Ten Ely Writers attended to this month’s meeting. Some people have been coming for a long time, some for a short time and some for somewhere in between. All are welcome!

Introductions and progress reports

Since the last meeting, most of us have made progress. One of us has finished their first novel in the series they’re planning, and is ready to let someone else read it for the first time. Big news indeed! Another member has had competition success, winning a mentorship that will hopefully prove to be invaluable.

A couple of us found that using techniques they’d learnt at previous meetings helped tremendously. This is always great to hear. We might not be professional writers (yet), but we’re learning all the time what helps us to further our work and our motivation.

We’re very proud of all of you, even if you haven’t made much progress since the last meeting. We know life gets in the way. When it does, we have to accept that we’re not going to write as much as we’d like, and then get back on the writing horse when life stops being in the way.

Free writing

The prompt for this month’s free-writing session was for the first time photographic. We were shown two different photos, with no context, and told to choose one. We had to write whatever came into our minds when we looked at it. The only way to fail was to write nothing.

Which photo will you pick? What will you write? If you were at this meeting so have already picked one, why not pick the other one and see what that produces? Maybe you could share your writing with us next month or send it in for presentation here!

And yes, one of the people in one of the photos is an Ely Writer!

If you’re sick of staring at a blank page, why not set a timer for five minutes, take a random image 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: introversion and writing

We have a confession to make: we couldn’t come up with a topic this month, so another member came up with one instead. That member wondered if writers were introverts (as defined, for example, by the sixteen Myers-Briggs personality types) – after all, writing is a solitary activity.

We didn’t necessarily answer the original question, but we did mostly agree that we could switch between being a more outgoing person and our normal selves.

Readings

Reading out our work is strictly optional, and we only ever make positive comments on anything you read out. A single negative word can knock a writer’s confidence for six, whereas the point of Ely Writers is to encourage and embolden writers.

Two Ely Writers read out their work this month.

The first member to read had written a poem about one of the characters in their novel. This is something one of us has done before. It’s a great way of getting to know your character better or defining the character’s story arc in a narrative poem. One thing we enjoyed about the poem we heard this evening was that, from the character’s point of view, it talked about a dark personality trait as if the character thought it were a bad thing, but then snapped into showing us they really liked that aspect of themself.

The second reading was a continuation of a novel. This member wanted some feedback about what didn’t work. We felt we should intervene and suggest feedback about what did work because our inner critic can tell us very easily what doesn’t work, but we trusted the Ely Writers to be constructive in anything they offered as feedback. That trust was borne out: all comments were praise. This writer is excellent at creating an atmosphere, but was doubtful about the plot. We suggested they get to know their characters, not forgetting the environment, better, and see what they do.

Next meeting

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

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