This month, we had to hold our meeting in the second week rather than the usual first week. Nevertheless, we had good attendance from members who’ve been before – no newbies this time. Thank you all for coming; it was lovely to see you and to hear what you’ve been up to since we last met.

Progress reports

Caity had reviewed her scribble chat with her character. She wanted to sort the wheat from the chaff in what the character had said. Sometimes with a scribble chat, especially a long one, the answers can change with the development of the character, and you can find some absolute gold in there.

Caity reviewed the chat by simply using coloured highlighters: pink for the chaff, green for the wheat, purple for stuff to question the character about again to really delve into her psyche or to clarify certain things.

Once she’s reviewed the chat, she’ll use the wheat to inform a conversation between this character and the protagonist. When the first draft is finished, she’ll use the wheat to inform this character’s behaviour throughout.

A couple of our members went to the the recent workshop by Artemis Writers. How useful they found it depended on how much experience they had with writing already, which makes sense. Hopefully, we’ll see their reviews crop up here soon!

Some of our members are keen to get some kind of system up and running for feedback on their writing from other group members, as discussed last month. To this end, two of them have been investigating Notion, which is free up to a point.

Ely Writers does not charge for membership or its activities; if we cannot make Notion work for us for free, then we cannot create an official group on this platform. That doesn’t preclude members from using Notion independently, of course.

One member is doing a university course on creative writing. Her current assignment is a 12,000-word crime thriller about a food-writer in Japan. To this end, she is going to a crime-writing course at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich, which should be good.

Another member, who has found a local cafe to write in, has been getting on board with scribble chats. She’s been talking to her main character; once thought to be divorced, this character is actually a widow, which suits our member better. She said she found out all sorts of interesting material about the character, which she wouldn’t have obtained otherwise. I think it’s fair to say that she’s delighted and excited about these revelations!

Our resident zombie-apocalypse guy has finished editing the latest draft of his first novel in his series of five. This is a great achievement, and he’s ready to let some beta readers at it now. We hope he gets some useful feedback.

Free writing

This month, the prompt was taken from the first word Caity saw when she opened her other notebook. That word was tourist.

One member wrote an excellent piece that sucked you in to a happy, sunny time, then smashed you over the head with the reality. It’s humbling to hear a powerful piece written in only five minutes with a single-word prompt.

Readings

We were lucky enough to hear four readings this month, all different and all fantastic. We really love to hear your writing, although it’s strictly optional to read it out.

Discussion

Caity shared some tips on finding an agent and a publisher that were shared in another writing group she belongs to:

• Aim for three agents and three publishers, one small, one medium and one large of each.
• To find the best ones for your work, think about the genre and which shelf your work will go on in a book shop.
• Think about the title and the cover. One member, from her library experience, implored us to make the author name and the title on the spine legible and distinguishable from each other if we have any say in the design. This makes sense: not every book is displayed with the front cover facing customers in a book shop, and you don’t want them to pass your book by because they can’t read the spine.
• Scour the acknowledgements in (recent) books like yours: here, you will find the names of agents and publishers. Collate and research them, then pick three agents and three publishers – one small, one medium and one large of each – to send your work to.

Good luck!

Any other business

Not so much other business this month.

We’re hoping to review Artemis Writers‘ last workshop Creative writing workshop: fundamentals of plot from different levels of writing experience.

If you went to this workshop, why not send us a review as well?

We plugged Artemis Writers‘ next workshop:

• Creative writing workshop: let's talk dialogue at Prosper on Monday 23 October 2023.

Next meeting

We revert back to our regular meeting timetable in November, meeting on Wednesday 1 November 2023 at 7:15 pm till 8:15 pm in Prosper. See you then?