Catherine Forde: Online Writer In Residence

Scottish Book Trust is very excited to welcome Catherine Forde as our brand new virtual writer in residence, following Keith Gray's fantastic residency last year. Catherine takes over the blog this week to tell us a little bit more about the plans she has for her residency and for the regular blogs she'll be writing for us over the next year....

Welcome to the first regular blog I’ll be writing as Scottish Booktrust’s new Online Writer in Residence. I should confess that I’m completely new to this blogging game so in case I’m rubbish, I thought I’d better swot up a bit on the whole bloggy business by taking a peek at a few the famous, or rather infamous blog sites.

Perez Hilton’s was the first – actually the only blogger I could think of off the top of my head ( which tells you how tacky I am) . So I dutifully googled Perez, and have to say I have come away from the experience of his gossip-blog profoundly enriched with knowledge, some of which I’ll share with you.
Here goes:

Michelle Obama is going to be a guest on Sesame Street.
Suri Holmes/Cruise ( her dad’s that chippy actor bloke out of Top Gun, isn’t he?) has a pair of black and white stripy tights. She’s about four, by the way.
Sarah Jessica Parker has dyed her hair blonde…
And er… I think that’s enough of that. This is meant to be educational.

I’m just going to focus my blog on some of the things that happen on my travels as Online Writer in Residence instead. Unfortunately they haven’t actually started yet, although when they do, I’ll be visiting many different places in Scotland with Scottish Booktrust, giving talks on creative writing. Over the last few weeks I’ve been putting all my ideas together for what I’m going to discuss. That’s been quite a challenging experience for me because it has forced me to analyse the way I approach my own writing and break it down into chunks of information. These chunks will form the individual tasks you’ll be able to see on the podcasts over the next few months, and I hope they are helpful to any budding writers.

If you have watched my first podcast, you have beaten me to it as I will be on a train to London when it goes ‘live’. I am going to speak at the Shoreditch Festival and visit the Sydney Russell School in Dagenham. I went to Sydney Russell for the first time a couple of years ago and have been asked back. I am looking forward wandering about London in between work duties, feeling a like a tourist, although I’m worried about navigating their Tube system with its thirteen different lines. Being a Weegie I can only deal with the Inner and Outer Circle of the Glasgow Underground – if you miss your stop you just stay on and it comes back round twenty minutes later.

I hope I make it back to write my next blog…

You can find out more about Catherine's residency by reading the Online Writer in Residence pages on our website.

Other news:

It's Children's Book Week this week and to celebrate we're putting on two events with Darren Shan and Barbara Mitchelhill. Keep your eye on the website for more from them.

At the end of this week Heather and Jasmine set off on a tour to Newcastle with Debi Gliori. Scottish Book Trust have never toured in England before so we're all very excited about it!