_ I love living in Breconshire, and never more so than when the time draws closer to the Hay Literary Festival, an annual treat which has become a real institution for book lovers. Being huge book fans our family travel to Hay-on-Wye pretty regularly anyway, but we would never miss going to the festival: we had our tickets booked the day they became available.

This year the event runs from 31st May til 10th June, and there are some great names attending including Terry Pratchett and Simon Callow. Oh, and Maisy Mouse!

With tickets priced from just a couple of pounds it’s a day out that doesn’t have to break the bank, especially if you take advantage of the [hopefully] good weather and take a picnic with you. There’ll also be lots of activities to keep the kiddies amused in the ‘Hay Fever’ area.

The price of parking includes travel on a shuttle bus into Hay-on-Wye itself. There you’ll find the legendary Booth Books and Cinema Bookshop as well as many other smaller treasures. A couple of my favourites have closed in recent years, but there’s still plenty to gladden even a bibliophile’s heart.

My husband and I love the Festival best in the evenings, when you can take in the wonderful atmosphere with a glass of ice cold Pimms in your hand, and partake in a little people watching [you’ll see some fantastic hats and beards] before you go to an event. There are bookshops set up at the site [selling plenty of works signed by featured writers] if you fancy a little shopping.

As an extra bonus the Hay Festival has the poshest portaloos I’ve ever seen – they’re well worth a visit themselves!

For more information see: http://www.hayfestival.com/portal/index.aspx?skinid=1&localesetting=en-GB

I am proud to belong to the Romantic Novelists Association.  It is a fantastic organisation, run entirely by volunteers. Its full members are published authors, who write books which could be anything from historical sagas, through Chick-Lit and category romance to erotica, as long as there is a love theme. The RNA also runs a New Writers Scheme, whereby unpublished authors can be members as long as they submit a novel or a partial, for consideration and criticism once a year. It is this scheme which has helped many now successful authors to become published. There are regular meetings, usually in London, where members can listen to talks and meet industry professionals. There are informal ‘chapters’ all over the country.  There are two parties a year and there is an annual conference. 

Over the years I’ve attended countless RNA workshops and inspirational talks about craft and the writing process, I’ve learnt about plotting and becoming an ideas factory, mind mapping and overcoming writer’s block. I’ve gratefully received tips on how to deal with my saggy middle. I’ve been advised about pacing, how to involve all the senses in scene building and how to create my characters using enneagrams or astrology. After scribbling copious notes and scooping up the hand-outs, I emerge from each session believing that this time I have the Holy Grail. Metaphorically I’m punching the air. YES!

I return home, buoyed up by a happy buzz of fellowship and a renewed determination to employ my newly gained wisdom. But when I eventually reach the finale of my next novel, what have I done with those pearls of wisdom that I’ve collected up greedily over the years? Doh! Clutches hand to head. I will have totally forgotten every word about them.

The only piece of advice which I do constantly bear in mind, is ‘Point of View’. In the first fine careless rapture of my writing career, I’m sure I unconsciously head-hopped all the time. Nor was I aware of it in the books I read.  Now I notice head-hopping in other writers and, because it bumps me out of the story, I try to be rigorous in this regard in my own writing. And it is not just about staying in one head for a period - which could be a paragraph, a section or a chapter - but you have also to consider the character’s voice, given that the world is being viewed through his or her eyes.

My current book, LIFE CLASS, is told through the four characters. Each has a chapter to him or herself. Even though these dedicated chapters are not in the first person, I still had to think about the voice when I was writing each one.  A chapter written from the point of view of Dominic - a seventeen year old gay youth who has been brought up in care - has a different tone, and will use a slightly different language, to a chapter written through Fran’s eyes. She is a respectable and comfortably off house-wife.  The chapters from Dory’s point of view, a laboratory technician who works in a sexual health clinic, will have a different take on the world, to those written through the eyes of Stefan, the single-minded sculptor.

That’s the theory anyway!



Gilli is the author of 'Torn', her latest novel, 'Life Class', has just been released. She can be contacted at:

http://www.gilliallan.blogspot.com/ 
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twitter: @gilliallan
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