Monday Writerly Roundup: Garden Workshops and Sea Competitions
This week’s roundup will take you to gardens for a workshop, to the sea for a competition and to the near future, with talk of AI.
Bookings Open for Japanese Gardens Workshop
I’m delighted to say that bookings are now open for my Feast for the Senses workshop at the Japanese Gardens in Tramore on Sunday 30 June, from 10am to 12pm. In this workshop, we’ll use the senses – sights, sounds and touches, to delve into memory and unearth stories.
There are a mere 10 places on the workshop, so if you want to claim one, make your way post haste to the Japanese Gardens website and click here to book your place for €25.
Photo Description: Here’s the poster for the whole Sean Dunne Literary weekend, designed by the dynamic Janet of Redox Media, who is also a newsletter subscriber.
Write By the Sea Competition
You’ve eleven days left to enter the writing competition run by the delightful Write By the Sea Festival in Kilmore Quay. Entries close on 21 June. They’re taking entries in four categories – poetry, flash fiction, short story and memoir, and you enter via the website. Entries cost €10 and you’ll find the competition info here.
Alliance of Independent Authors
The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) is a UK based organisation which represents the interests of independently published authors. They give advice on contracts and can link you up with professionals who’ll help you publish your book. I was a member for a while and found it very useful. If I were to self-publish again, I would rejoin.
But their most valuable work is the in educating people on how to achieve excellence as self-published authors, so that self-published books will be on a par with anything produced by traditional publishers. Have a look at ALLi’s website.
Editing an AI Generated Document
I do transcription work for my bread and butter, and AI is starting to take over as a transcriber. I had my first experience of that this week, when instead of being asked to transcribe a document, I was asked to edit transcripts generated by AI.
I reckon the transcript generated by AI was 80% right. I’m not inclined to gnash my teeth about AI, but it’s clear that it will change how we work as it becomes more accepted by the mainstream.
And finally… I can’t resist books that give you the origins of common words and phrases. One I dip in and out of from time to time is Judy Parkinson’s Spilling the Beans on the Cat’s Pyjamas, which clearly lays out explanations for lots of common phrases.