Archive for category Events
My First RNA Conference and an Award
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Successes on August 15, 2023
I’ve just returned from my first ever Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) Conference and my head is still in a complete whirl. I feel enthused, energised, educated and exhausted!
It was a hurricane of informative sessions on How to be Happy as a Writer, How to Write 19K Words in a Weekend, Marketing, Author Branding, Synopsis Secrets and much more. Sarah, Duchess of York and successful romance author, Marguerite Kaye were there to talk about how they write collaboratively – unfortunately I couldn’t make that session but I was told that it was brilliant.
All of the above was interspersed with meeting lots of new people, catching up with the few I already knew and meeting, in the flesh for the first time, some of the other Choc Lit (an imprint of Joffe Books) authors.
The weekend had three stand out highlights for me:
Firstly, the chance to meet up with Emma and Jasmine, Editorial Director and Project Editor respectively from my publisher, Joffe Books. We were taken out to to a swish bar off the College Campus and given wine!
Secondly, the terrific atmosphere at the Saturday night Disco. The dance floor was full of women (& a tiny handful of men!) all night. Who knew romance writers were such party animals?! The DJ looked on in a very bemused way.
Thirdly, the announcement that I was the winner of the Elizabeth Goudge Award for my one thousand word opening for a novel on the theme: Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder. Nobody can have been more shocked than me!
My award made the evening a full house of awards for Joffe Books because another of their writers, Katy Turner, won the Joan Hessayon Award for New Writers with her novel, Let’s Just Be Friends. This award is for authors whose novels have been through the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme and are subsequently accepted for publication.
I now need to go and lie down in a darkened room to get over my ‘conference lag’.
ALCS Focus Group & Networking
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Resources, Writing on July 11, 2023
Last week I took part in the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) focus group in
ALCS = Free Money!
Birmingham and in the networking event that followed. It was the first time ALCS had ventured out of London since Covid and the first time I’d taken part in any sort of focus group.
For those of you who don’t know, ALCS makes sure that writers receive the money they are entitled to for secondary uses of their work, such as when someone photocopies a magazine article or a book extract. Understanding where ALCS get the money they pay to writers is complicated and I suggest reading what it says on their website.
There were ten of us ALCS members, ranging from academics to poets, novelists and indie authors, around the table in the focus group plus various ALCS staff members (as well as cookies, muffins and hot drinks to fuel us!) Various topics were thrown at us for discussion and the ensuing conversation was recorded. Points that came up:
- Initially some people had been reluctant to sign up to ALCS because ‘free money’ in exchange of bank details sounded like yet another internet scam.
- The fact that the membership fee is only taken from a writer’s ALCS earnings was a major selling point, because there is no risk of not receiving enough money to cover the joining fee.
- Very few of the writers present were aware of the ALCS podcast.
- Few of the writers present properly understood where ALCS source the money and how it is shared out – we were just happy to receive the payments!
- The big discussion point was Artificial Intelligence and how it might be used to plagiarise our work or to create new, ‘original’ pieces of writing. ALCS are currently lobbying MPs and the government to bring in laws that will protect writers from any negative effects of AI.
At the end of the discussion we were joined by other writers and offered prosecco, wine and lovely little canapes! It was interesting to discover all the different types of writing served by ALCS. I spoke to a script writer for the Horrible Histories children’s television series, a feature writer for Bauer magazines, an indie romantic novelist and an academic who got nothing on publication of a textbook but had received regular payments from ALCS because it was widely photocopied.
Conclusion: ALCS are definitely on a mission to protect and campaign for writers’ rights. If you have had anything published then you have nothing to lose by joining ALCS and you may well receive some free money!
(Members of the Society of Authors receive free ALCS membership)
Still Waiting for News
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Lifestyle, Writing on February 24, 2022
Last November I mentioned my novel was out on submission. It still is. Off it went to seven publishers and the responses have dribbled back. So far there have been four rejections and three publishers still to hear from. For many of us ‘getting an agent’ is the pinnacle for which we aim and we assume that after we’ve achieved that, everything will fall into place and we will become successful, traditionally published authors. Be warned: that is not always the case! However, hope springs eternal …
In the meantime I’m finding it hard to focus on a brand new novel and my ability to write short stories seems to have gone AWOL. So I’m keeping my writing brain in gear by producing short articles for The People’s Friend and the Mirthy website. Obviously this is not as glamorous as having a novel published but at least I’m no longer writing on spec and am getting paid for my words.
I am also considering doing Alison May’s ‘Re-ignite Your Creativity and Find Your Voice’ online course in order to kick the fiction part of my brain back into gear. But first I need to find some space between the day jobs and my other commitments …
In other news, we’ve been making marmalade in our house.
My husband and I do this every year and it takes hours of simmering the peel and filling the kitchen with steam. This year we used the slo-cooker to cook the peel overnight and it made things a lot easier, quicker and kept the windows free of condensation. The recipe is here – a bit late for this year’s Seville oranges but, if you’re a marmalade love, save it for next year.
Shared Reading in Sutton Coldfield
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Events, Non-writing on May 19, 2021
Earlier this year I did a 3 day Zoom training course in order to become a volunteer Reader Leader for the charity The Reader.
That training has now come to fruition and my own fortnightly Shared Reading in Sutton Coldfield Group started on Zoom last week. We hope to move to face-to-face meetings in Sutton Coldfield library as soon as restrictions allow (my fingers are tightly crossed!).
The participants in a Shared Reading Group have no homework – all the reading is done aloud during the meeting (as the leader I do have the homework of choosing and preparing the texts). The reading usually comprises a short story and poem and the two texts may share a theme. We take a pause at relevant points in the story and discuss what has been read, hypothesize about what might happen next and pick out any parts of the text which strike a chord with us or that we don’t fully understand. The poem will be read aloud a couple of times before we start to drill down into its possible meaning. It’s not an English Literature lesson (I have no relevant qualifications!) and there are no right or wrong answers: everyone’s opinion is valuable and valid because we all take different things from the text. The things that we take away might educate the way we live our lives.
And participation in the group is free!
For our first meeting we read The Bet by Anton Chekhov as our story. It tells about a bet between two men – if one can live in solitary confinement for fifteen years he will be paid two million dollars by the other. During the reading we discussed who might win the bet, the way the ‘prisoner’ spent his time and what effect the isolation had on him. You’ll have to read the story to discover the outcome of the bet!
We followed this up by reading For Whom the Bell Tolls by John Donne and talked about whether we are all valuable to society.
I’m excited to be getting this group started!
There’s more information about how Shared Reading can help depression, loneliness or simply bring like-minded people together on The Reader website. There’s more about the Sutton Coldfield group on the Folio website.
A Few Interesting Nuggets
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Resources, Writing on October 17, 2020
I’ve had a day of writing events.
First up was a writers’ networking meeting organised by Writing West Midlands:
The chief executive, Jonathan Davidson, explained how the selection process for the writer development program Room 204 works – each year there are around 150 people for 15 places, but a worthwhile scheme for ’emerging writers’ if you can make the grade.
The Arts Council England is now open again for applications for Developing Your Creative Practice – grants from £2000 to £10000 are available, but be quick because they close on 5th November.
And a reminder about the free courses offered by Futurelearn and be edX.
Then it was off to Bristol Literature Festival and Build Your Social Media Presence with Tom Mason. He told us that social media posts that include images get 150% more engagement than those without. He recommended using Lumen5 to create mini promotional videos to use with social media and Canva for graphics.
Next up in Bristol was a panel discussion between Phoebe Morgan, editorial director at Harper Collins, literary agent Kate Hordern and book blogger, Anne Cater. Phoebe explained the importance of the hook – it is the selling point to an agent, on to a publisher and then on to supermarkets and book shops. It’s also essential that the book fits a recognised genre, otherwise even the best written book is likely to fall by the wayside. Kate Hodern echoed the importance of hook and genre and mentioned the usefulness of being able to draw comparisons between your book and others already out there. She added that younger agents are often more hungry to take on new writers than older, more established agents who already have a large stable of writers. Anne Cater gave an explanation about the blog tours that she runs for both mainstream publishers and indie authors. She and Phoebe both agreed that, hot on the heel’s of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, cosy crime is likely to be the next big thing. There was a general consensus that psychological thrillers are still hugely popular but to be successful, they need to be better than the books being published five years ago and need to offer the reader something different to what has gone before.
Please take the above nuggets and use them as you see fit!
Finally, a couple of months ago I recommended Readly for accessing a multitude of magazines digitally. I now have a link offering you a two month trial subscription if you fancy trying it out: Readly 2 Month Trial. The link is valid until 31/10/2020.
Tips for Remote Conferencing
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Lifestyle, public speaking on September 18, 2020
It feels like everything has been cancelled or indefinitely postponed this year.
But every cloud has a silver lining. Many of the literary festivals, writing workshops and bookish events have been re-engineered to take place online, either via Zoom or some other remote conferencing facility. This means that events which were previously too distant geographically to attend are now within reach. Plus, many are also being made available for free!
There’s an interesting article in the November 2020 issue of the US writing magazine The Writer by Melissa Hart giving tips for how to make the most of these remote events. If you can access the magazine (I use Readly) it’s worth a read. If you can’t, here are the salient points for conference participants:
- Put yourself on mute if you’ve got children/pets/background noise.
- When taking a break from the conference action, turn your camera off as well as muting (you don’t want others to see you wandering around in a smart top and pyjama bottoms).
- Have a tidy, neutral background.
- If the time of day allows it, use natural light otherwise try a white bulb about a foot in front of the screen (not behind you or you’ll appear like a silhouette).
- Put the laptop on a pile of books so the camera is slightly above eye level.
The original article also contains useful information for conference staff and instructors.
To get you started in the online writing world: Arvon are running a number of courses and readings ,My Virtual Literary Fest is connecting readers with authors (and there is a free e-book to download every month for members) and Harper Collins at Home is hosting a number of author events.
For some people another advantage of online events is that it can be less daunting to speak and give your opinion from behind a screen rather than in front of an audience. But if you’d like to start readying yourself for a return to ‘normal’ and the opportunity to speak in front of a group, Public Speaking for Absolute Beginners has lots of tips for addressing in audience in many different scenarios. It is available on Kindle, Kobo and in paperback.
#MarketYourMarketing Workshops
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Promotion, Resources on September 10, 2020
My Very Basic Marketing!
I want to give a shout out to the very generous Ellie Pilcher. She is running a series of free Zoom workshops entitled #MarketYourMarketing. The workshops are principally aimed at those taking their first steps in a career in book marketing. However, anyone can signup and it’s useful for an author to be aware of what goes on behind the scenes when a book is published or to apply some of Ellie’s advice to the marketing strategy for a self-published book.
So, in order to broaden my own horizons, I signed up to Ellie’s first two workshops: How to Write a Marketing Plan and How to Utilise Social Media to Promote a Book, the latter will also feature Claire Fenby from One More Chapter.
How to Write a Marketing Plan took place last week and is now available to watch on YouTube. There were over a hundred people in the meeting (all muted!) to watch Ellie’s presentation. The main purpose was to show how to create a book marketing plan during the interview process for a job in publishing. However, as an author, I found it interesting and picked up on the following points:
- The importance of pinpointing the audience for the book, for example: gender, age, beach read, Christmas gift etc. This enables the marketing to be correctly targeted.
- Publishers generally allocate large marketing budgets to writers who are already big names and often there is no budget at all for some books. No budget means creative thinking is needed plus more input from the author.
- It’s important to get a buzz going pre-publication around the cover reveal and the launch of pre-orders. At this point assets for social media are effective (gifs etc.) along with trying out different straplines for the book and using fun photos.
- Post-publication the emphasis shifts slightly to sharing reviews and a blog tour plus more social media.
- A person has to see a book mentioned three times before they might be tempted to buy. So it’s important to keep putting the cover image out there.
How to Utilise Social Media to Promote a Book takes place on Tuesday 15th September at 18:00. This is followed on Tuesday 29th September by How to Ace a Publishing Job Interview. Both of these are free and can be booked via Eventbrite.
A Zoom Writing Retreat
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Writing, Writing Exercises on July 13, 2020
Although lockdown is gradually easing, there are still lots of things we can’t do. Groups meeting together indoors is one of them. This has led to the rise and rise of Zoom, video conferencing software that most of us had never heard of at the beginning of March but now use regularly. I take part in Speakers’ Club and Shared Reading on Zoom. We have family catch-ups and quizzes and there’s been guided alcohol tasting too!
On Saturday I tried something new – an all-day Writers’ Retreat on Zoom.
It was organised by Sophy Dale of Fully Booked and ran from 10:30 am to 4:30 pm. There were around twenty of us online and Sophy stopped any chaotic, cross conversation by keeping us all on mute. Instead of speaking we typed in the chat box a few sentences about what we intended working on. This included novels, short stories, blog posts, a translation and a guided meditation, among other things. For those who didn’t have a project in mind, Sophy provided writing prompts and also offered guidance to anyone who was struggling or had questions.
Introductions and explanations over, Sophy set a timer for 45 minutes, we all minimised the Zoom window and started writing.
Timed 45 Minute Writing Sprints
It’s amazing how a defined time limit and the knowledge that others are beavering away too helps creativity! I focused on the chapter I was writing and the words came quickly.
After 45 minutes we were all called back together to add more comments to the chat window and then take a five minute comfort break before the next writing sprint. At lunchtime Sophy gave us an hour away from the screen and encouraged us to get some fresh air (I mowed the lawn, which went some way to cancelling out the ‘guilt’ I felt for spending a whole day on writing).
Through the course of the day we had five writing sprints. I switched from churning out words to reviewing the structure of the story and ironing out parts of the plot that didn’t work.
At the end of the afternoon there was time for comments on the day and everyone deemed it thoroughly beneficial. Sophy is planning on doing it all again sometime later in the year.
It struck me that a retreat like this would be easily organised by a group of writing friends – but it would require someone to have the paid-for version of Zoom. I fear the continuity of the retreat would be lost if participants had to keep logging into a new meeting every 40 minutes!
Park Run First Timer
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Lifestyle, Non-writing on January 4, 2020
I took part in my first Park Run this morning – 5 km (3 miles) over varied, undulating terrain in Sutton Park. 
Park Runs are held all over the country at 9 am on Saturday mornings. They are free and anyone can take part. All standards of fitness are welcome and at Sutton Park there was a sign ‘Walking Group Meet Here’ – so there was no need to even run. The events are organised and marshalled by volunteers and there is a friendly atmosphere geared towards encouraging everyone to get outside and move more. The only preparation needed before joining a run is online registration. This is a one-off process which generates a unique barcode for each runner. This barcode must be printed, taken to the event and scanned once you’ve crossed the finish line in order to get a time for your run.
At Sutton Park there was a briefing just before the start for first-time runners. The course was described and I had second thoughts when ‘Hill of Doom’, ‘trip hazards’ and a ‘single file wooden bridge with a slat missing’ were mentioned. My aim became to get to the end without falling over.
With my eyes on the ground I successfully negotiated the hazards. The ‘Hill of Doom’ was short and very steep, so I have to admit to walking here. Everything became easier once the course hit tarmac and I became a lot more confident. It was downhill to the finish and to that lovely feeling of having accomplished something.
Park Run results hit the website later the same day. My time was 34:45 and my results emails says, “You finished in 272nd place and were the 78th female out of a field of 398 parkrunners and you came 5th in your age category”. I don’t know how many were in my age category but 5th will do me!
The similarity between writing and running has been pointed out many times before and my Park Run brought it home to me again. Writing and running are both hard work and we don’t always enjoy the actual process – but the ‘high’ produced by having run or having written can’t be beaten!
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