Lights, Camera, Words

Writing can be a lonely profession. Most of the time it's just you, a laptop, and enough coffee to power a small submarine. If you're really lucky you might have a pet - a cat, or a dog, or a houseplant - to mutter at while you work.

But occasionally writers are released into the community, at special events called Literary Festivals. When these come around we like to make the most of them, drinking far too much and partying until almost ten o'clock in the book tent. They're our chance to meet like-minded individuals, swap a few stories, make a few new contacts. Oh, and occasionally we read from our work.

Last weekend I took part in the fifth Stoke Newington Literary Festival, presenting three young authors at the Litro Live! event on Sunday evening. The temperature had risen throughout the day, and our venue felt like a sweatbox by the time we came on stage. We'd all been at the festival for two days straight, catching events with Thurston Moore, Joanne Harris, Mark Billingham, Barry Miles, Daniel Rachel and many, many more - our turn came just as last orders was being called on Stokey 2014.

But we still enjoyed ourselves. Our three authors - Rebecca Swirsky, Reece Choules and Maia Jenkins - read from their works-in-progress, entertaining the slightly sweaty crowd with stories of travelling communities, struggling relationships and faraway places. They entertained and enthralled us, weaving complex webs with their words that proved impossible to escape. It was easy to see why the three of them were selected as our most exciting emerging writers.

Me, stroking my chin. In Stoke Newington.

As for me, I managed to bring the tone down with jokes about Mark Wahlberg. But even I went home with a smile on my face, only slightly tempered by the utter exhaustion that awaited me on the train.

Sometimes being a writer means shutting yourself away, escaping every distraction as you focus solely on the words on the page. But sometimes - just sometimes - even writers like to feel a little of the limelight.

(Footnote: I was going to mention my latest publication here too, but somehow it didn't fit into today's rant. So here it is. I have a 75-word work of microfiction on the new Micro-fiction Monday Magazine website. In fact, it's the first story in their first issue, making it the very first thing they ever published. There's something to be proud of. It's called 'This is the Winter', and it will take you less than a minute to read. No excuses.)

(Photo: David Green)