Tartan Loony

Well, that's the Edinburgh Book Festival over for another year. Anyone with a snorkel had a distinct advantage.

Now, there are many things I could say about my experiences this year. And some of them are simply not for public airing. (Oh, and can I say first that the festival is fabulous and any negative experiences do not at all imply any lack of wondrousness of the whole thing?) But gosh, the egos that parade around that authors' Yurt (aka large and splendiferous tent) can make you dizzy. Some authors are painfully full of their own importance. Others, of course, are just delightful.

But I would like to share my tartan loony moment. (The tartan loony wears tartan from his tam o'shanter to his shoes). He hadn't heard of the internet, so there's no danger of him reading this, just in case you were wondering. This is the guy who hi-jacked (for the third year in a row) one of my workshops, and spent it asking bizarre and pointless questions and being quite angry with me for actually having had some books published despite being an idiot.

To explain: I run some workshops for unpublished authors. This is a deeply frustrating business, as no one really listens to me. I tell them it's simple: write the right book at the right time and send it to the right publisher at the right time and in the right way. They only listen to the last bits but actually the first bits are way more important. Anyway, the tartan loony has been to these workshops before (so, I'm obviously doing a great job). But this time he chose to come to the one for published authors. Since he is nowhere near being published (having not yet written a book), I asked him why he hadn't come to the one for unpublished authors - "Because it was fully booked." Actually, he wasn't the only one - 24 out of 30 of the participants were also in the wrong one, which was thoroughly discombobulating.

By the way, in each workshop, there were several people who were actually doing all the right things and showed every chance of one day being successful writers. I hope they will tell me when they get their first contract.

Back to the TL. The TL asks many questions. He writes all the answers down, using a tartan shopping trolley as a table. When I say "many" I do mean many. But I will just give you one example:

TL: How long should a book be? (bear in mind, please, that this is the workshop for published authors).
Me: (thinking that the correct answer - "as long as it needs to be" - is not going to satisfy him) What sort of book?
TL: (thinking for a moment) Probably a novel.
Me: (deciding that a simple answer is definitely what he wants) 120,000 words
TL: Thank you. (and writes it down on his tartan clipboard)

Anyway, to the point. After the first workshop, I had told a fellow author (let's call him John) about the experience. So, when I turned up in the Yurt before the next one, I breezily said to John, "So, that's me ready for the tartan loony!" He looked at me, horror writ large on his face. The horror stayed there for several seconds. Then realisation and relief dawned. "Oh, you mean your workshop guy? I thought you meant ..."

Yes, I should have realised too. Sean Connery was about to do his event. And there he was, not a million miles away ... That's me off his party list, then. Shame.