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Crafty courses in Newcastle

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 7 September 2009 in Courses. 0 Comments

This Autumn I’ve got a variety of courses and workshops lined up.  I’ll be:

  • running a 5-week course on travel writing plus be giving talks on non-fiction writing style at the North East Centre for Lifelong Learning. This is part of the centre’s Explore Membership scheme. You pay an annual membership fee and can enjoy as many courses, workshops and one-off lectures as you like on a variety of subjects from family history to glass sculpture! Other writing courses include children’s writing and general creative writing.  Contact the centre through the website to enrol.
  • running a 10-week introduction to creative writing course at Crisis Skylight Trust. This is a charity geared towards helping people in crisis. The course will start in early October, date and time to be confirmed. Enroment through Skylight.
  • hosting a monthly meeting for Christian writers at Heaton Baptist Church. The next Write Life meeting is this Friday, 7.30 – 9. All are welcome and attendance is free.
  • lecturing a module in dramatic writing at Northumbria University.
  • lecturing a series of modules on writing for the media at Newcastle University.

In addition I’m proud to announce the first meeting of the Northern Non-Fiction Writers group. It has been started by a group of writers who attended my non-fiction writing course at the Centre for Lifelong Learning. Their first meeting is this evening and all are welcome. Check out their website for further details.

For those of you not in the Newcastle area, feel free to work through the online courses on creative writing and non-fiction writing.

Poetry: Tolstoy in Love

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 20 August 2009 in Author interviews, poetry and Publishing. 2 Comments

Poet Ray GivansRay Givans hails from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland but teaches English in County Down. He’s also a very gifted poet. He has published four pamphlet-length collections, most recently Going Home (2004) from Lapwing Publications. He has been awarded prizes for his poetry in Britain, the US and Australia and was the first recipient of the Jack Clemo Memorial prize for poetry. Tolstoy in Love, published by Dedalus Press, is his first full-length collection. BBC Writer in Residence Ian Sansom  describes it as ‘a true poetic achievement … a work of great human value.’ I would agree with him. So after reading this interview, get the book and judge for yourselves.
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Screenwriting: the perfect pitch

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 15 August 2009 in screenwriting. 1 Comment

One of the best blog posts I’ve read all week is over on Danny Stack’s Scriptwriting in the UK. If you’re wondering how to pitch your idea to the powers that be, zoot over there and see how Danny does it.  But if you’d like to stay here and chat, please do so. Maybe you can tell us about your pitching highs and lows. This week I cold called a producer, not expecting a reply, and got a very warm response. A couple of emails later and I was sending him my feature screenplay which he’s looking at now.  Sometimes it’s not as scary as you think. Go on, give it a try.

Screenwriting: Writing for the Camera

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 3 August 2009 in Film, Filmmaker interviews and screenwriting. 6 Comments

It’s an oft-quoted maxim in screenwriting that one should never write camera directions into a script. On the other hand, writers are encouraged to write as if viewing the scene through the camera lens. How does one achieve this apparently contradictory feat? The Crafty Writer asked writer / director John Allen to give us some tips.

Writer/director John Allen
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SoCal Film Festival – semi-finalist

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 31 July 2009 in Announcements, Film and screenwriting. 2 Comments

My feature screenplay Another Man’s Shoes has just been announced as a semi-finalist in the SoCal Independent Film Festival in California. Finalists to be announced on 7 August. If I get selected I’ll be heading over there to meet agents and producers 🙂

And all of this on the back of a very successful festival run for Enemy Lines at the Rushes Soho Shorts Festival. We didn’t win, but certainly held our own.

Co-publishing – pros and cons

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 22 July 2009 in Business of Writing and Publishing. 21 Comments

It used to be vanity publishing, then along came self-publishing, now the buzz word is ‘co-publishing’. What is it, and is it worth it from a writer’s perspective? The Crafty Writer investigates.

It’s not vanity publishing

Well firstly, let me say that it is not vanity publishing. In fact, since the self-publishing revolution, brought on by Print on Demand (POD) technology, the charlatans who preyed on desperate writers seem to have scurried back into their holes (although I fear, some of them may have re-emerged as ‘co-publishers’). Vanity publishers will print anything.  They claim to be ‘real’ publishers but there’s no editorial input and, apart from a post on their website, no marketing or distribution either – and you of course foot the whole bill. In addition, you have to buy your own books from them, albeit at wholesale discount or ‘cost’. For more information see this article by the Society of Authors.
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Rushes Soho Short Film Festival

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 13 July 2009 in Announcements, Competitions, Film, screenwriting and Scriptwriting. 11 Comments

My film, Enemy Lines, has been selected in the short film category at this year’s Rushes Soho Shorts Festival:

soho shorts film festival

140 new films from 18 countries will be competing in 8 categories:  Long Form, International, Newcomer, Short Film, Documentary, Animation, Music Video and Broadcast Design. The Official Competition Screenings will be held at The Institute of Contemporary Arts in central London.  The Awards Ceremony will be held on Thursday 30th July 2009.

enemy lines short film

Enemy Lines will be screened on Thursday 23 July (6.30pm , Cinema 1; Saturday 25 July (9pm, Cinema 2) and Wednesday 29 July (9pm, Cinema 1). 

Other films to be screened at the festival include Sadie Frost’s Directorial Debut, Danny Boyles End Credit Sequence for Slumdog Millionaire, actors such as Michael Bryne (Gangs of New York), Juliet Stevenson (Bend It Like Beckham), Nick Nolte (Hotel Rwanda, 48 Hours), Connie Fischer (Sound Of Music), Russel Tovey (Being Human), Chris Hehir (Green Street), Danny Cunningham (24 Hour Party People), Jack O’Connell (This is England), comedians such as Adam Buxton Lulu McClatchy and Alexei Sayle, and music videos from McFly to Royskopp, Will Young to Goldfrapp, Coldplay and U2 and many more.

Having grown dramatically every year since its inauguration in 1998, this year’s festival runs over 10 days and offers a wide range of events including the Opening Night Premiere ‘The Calling’, BAFTA Short Filmmakers Market, seminars, panel discussions, guest screening programmes, receptions and exhibitions held in 15 different venues in Soho district.

All events and full booking details can be found on their website:  www.sohoshorts.com.

I’ll be going down for the Wednesday screening and will be meeting up with my director, Michael Steel. Please let me know if you’re going to any of the screenings.

How to get your short film onto the festival circuit

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 29 June 2009 in Business of Writing, Film and screenwriting. 0 Comments

If like me you’ve written a screenplay and been lucky enough to have had it made, you’ll be wondering what to do next. Does your film have a life beyond the first screening? Yes, on the festival circuit. But some producers and / or directors may not seem too keen to do the legwork involved in getting it onto the circuit (fortunately my director is, and ‘Enemy Lines’ has just been nominated for the Best Short Film at this year’s Rushes Soho Short Film Festival – but more of that in another post). If that’s the case with you, perhaps you should consider distributing your film yourself (check with your producer first that you have the right to do so). And of course, if you’re an independent who has written, directed and produced your film, you’ll need to do it anyway.  Screenwriter Keith Jewitt gives us some advice on how to go about it.
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The Ambulance Box – getting your poetry in print

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 17 June 2009 in Author interviews, poetry and Publishing. 6 Comments

Andrew PhilipAll writers struggle to ‘make it’ in the commercial world of publishing, but none more than poets. So it is always heartening to hear of publishers investing in emerging writers and new collections.  Scotland’s Andrew Philip has published two poetry pamphlets with HappenStance Press – Tonguefire (2005) and Andrew Philip: A Sampler (2008) – and was chosen as a Scottish Poetry Library “New Voice” in 2006. The Ambulance Box (2009) by Salt Publishing is his first book of poems. In this interview he discusses writing as therapy, writing in Scots, the effect of the credit crunch on new poets and the business of getting your poetry into print and trying to earn money from it.
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Writing violence – ‘easier than sex’

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 10 June 2009 in Craft of Writing, Fiction, genre, Guest Blogs and Science Fiction. 3 Comments

He shot him twice in the back, and the figure jerked each time. Petrovitch watched the man start to turn, then slip heavily to one knee. The strange green-glowing eye of night vision rested on him. Their guns came around, and Petrovitch fired first, straight into his face.
(From ‘Equations of Life’, Simon Morden)

simon-morden-the-lost-artScience Fiction writer Simon Morden writes violent novels. Another War (2005), was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award, and 2007 saw the publication of The Lost Art which has been shortlisted for the 2009 Catalyst Award for best teen fiction. He’s currently writing his next novel, ‘Equations of Life’, which he tells us is set in a future London packed with refugees, armoured nuns, Stalin-lookalikes, and seriously hard-core science. So how does he do it?
Continue reading ‘Writing violence – ‘easier than sex’’

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