After a hiatus in Ely Writers meetings, we’re back! It was our first post-hiatus meeting this month. The Cutter Inn, chosen because we met there previously, has been done up, and what used to be a quiet room at the back is now busier and therefore noisier. This made the meeting tricky, but we persevered.
Thank you to the seven people who turned up to have fun with writing on Wednesday evening. It’s a promising start!
Caity, who heads the revamped meetings, is a member of the Churchill Writers group, run by Rosie Johnston1; the format of this new phase of Ely Writers meetings is based on the format Rosie uses.
Introductions
The first thing we did was that usually awful thing of going round the table with everyone introducing themselves and their writing, except it was fun to hear the wide range of projects in such a small group: we had everything from time-travelling Buddhist monks to solar punk to the almost inevitable zombie apocalypse.
Free writing
Free writing is a great way to wake up the creativity muscles and eliminate writer’s block. By using a prompt, we’ve got something to write about straight away, even if it’s only to describe what your senses tell you about that location, object or whatever the prompt gives you.
Free writing is a chance to get the nonsense out of the way before you start writing proper – and you never know, you might have written a gem of a sentence that you can lift straight into your current project. Win–win!
We allow five minutes to write freely in. Having a fixed time period can cause opposite reactions. First, panic that there’s only five minutes to write in. Second, relief that there’s only five minutes to write in.
If you’re writing in your own time and the creative juices won’t stop flowing, then you can ignore the timer and continue until the creativity dries up. After you’ve congratulated yourself on how much you wrote, go through it and highlight the best bits – perhaps you’ll find a home for them in another piece of writing.
Our prompt this month was a walk in the park
. Caity wrote about a horde of incoming ducks at the duck pond in the park. What would you write?
Current projects
We like to celebrate each other’s writing wins, even if it’s only that someone wrote 100 words this month.
But it’s not all about the glory: if someone has a problem, we’re ready to brainstorm our way through it, if not to reach a solution, then to provide that member with different ways towards a solution.
Readings
It’s always lovely to hear what people have written, no matter whether it’s first draft or polished to perfection. After establishing the group’s rules on readings2, we heard from a couple of people. We’ve got some talent in the group!
Discussion
We talked about what we wanted to get from the group; accountability was popular.
Caity recommended a book she’s been recommended about editing3; someone else recommended wavemaker4, a cross-platfrom free alternative to the somewhat pricy Scrivener5.
Caity suggested homework tailored to each member, should they take it on; homework is optional.
We also discussed a new venue: Revive Coffee (inside Fresh on Broad Street, Ely); one of our members will check this out for us. The Cutter has become a little too noisy since we last met there.
Next meeting
Our meetings will take place monthly, on the first Wednesday (unless otherwise stated), so we’ll next meet at 7 pm on 4 May 2022, hopefully in Revive (watch this space). Will you join us?
References
- Churchill Writers
- no date. Readings at Ely Writers.
- 2018 On Editing: how to edit your novel the professional way, John Murray Learning.
- wavemaker: free novel-writing software.
- Scrivener: paid-for novel-writing software