Yesterday we had a thoroughly enjoyable day in Bristol, helped considerably by good weather and by one of those intuitive promptings which occasionally tells me that I should be somewhere. I have learned over the years not to dismiss these feelings too quickly.

Françoise had some practical objectives. She wanted to buy a new pair of shoes and also look for materials for her painting. My own magnet was the Bristol New Writers Festival, being held at the Bristol Folk House in Park Street. One particular event caught my attention: So You Want to Be a Writer?

Since I have now published two books, and am contemplating more, I thought it would be interesting to hear what representatives of the professional publishing world had to say to people who were thinking of becoming writers.

Discovering the Bristol Folk House

The first pleasant surprise was the Bristol Folk House itself.

From Park Street, the entrance doesn’t prepare you for what lies behind it. It reminded me of the TARDIS in Doctor Who: something apparently modest on the outside which turns out to be surprisingly extensive once you enter.

Behind the frontage is a collection of meeting rooms, a hall, café facilities and an attractive outdoor area. There was a relaxed atmosphere about the place which immediately appealed to me. It felt like somewhere designed for people to meet rather than simply somewhere in which events happened.

I would recommend the Folk House to anyone visiting Bristol who enjoys cultural and community activity. Even if you have no particular event in mind, it is worth knowing that it exists.

“Sorry, we’re full”

When we arrived, we were told that the writers’ event was full.

I wasn’t particularly convinced.

Anyone who has organised meetings knows that the number who book and the number who actually arrive are rarely identical. People become ill, trains are delayed, family matters intervene and some simply change their minds.

So rather than immediately disappearing back onto Park Street, we hung around.

Sure enough, we eventually got in.

There appeared to be around sixty people present, which in itself demonstrated something encouraging: there are plenty of people interested in writing, publishing and perhaps finally getting that half-written manuscript out of the drawer.

At the front were representatives from three organisations connected with writing and publishing: Writers & Artists, the Society of Authors and the Society of Young Publishers.

There was therefore plenty of expertise in the room.

Some avoidable problems

Unfortunately, the presentation did not initially make the best use of it.

The stage lighting was poor, which meant that the very people we had come to see were difficult to see properly. More seriously, the sound was not good enough for a meeting of this kind.

Some of the speakers talked very quickly and did not always project sufficiently clearly through the microphone. At one point I asked if the speakers could be encouraged to slow down.

One of them later acknowledged that she did indeed speak quickly.

There was also no spare microphone for members of the audience. Consequently, somebody several rows away would ask a question which many of us could not hear, followed by a perfectly audible answer from the platform.

This creates the peculiar experience of listening to answers to questions you haven’t heard.

For an event concerned with communication, these were fairly elementary shortcomings.

What was actually being attempted

There was one respect, however, in which my initial judgement of the organisation was too harsh.

About forty minutes into proceedings, we were told that there would be a break and that chairs would be moved away. At the time this seemed rather mysterious. After waiting for some time without the conventional meeting apparently restarting, I concluded that the event had simply lost its way.

Listening subsequently to my recording made me realise that this wasn’t quite fair.

The organisers had explained at the beginning that the event was deliberately divided into two parts. The first was a conventional panel presentation and question-and-answer session. After a short break, the chairs were to be removed so that people could circulate around the room and talk individually to the publishing representatives at their tables.

In other words, what looked to me like the collapse of the formal meeting was actually intended to be its transformation into an informal one.

The difficulty was partly one of communication and execution. From where I was sitting, it wasn’t sufficiently apparent that the second part had begun or exactly what we were supposed to be doing.

So I withdraw the charge that the meeting simply “collapsed from within.”

It didn’t.

But it certainly could have been managed and communicated more clearly.

What do you actually need in order to write a book?

During the question period, I felt sufficiently moved to make a contribution of my own.

I have met many people over the years who tell me:

“I’ve always wanted to write a book.”

Meet them a year later and they may say exactly the same thing.

The problem, I suggested, is contained in the words write a book.

A book is enormous.

The moment you imagine 50,000 or 80,000 words, perhaps 200 or 300 pages, chapters, editing, covers, publishers, agents and marketing, the mind has been given an excellent collection of reasons for doing absolutely nothing.

So I suggested forgetting the book.

Write one sentence.

That is all.

Once the first sentence exists, the brain has something to respond to. A second sentence may suggest itself. Then comes a third. Sentences become a paragraph. Paragraphs become a page. Pages eventually become a chapter.

And one day, rather surprisingly, you discover that you are writing a book.

For me, writing is essentially an organic process.

There are times when I feel less like the manufacturer of a book than its assistant. Something wants to be expressed and my job is to give it sufficient space to emerge.

I had remembered the response from the platform as rather more conventional: yes, but you also need to find an agent.

Fortunately I had recorded the event, and when I later examined the transcript I discovered that my memory had done the speakers something of an injustice.

My contribution was actually received warmly. One of the panel said that it was “really good advice” and agreed that thinking about an entire book could be thoroughly off-putting.

She then raised a different question: once you have written something, how do you get it into the hands of readers?

That is a fair question.

Do you really need an agent?

This was one of the more interesting aspects of the discussion.

There was considerable practical advice about approaching literary agents, but the message wasn’t simply that every serious writer must have one.

Indeed, the Society of Authors representative pointed out that most authors don’t have agents and made the memorable observation that having a bad agent—or a bad relationship with an agent—can actually be worse than having no agent at all.

For writers who do want conventional representation, the advice was sensible.

Research the agents rather than firing manuscripts indiscriminately around the country. Find people who actually represent your kind of book. Read their submission requirements carefully. Address the agent personally rather than writing “Dear Sir or Madam”. Treat the approach as a business proposition.

One suggestion was to begin with perhaps eight carefully chosen agents.

That struck me as much more intelligent than sending fifty identical letters and hoping one sticks.

There was also acknowledgement of self-publishing. This interested me particularly because it is the route I have taken.

The panel recognised that self-publishing can be a fruitful way of getting one’s work into readers’ hands. When this came up, I volunteered to talk to anyone who was interested in my own experience.

“Look for the flowered shirt,” I said.

I was not difficult to identify.

The publishing world has changed

One thing that struck me was how much the world of publishing has changed.

The Writers & Artists Yearbook has existed for around 120 years and remains a substantial directory and guide to the industry. It now exists alongside online resources and covers not merely finding agents and publishers but such matters as copyright, publicity, finances, self-publishing and artificial intelligence.

AI inevitably entered the discussion.

The Society of Authors is particularly concerned about protecting writers’ rights in an age when creative work can be absorbed into technological systems on an enormous scale. It has even introduced a scheme through which members can identify works as human-authored.

Another modern problem is fraud.

Apparently writers are increasingly being approached by people impersonating genuine publishers and agents. Some of these approaches are sufficiently convincing that the Society of Authors receives several enquiries a day from writers asking whether an offer is genuine.

This is probably particularly dangerous because aspiring writers naturally want someone to tell them that their work is wonderful.

Flattery is an extremely effective sales technique.

Writers need other writers

Perhaps the most worthwhile theme of the afternoon emerged towards the end.

Writing can be lonely.

Whatever romantic ideas we may have about the solitary author sitting in a garret producing a masterpiece, human beings generally benefit from contact with others attempting the same thing.

The speakers talked about writing groups, local Society of Authors groups, libraries, online communities and informal meetings where writers can exchange experience and encouragement.

The festival itself grew out of the Bristol Writing Collaborative, which meets regularly and welcomes writers without charge.

This interested me because it touches on something much broader than writing.

People need communities.

We may imagine that the internet has connected everybody with everybody else, but it is perfectly possible to have hundreds of online contacts and still lack anyone with whom you can sit down over a cup of coffee and have a worthwhile conversation.

Writers perhaps experience this particularly strongly because so much of their activity necessarily takes place alone.

The unofficial event

In the end, the informal part of the afternoon proved more valuable to me than the formal presentation.

I did what I normally do: I talked to people.

I encouraged several people who were contemplating writing and told them something about my experience of producing and publishing two books.

One encounter particularly stayed with me.

I met a woman who had suffered a stroke. It had resulted in three fingers on her left hand remaining permanently bent, but otherwise she appeared to have recovered remarkably well.

More interesting than the physical consequences was what the stroke had done to the direction of her life.

She had previously performed on stage. Afterwards, her priorities changed and she began doing other things.

There are events in life which divide time into “before” and “after”. An illness, bereavement, accident or unexpected meeting can suddenly rearrange the furniture of our existence.

We may not have chosen the event, but we still have some choice about what we do with what follows.

That conversation alone was worth going to Bristol for.

What I learned from the afternoon

Having listened again to the recording, I have modified my original judgement.

The event certainly had organisational weaknesses. The lighting should have been better. Speakers addressing an audience need to speak slowly and clearly. If questions are invited from the floor, there should ideally be a microphone so everyone can hear them. And when an event changes from formal presentation to informal networking, the transition needs to be unmistakable.

But I was wrong to conclude that the organisers had simply lost control.

There was a plan.

Indeed, listening afterwards revealed something else: there was considerably more useful information in the meeting than I appreciated at the time.

That in itself is interesting.

Our experience of an event and what actually happened are not necessarily identical.

Perhaps this is one reason why keeping a diary—and occasionally making a recording—is so valuable. Memory doesn’t produce a verbatim transcript. It edits. It emphasises. It interprets. Sometimes it even rewrites.

On this occasion, my recording enabled me to be fairer.

Twenty years later

I think the last writers’ event of this general kind that I attended was around 2006.

Twenty years is quite a gap.

The fundamentals of writing haven’t changed. You still need an idea, curiosity, persistence and the willingness to sit down and put words on a page.

But almost everything surrounding writing has changed.

Self-publishing has become vastly easier. Writers can reach readers without first obtaining the blessing of an established publishing house. Social media has transformed promotion. Artificial intelligence is simultaneously offering writers new tools and creating serious questions about authorship and copyright. Publishing scams have become more sophisticated.

Perhaps, therefore, my own understanding of the publishing world is due for an update.

That doesn’t mean abandoning my belief that writing is fundamentally organic.

Quite the reverse.

The publishing machinery comes afterwards.

First there has to be something worth saying.

Then there has to be that first sentence.

Following the nudge

Looking back, I am glad I followed my intuition and went.

The event was imperfect. Some things irritated me. Some things surprised me. I learned something about publishing, something about other writers and even something about the unreliability of my own first impressions.

Françoise found what she needed in Bristol, I encountered some interesting people, and together we enjoyed a fine day in the city.

And I discovered the Bristol Folk House, which I shall certainly remember.

Perhaps that is the larger lesson.

We often judge an event according to whether it delivers what was promised on the programme. But sometimes the real value lies somewhere else entirely—in the person sitting beside us, the conversation during the interval, the unexpected thought that occurs on the way home.

An imperfect event can still produce a perfect encounter.

You just have to turn up.

And perhaps writing a book is much the same.

Don’t worry too much about the entire journey.

Start with the first sentence and see where it takes you.