want to attend and have paid the £25 entry fee. I must confess it’s quite embarrassing looking at the attendee badge with its Matt Bruce – Author taking up most of the front, and I’m dreading the second shoe-drop at the Fair when I expect someone will ask, ‘Oh, so what have you written…?’ Still, this gets me access to all 3 days and any of the free seminars, though there is one paid-for  seminar I’m considering attending: How to Write For Screen: Film & TV Masterclass. It’s just a shame this 2½ hour class costs more than 3 days entry to the Fair itself…

I expect to attend more fairs and festivals during the year, so I’ll post about it here.

So who else is planning on attending these kinds of events in 2010, and where and when are they?

Flickr CC-BY-ND welcometoalville

On the subject of pantsing and first lines, I thought I’d share an interesting literary magazine with you called The First Line.

At the start of each year, they put up on their website the first sentence of a story (a writing prompt) for each quarter and tell you to have at it, ensuring you submit your story or stories to them by each edition’s deadline on the 1st days of February, May, August and November. According to their submission guidelines, The First Line will pay for fiction and non-fiction submissions that are accepted for print.

Their Mission statement:

The purpose of The First Line is to jump start the imagination-to help writers break through the block that is the blank page. Each issue contains short stories that stem from a common first line… The First Line is an exercise in creativity for writers and a chance for readers to see how many different directions we can take when we start from the same place.

Just to make it clear in case you missed it the first time: you can become a paid and published author for simply doing well what many of us were asked to do during creative writing lessons at school. You can see why it excited me, I’m sure.

If you’re like me and want a copy of an earlier edition before submitting, you can buy individual back issues via their online shop. I have their Spring 2008 (v10n1) edition of ten stories, which cost US$3.50 plus $5 international shipping to the UK. The book is about 21x13cm and 5mm thick, which is about the dimensions of a Commando magazine, but half again as tall (or was when I read them as a boy).

There are many of these kinds of literary magazines out there, to cover every genre and style, and come in various formats from glossy magazines to online PDF delivery. If you can’t find a listing in your Writer’s Market or equivalent, I suggest trying your preferred Internet search engine.

To give you a basic idea, I spent a couple of hours a few months ago and discovered the following:

• Albedo One
• Interzone
• Literary Review
• Notes from the Underground
• Rogue Worlds and Simulacrum

Then there are magazines your parents could probably tell you about:

• Analog
• Asimov’s Science Fiction

And lastly special-purpose publications such as the Hope #1 and Hope #2 anthologies, which were created to raise funds for the Australian Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal 2009. (I find this amazing and inspiring).

The world is your shellfish.