I'm sat looking out on the green campus of UEA. Last year the place was plagued with giant rabbits like some experiment had gone wrong in the University's Biology department. It wasn't just the profusion, but the size. Clearly there's something good in the East Anglian grass. I'm sure I'll find them again this year, when I get a chance to look round the rolling campus.
But I'm also struck by how the Manchester lit community is decamped to Norwich this week. As well as myself, there's John McAuliffe, from the University of Manchester's Writing School, and blogger-novelists Jen Ashworth and Chris Killen. We don't actually know each other, though the latter two I must have seen at last years' Manchester Blog Awards - Mancunian-based writers seeming to be always taking a lead in terms of their blogging; perhaps the distance from the capital requiring a web-based presence to mitigate not being able to attend the same literary bashes as your London-based peers. It will be interesting to meet them all properly, as this year's theme at New Writing Worlds is "Creative Writing", and where "online" fits into that is clearly of some importance. Last year's event led to a few creative thoughts, including the essay "Writing Catastrophe" that was published online at Horizon Review earlier in the year. I imagine that anything I write this year is likely to be looking at the online aspects of creative writing as much as, or more than, any other subject.
Giant bunnies aside.
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