Winchester Writers' Festival 2015

Pretty much as soon as last year’s Winchester Writers’ Festival wrapped up, I was determined to go to the next one as well. The events were fun, the speakers were helpful, and the fact I knew I’d be a Winchester MA student this time around was also quite a factor. It’s not a cheap event to go to, but having made the most of a one-day ticket in 2014, I figured it would be well worth doing the same again. Coming up to this year’s festival, things are going even better than I expected.

First and most importantly, I’ve managed to get a scholarship!

Thanks to the University of Winchester, I’ll be able to attend all three days of the festival. That means even more opportunities to meet one-to-one with agents and authors, which this time around will be a huge help to my academic work as well as my writing in general.

Second, and also pretty cool, I won the festival’s #140filmpitch competition!

My entry was:

A diplomat tries to deal with an international crisis while concealing the fact he's really several tiny elves in a long coat. #140filmpitch

The competition was judged by Julian Unthank, and the prize was this pair of books on story and scriptwriting:

Into the Woods and Save the Cat! Strikes Back.

These will also be spectacularly useful for my university work. I’m taking a module in scriptwriting at the moment, and I almost bought Save the Cat literally the day before I found out I’d won these. Scriptwriting is both the most difficult and most interesting element of my course just now. Only five other people are doing it, which was kind of daunting at first but it’s given me a chance to really get into everyone else’s stories and to develop my own as part of a really tight-knit group.

Also, in non-festival news, another comic from CorricothaCro is available over on Beyond the Black Throne, in lieu of a new chapter.

Since this was the last week of the semester, I got pretty swamped with work and didn't have time to write anything new. In addition to that, the poll posted in the last update is currently split exactly 50-50 between building the nightclub and finding musicians, so I'm hoping it'll tip one way or the other before the next update. One vote can make all the difference here!