Apologies for this month’s meeting review being late: we’ve been kept busy elsewhere!

Eight Ely Writers turned up to this month’s meeting; it’s lovely to see people coming back month after month. After the meeting, a feeling of contentment arose from the realisation that Ely Writers has settled into a core group of people who are really quite wonderful. They all bring something to the meetings, and we hope they all take something away with them (but not the pen from the bag of mystery objects!).

Introductions and progress reports

Most of us have been writing or editing something since our last meeting, although it seemed like many of us had been sidetracked away from our main projects onto something else. That’s ok: sometimes, we need a break away from our pain projects to let ideas settle into place in our subconscious, ready to spring forth once we get back to it.

Free writing

The prompt for this month’s free-writing session came from the bag of mystery objects.

If you’re sick of staring at a blank page, why not set a timer for five minutes, take the first thing you focus on when you look up as your prompt, and see where it takes you. Perhaps you’ll write about how your character would react to the prompt. Perhaps you’ll write about what it means to you. The result, whether guff or good, means your page isn’t blank anymore!

Discussion: how to move on when you’re stuck

Last month, we heard that one of our members was stuck because they didn’t know how to get the story from point A to point B. This is frustrating, so we opened up the floor to see what techniques we could think of to help when we’re stuck like that. We came up with:

• Move on to the next bit, coming back to the problematic bit later
• Go for a walk, as in the Latin phrase solvitur ambulando ‘solved by walking’
• Make notes on your phone; useful if you think of something while you’re away from your project (perhaps you’re out walking!)
• Leave it alone for a while
• Write a bullet-pointed list of all the things that need to happen to get from A to B, and write each bullet point

What advice would you give to someone who can’t progress from one point to another in their story?

Readings

We had two readings this week. One was an experiment in narration; the other was a delightful story for a child. We enjoyed hearing them both.

Next meeting

If you like to talk about writing or you’ve written something you’d like to share with other writers, why not pop along to our next meeting?

Next month’s meeting is from 6:15 pm till 7:15 pm on Wednesday 5 June 2024 in Prosper.