WriterConUK and Internetz!!

[quinara]

I'm just back from writerconuk which was absolutely fabulous, as usual, with a lovely mix of interesting and funny new people, familiar old hands that it's always nice to catch up with at conversational pace (even if they spent a considerable portion of the weekend telling me how much was going to go wrong with my body as it got older... Cheers again, gang!), tasty food, tasty drink, comfy hotel furniture and extra specially informative talks! Having got back, also, I have found myself in the WiFi-enabled cafe down the street and am being constantly informed by menus to 'make myself at home', so I intend to.(I feel very cool though; this is the sort of cafe that only appears on TV, with loads of random tables and rickety chairs, with nice people serving you stuff and a whole library's worth of old books to read. I feel like a proper student or something... ETA: I should probably explain this with an extra comment that I currently have no internet in my house, and so have been using my phone as a WiFi hotspot, but do not have anywhere near enough data allowance to properly surf the net, so that's why I've been somewhat absent, and will probably continue to be until I go to France via my parents' house at the end of this week.)

I'm a bit tired so I'm not sure I'm up to recounting everything at any sort of length at the moment, but I did do a fanpoetry talk involving a workshop where we collectively wrote a poem in the style of Blackadder (from the Blackader III era - written to Amy Hardwood in Amy and Amiability, aka The Shadow, before she screws him over), and I have promised Gill repeatedly that I would post it, so the two versions are below the cut. There should be a podcast of the talk at some point (scarily!), so I'll post the rest of the presentation then, because the slides aren't very informative on their own and all else I have are the scribbles in my notebook.

So this is the original draft I wrote. The point of this part of the talk was to discuss how much editing goes into poetry, and that getting something that rhymes and scans is only the first part of the battle. This not-very-good sonnet (written in about ten minutes with only two edits simply because there were two lines too embarrassing even to show the WCUK gang) is meant to be a sort of Keats-ian Regency pastiche from Blackadder's perspective in this episode, but only the first quatrain is really worthwhile. I quite liked the -uck rhyme gag at the end too, because that is of course a Blackadder favourite from that episode in Blackadder II.

To Amy
 
Without, sweet darkening Night lets down her hair
      And finds us met, concealed in cool moonlight
      Where you have made your trade, now us our flight
Away from drudgery and slow despair.
I wish to leave with you, without a care,
      And end my misery, this dreadful plight
      Of servitude to ignorance’s blight,
So we can settle down in sin somewhere.
My Highway Queen, I long to find our bed
      In Trinidad, or else in Coventry
             If we cannot find lodging with our luck;
Without your love I rather would be dead.
      Or if that’s gone too far, please do believe
             I’ll find us somewhere for a right old –

Discussion of course (why was I surprised?) picked up on the rather smutty element and decided to push that through, along with a lot more garden imagery that grew(!) from somewhere I'm not quite sure. We also worked on getting a slightly more specific epithet for Amy Hardwood, the miller's daughter (although I forgot to remember that she's a cotton miller's daughter, rather than flour, but never mind). This is what we came up with:

To Amy
 
Without, sweet darkening Night lets down her hair
      And finds us met, concealed in cool moonlight
      Where you have made your trade, now us our flight
Away from squirrels and the mad March hare.
I wish to leave this vale of deep despair,
      Beset by greenfly and the roses’ blight;
      My stem will arch up strong towards the light,
If we can settle down in sin somewhere.
My Floury Queen, I long to find our bed
      In Port of Spain, or else on Wapping Wharf
             If there’s no lodging at the Randy Duck.
My tools I’ll stow within your garden shed,
      So much I want our love to blossom forth:
             I’ll find us somewhere for a right good –

Improved, no? This probably isn't quite the finished product, but I think it's already become something pretty different with much stronger imagery (although 'stem', I think needs a bit more subtlety on the innuendo and increased literal sense /still thinking). What do you think, oh people who weren't there - and indeed people who were and might have forgotten our magnum opus...?

I learnt many things over the weekend, so I'll have to get on those at some point. I think the main points are, though, that my vids are vastly more amateur than it's quite standard for vids to become (I have this horrible feeling I might have to learn some software); I have a worrying tendency of picking up on sueworld's accent and vocal mannerisms if I talk to her for more than five minutes; also that Tara in OMWF is actually enjoyable to play when putting on a mildly(?) David Bowie voice. And when having an EastEnders style row with bogwitch as Willow.

Oh, oh, oh, though my Docs also won an award for Cutest Shoes (I may have been ungracious about the 'cute' label, but was chuffed nonetheless) and I won an apparently authentically patterned Fourth Doctor scarf in the raffle, as knitted by lilachigh! I am much pleased with it, and look forward to wearing it in the autumn/winter. (Yes, with my anorak parka! At least until I need a thicker coat. :P)

Hope everyone got home OK, or is stiil OK at the hotel! I'm already looking forward to the next meet up. :D