Listowel Writers' Week Fringe

Or is it all under wraps… in committee?

Does everyone know that LWW10 will be number 40?

It means that the planners must be wondering how they can mark the occasion fittingly. It’s not as if there hasn’t been enough time to prepare for it.

No one’s approach this blog to see if we’ll be live for the 2010 Festival. That doesn’t surprise me because no one from the committee approached the blog during 2009. No one official contact – imagine.

It was as if we the bloggers were the elephant in the room.

I bet there are loads of ideas out there concerning how the 40th anniversary should be celebrated. The challenge is how to let others contribute their goodwill?

These are the kind of issues that cause the passion of bloggers to be engaged. If LWW doesn’t get it’s act together and engage with bloggers, what will bloggers do?

Answer: they’ll chatter about myopia on Twitter. It’s the world we live in now – so different from the locals who set up Listowel Writers’ Week.

Magic. It’s magic the way Google Alert brings stuff to your attention.

Whenever anyone, anywhere, publishes anything about Listowel Writers’ Week, I get it within hours. I don’t have to go looking for it. I can relax in the confidence that if Listowel is out there being talked about or written about, I’ll be in the loop.

This is how I came to discover a your Irish student journalist.

Robert Babington from Tralee: his blog is “The Write Stuff” - so he knows his Wolfe.

All he did was mention the woman who questioned Seamus Heaney @ LWW08. But Google Alert introduced us and I left his a comment on the blog.

I feel I’ve discovered a talent who could go far, who will go a long way. He’s even on Twitter.