Judith Heneghan and Sarah Butler, 12 – 19 August 2023
Writers-in-residence;
For myself, the stay was extremely important, as I had time and space to focus solely on drafting a new novel, with no distractions. It was particularly helpful to be on the cape, as I am writing about a ferry crossing and also a different Atlantic cape in Galicia, N. Spain, where I have been unable to visit.
My expected output is a 70k novel.
Judith Heneghan
I split my week in two: for the first half I focused on writing a proposal for my next book. I needed time and space to work out how to convey the themes, content and style of a full-length book in 1000 words for potential publishers and Brisons Veor gave me exactly that.
For the second half of the week I wrote the first draft of a brand new short story, trying a different way of working for me. Usually I polish every sentence and paragraph as I go and take weeks or months to achieve a full story – this time I wrote scattered scenes by hand over a day, and the following day I wrote the whole story with no editing.
I needed an entire day to get 3000 words onto the page, and I haven’t had a chance to return to the draft to begin editing, but it was incredibly freeing to work like this. I’ll definitely try it again.
Website: https://www.sarahjanebutlerauthor.co.uk