Last month the talented writer and poet, Caoilinn Hughes dropped in to a Word Away zalon. Caoilinn hails from Ireland and is an award winning writer and poet. Her debut novel Orchid and The Wasp, won the Collyer Bristow Prize. Her poetry collection Gathering Evidence and her short fiction have been awarded a slew of prestigious prizes, including the Moth Short Story Prize and an O.Henry Prize. Her second Novel The Wild Laughter was published this summer and is a masterclass in character, voice and dialogue!

“What I love about publishing,” said Lennie, “is the tension between commerce and art. Publishing comes down to one person telling another, you must read this book!” We kicked off the zalon talking about Lennie’s own experience of writing a book, A Bite of The Apple, A Life with Books, Writers and Virago, published last February just before the world shut down. It’s a “part memoir, part history of Virago and part thoughts on over forty years of feminist publishing.”

Writing a novel can feel like entering a dark forest without a map to follow or a torch to see where you’re going. “Start where you start,” said Emma, and try not to get locked into the idea of “getting it right”. Focus on getting the words down and don’t worry too much - you can change every word of the first draft. Accept that you don’t know all the answers just yet and keep moving on. Try and embrace the idea it’s OK to work with uncertainty and that “not good enough is good enough for now.”

I fired up Zoom on a Saturday morning this month, rather than the usual Monday evening slot, welcoming a global audience and introducing Australian author Charlotte Wood who was at home in Sydney. In an alternate universe Charlotte was meant to be visiting London for the UK publication of The Weekend and had kindly promised to be a Words Away guest for a summer salon. Alas Corona put a halt to everyone’s plans for 2020.

I really enjoyed hosting our recent zalon with the novelist and screenwriter Emma Jane Unsworth. It’s only the second online event I’ve run and I’m still a bit nervous of zoom, however I’m always a wee bit nervous before doing any event but I needn’t have worried! Emma was such an enthusiastic and convivial guest and generously shared a wealth of writing tips. Plus we had a wonderful audience too of about 80 people who after the first part of the talk took part in an excellent Q&A session.

Hello Zalons! While we’re not allowed to gather as a group under the same roof, Words Away has made the move to hosting literary salons online. Andrew Wille was our inaugural guest in 2016 and so it was a real buzz to have him back as our first Zalon guest along with an audience of over eighty writers from the UK and abroad! We followed a shortened version of our usual format and the topic for the evening was Revising and Editing. I started the ball rolling with a few questions for Andrew and then the audience joined in for a hearty Q&A session.

I hope you are all keeping well in this strangest of times. I’ve been thinking wistfully about last month’s salon, Parallel Worlds: writing recurring characters and serial fiction with the novelist, critic and journalist, Amanda Craig. The salon took place on the 9th March before the lockdown came into effect here in the UK. While there was a rising sense of anxiety in the air that night I don’t think any of us then quite grasped the enormity of what was about to happen on a global scale.

We started the new Words Away year with a salon exploring the intriguing topic of Writing Sex in Fiction. The venue had been undergoing renovation and the café, freshly painted, felt chilly without all of its customary furniture - so we wrapped guest author Leone Ross in a blanket and she entertained us with her warm hearted and free ranging take on how to write an authentic sex scene.

We welcomed the novelist Ayisha Malik last month to Words Away for a festive and fascinating salon about writing humour in fiction, a brilliant way to see out the old year. Humour is so subjective and it proved to be an intriguing if not complex topic. Dubbed the "Muslim Bridget Jones”, Ayisha writes novels about everyday life in contemporary Britain. She approaches her subjects with a light touch and looks at themes of love, friendship, family and culture. Ayisha was born and raised in South London and worked as a book publicist and an editor before becoming a full time author. She’s also known for ghost-writing the Great British Bake Off Winner Nadia Hussain’s adult books

We welcomed editor and publisher Richard Beswick, the Managing Director of Little Brown/Abacus, to Words Away last month. If any of us had high hopes for our unpublished manuscripts they may have been somewhat dampened after listening to the realities of the industry. Fortunately it wasn’t all bad news, and we were much encouraged by Richard’s palpable enthusiasm for books and his work. For Richard a good book is defined by well-drawn characters and compelling story-telling. He spoke about about the pleasure of “small victories” as well as surprise hits and the excitement of discovering a book that can’t be pigeon holed.

When Paul Burston joined us at Words Away to discuss Writing Psychological Thrillers we found the Tea House Theatre Cafe surrounded by Extinction Rebellion protesters and almost as many police officers. The protesters had been moved on from Leister Square to establish a tent city outside the Teahouse Theatre complete with a kitchen and a bank of portaloos. The Pleasure Gardens were so transformed that my co-host, crime-writer Caroline Green, temporarily lost her bearings on route. Paul, like a true crime writer, said it had crossed his mind that the portaloos would make the perfect setting for a murder…I’m fairly sure he was joking.

The autumn season of Words Away launched last month with a sell-out salon, Identity and Belonging: Writing Character and Place, with guest Diana Evans, author of the award-winning novel, Ordinary People. It was a thrill to welcome everybody and begin a new year of events not least because it also happened to be our third birthday! Diana talked about her process as a novelist, what inspires her to write and also shared some ideas to apply to our own writing practice.

I hope you’ve had a lovely summer. I watched a flock of house martins feasting over a meadow this morning - a sure sign that autumn is on its way and time to stock up on paper and pencils for the new term…

We had a wonderful salon earlier this month with guest author and short story supremo Adam Marek. Adam covered everything you need to know about writing short fiction and shared lots of inspiring ideas to take away and experiment with. Adam’s the award-winning author of two short story collections: The Stone Thrower and Instruction Manual for Swallowing. His stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4, and in many magazines and anthologies, including The Penguin Book of the British Short Story.

“They told him everything. He told everybody else…” so goes the gossipy and joyous tagline of Swan Song, the prizewinning debut by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott. We were delighted to welcome Kelleigh to Words Away last month to discuss Voice: the Writers Palette. And what a glorious salon it was, complete with Truman Capote inspired cocktails…mine’s an 'In Cold Blood Orange’ with ice please!

We welcomed author Candy Gourlay to Words Away last week for our May salon, Writing for Children. Candy’s been busy travelling the globe, visiting schools, literary festivals and launching her latest novel Bone Talk in the Philippines. We felt very lucky to lure her to the Tea House to talk to us about her writing. We had a fab audience, including a friendly contingent from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, many of whom stayed on for a drink and chat after the discussion.

We had a wonderful literary salon last week with our guest, the best-selling writer and former publisher, Antonia Hodgson. Book doctor Andrew Wille joined me as co-chair along with a fab room of writers all fired up to discuss the intricacies of Plotting, Process and Page-turners.

So, how do you pick yourself up when it’s all gone catastrophically wrong? What can a writer do to survive disaster and develop resilience for whatever might happen next? When Words Away regular and historical novelist Emma Darwin spent three years trying to write fiction about her famous ancestors she found herself hitting a wall time and again before finally admitting defeat. She drew on that experience for her new creative non-fiction, This Is Not A Book About Charles Darwin: a writer’s journey through my family. We had a full house for the salon and writer Caroline Green joined me as guest co-chair. We talked about the evolution (see what I did there) of This Is Not a Book as well as exploring ways to navigate the peaks and troughs of a writing life.

Novelist and playwright Alice Jolly believes that writing fiction set in history can offer tremendous opportunities for the writer and the reader, but it’s important to ask what historical fiction can do that non-fiction doesn’t or can’t do. Fiction can show a historical event from a different perspective and take us behind the scenes. For the writer this means finding the back door into the novel…

Earlier this week Words Away returned to the Tea House Theatre for the first in our series of salons for 2019. We were joined by literary agent Jenny Savill, a Director of Andrew Nurnberg Associates, to discuss How Agents and Writers Work Together. We covered much terrain, from the submission process to the creative challenges and rewards of maintaining an author’s career in the long term.