Eleanor Catton and Jenny Hellen

So in my forgetful rush, i've forgotten to blog about these two wonderful women that came into speak to us.

Start off with Eleanor:
She's this fairly young writer who is doing amazingly well, he first novel was shortlisted for the orange prize  i believe, and she dresses in a fairly aesthetic.
We were given an extract from her upcoming novel to read and I found it kind of hard to get into. So I didn't really expect much from her talk. But I was fucking wrong.

She talked about her writing process and how she got to ideas. Just the real out of the blue kind of stuff that inspires her writing was really thought provoking in the way that I would like to go around writing my own novel. She said that she wished that "The picture of Dorian Gray" was the father of fantasy fiction - that whole psychological fantasy thing, and it sparked something in the way that I want to write my novel. I was very much inspired by her, which surprised me.

Jenny Hellen:
She was fantastic. She is the non-fiction and children's editor for Random house and it was great having someone with a business ideal to tell us about the process of actually publishing a book.
She told us about the market (i.e. what sells.), the steps and people involved in the publishing process and all this other stuff.

She made me think more economically about being a writer. I know that I won't make any money as a poet and I'm fine with that, but learning about the industry in that sense was really good.
She was also very nice in giving us her card to email any of our manuscripts to her, which I thought was bloody brilliant.

Both women were strong and independant but still very down to earth and easy to get on with.