Last weekend I was asked to chair two sessions at the Words and Ideas Festival – part of PIAF. I’m usually pretty nervous about these things but as you know I love reading so the chance to score a pile of books and be *forced* to read for *work* seemed my kind of heaven.

Originally I was booked to do a session on Biographies – I was a bit disappointed when it was cancelled but in a way relieved because frankly, biography ain’t my thang. It was serendipity (my daughter’s current favourite word). Instead I ended up with crime fiction – how to maintain the suspense and young adult fiction. How lucky am I? I love crime fiction and I have two small people who are just getting into YA fiction. Bliss.

We had a bit of email correspondence between the panellists pre-conference which was helpful in working out how to run the sessions. My philosophy about the Words and Ideas conference is that there needs to be interaction between the authors on stage and the audience because the “art” of writing is the harmonic that is created when the work is read.

It’s the same with the visual arts – which is usually presented without explanation for the viewer to interpret. The reader takes the words – and interprets them from their own frame of reference, set of assumptions and life experience.

The joy for me in talking with authors is to discover whether my interpretation matches theirs to some degree.

Sometimes you notice how beautifully the words are written on the page – ‘good writing’ – but for me the best writing is when I don’t notice the construction of a sentence. Although having said that I do love it when a writer employs a particularly fine phrase.

For example, I’m reading Zoe Heller’s book Notes on a Scandal at the moment and she described the teachers in the staff room as slumping “slack shouldered” – what a great descriptive phrase.
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The books I got to read for the Crime Writer’s forum were ‘The Resurrectionist’ by James Bradley – a grisly tale of a young anatomist at the turn of the last century, Michael White’s ‘Equinox’ – which links Newton with a modern murder – very gross scenes – and Louise Welsh’s book ‘The Bullet Trick’ – the tale of a flawed conjurer.

Of the three I enjoyed – and perhaps that’s not the right word – The Resurrectionist best. The writing was superior IMHO and even though the subject matter was challenging :). The thing with good writing is that you feel good that you’ve read it – does that make sense? You might have enjoyed Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, but you don’t get that literary high of reading really good writing from it… or at least that’s how I felt.

Equinox was the easist to read – but not challenging – and I found the premise a bit far fetched. The Bullet Trick was the least engaging for me, but not hard to read, just hard to keep reading.

In the Young Adult section I had Garry Disher, Kate McCaffrey and Julia Lawrinson. Of these I found Kate’s and Garry’s books the most engaging – Garry is the more literary of the two I suppose but Kate’s issue of Cyberbullying was on the money. Julia’s book Bye Beautiful I didn’t get into as much but I do like some of her other books and in fact bought one of her younger novels for my girl. We had a lively discussion and the audience were great.

Of both sessions the most interesting point for me was when we started discussing whether or not people write to be read. My feeling is that they must. As I do I suppose with this blog. Would I write all this down if I didn’t think you, dear internet, might read it or at least skim it and perhaps add your two cents worth at the end? No I would not. I’m honest enough to realise that to have even just an audience of one makes it worth my while to spend a few minutes blogging every day. Sure, in the end there are benefits for me. My writing improves glacially, and I have a record of the last four years of my life.

But in the end – it’s all about you – the reader. For if you don’t read it – or if the possibility doesn’t exist for you to read it – does it make a sound?