24th April Meeting

Alison, Clive, Tim and Tony met at Tony's house on 24th April.

News

Tim - Is writing a poem for Worcester Lit Festival, and has a story in progress from a previously fermenting draft (but not the men in a boat draft sadly).
Clive - has received a cheque from a recipe published in Take a Break, and has entered a short story into the Malvern Theatres story competition.
Tony - is organising a Worcester Writers' Circle event for Worcester Lit Festival, which will feature comic stories and be held at the Arts Workshop. Is doing his 2nd ever stand up gig at the Holly Bush in Cradley, and also entered the Malvern Theatres short story competition.
Alison - has started submitting her novel to agents, has drafted a story for an internal Romantic Novellists Association competition and pitched two freelance articles to magazines. She also attended Chipping Norton Literary Festival at the weekend.

The group then talked about rock houses for longer than might normally appear feasible.


Critique of Here's to you, Mr Robinson

Tony read part of the story aloud. The story focusses on a teenage girl who alleges that she has had sex with a teacher. The story looks at her allegation but also her wider school and home life.

Feedback on the characterisation, tone of the story and character's voice were generally positive.
Reviewers raised similiar issues to one another regarding the plot and character's motivations. Character appears to be making up her allegations but motivation is not clear. Similiarly the opening was considered confusing, as it's not clear who the character is referring to and a lot of people are introduced very quickly.
There was a good amount of detailed comment on specific lines, which Alison noted for editing.

Next Meeting

Date: 14th May (amended from 8th May)
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Alison's house
Critiquee: Tony
Book analysis: Alison

Alison, Tim, Tony and Clive met at Clive’s house on Tuesday, April 10th.

News
Tony did his first stand-up gig at Artrix in Bromsgrove recently; he didn’t die and the audience laughed at the jokes – what more could a stand-up ask? Tony’s prepared script ran to around 1000 words and occupied about 8 minutes. Keep an eye on the telly?? Firecracker Mountain, Tony’s children’s work-in-progress, is now up to 10,000 words towards a target of around 25,000 and will be illustrated by Sarah Hayward before being  offered for publication. Tim’s been just as busy as Tony – but not with writing, rather catching up with visits to and from old friends. He has lots of half-finished works, including Mr A Havergoe who is languishing in desuetude at present. Alison has all but finished her novel and expects to begin submitting to agents and publishers in the next ten days; its present, possibly temporary title is Sweet Nothings. Her Creative Writing course, addressed to 19 students, at Worcester Uni has three more sessions to run.


Review of Keep Peckham Tidy
This is the title of Tim’s short story, which describes an incident amongst some drug-dealers’ in the eponymous South London suburb. The central character is a derelict who latches onto the dealers’ communication ruse – calls to local radio using a code – and uses his knowledge to acquire a plastic bag containing twenty grand and later a quantity of crack cocaine, after which things get complicated, especially for the guy who was to have collected the twenty grand.
The overall verdict of the story’s three reviewers was that the piece was like the curate’s egg – good in parts. In fact, it was excellent in parts: the atmosphere, the authenticity of the setting and the pace were all first-class, all of which combined to provide an very enjoyable read. The reviewers’ doubts concerned the plausibility of the plot, with questions raised over the motivation of the main character in some of his actions. Tony would have appreciated a more detailed description of the main character in the story’s opening and also found some inconsistency in the voicing of this character. There were a number of minor changes suggested in the punctuation and layout and some inconsistencies that arose, it transpired, from Tim’s having edited the story down, but all easily corrected.

Next meeting date provisionally fixed for Tuesday April 24th at Tony’s house, Alison to submit, but, as we had previously agreed but obviously forgotten, someone else to read the first 1000 words.

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

A reduced Pen Club met at Taliah's on the 22nd March, 2012.

News

TD - As usual, Taliah had the most interesting set of news. Her trip to Orkney is going ahead, but not quite as planned as her moving company has gone bust. She has also recently acquired two bull mastiff puppies, because merely moving 650 miles with five children was not sufficiently challenging. In preparation for tending the Highland Cattle which come with her new home, she has successfully completed DEFRA registration for animal husbandry.

TJ - Tony revealed that he has been attending Theo Theobald's stand up comedy workshop and will be appearing the the Artrix in Bromgrove on the Saturday, 7th April. Tickets are selling fast. In addition, Tony has produced some more instalments of his Littlehope saga as well as adding a few more words to Sir Lostthelot

TB - Tim had little to share except that he has a few new short stories which are either at the first draft stage or still in progress. Havergoe is still rumbling along having passed, as Tony put it, "the point of no return", which is found somewhere just short of 20,000 words.

Critique

Taliah was the only recipient of the club critique this week with a family oriented story aimed at "the People's Friend" market. The response was extremely positive from Tim and Tony, comments on punctuation and grammar notwithstanding and it was felt that it was well suited to its intended market (although no-one would actually confess to being a regular reader of the People's Friend) and was highly marketable piece of work.

..and the next time

It's Tim's turn to be criticised next time - apart from that, nothing regarding the next meeting has been decided.

Next meeting:

Date - TBD

Venue - TBD

Critiquee - Tim

Belfast, ABBA and Network Rail

We met at Taliah’s house on Thursday 16^th February.

News

TJ: none

AM: posted a new blog on the merits of the Health & Social Care Bill (she couldn’t find any); has presided over two sessions of her Creative Writing course at Worcester Uni which have gone well except for the age (youth?) of her students and entered a poetry competition.

TD: may be emigrating (depends on the referendum) – at any rate, she’s leaving Worcester at the end of March to spend three years in the Orkneys. Vacancy at the Pen club – must like choccie biscuits.

TB: has written two short stories.

CE: got twenty-five quid for a recipe.

Critique

CE’s Chance/Chancer was found confusing – how many characters were there ? – what kind of man was Dennis, the main character? Was the opening scene in the boardroom necessary? Overall the plot was ok and pacy but definitely in need of some work.

TB read a new flash fiction short, the heroine of which resembled a Agnetha Fältskog/Alien crossbreed – lots of long blonde hair and very sharp teeth. The fun was not quite able to hold at bay the sinister, which made it a very intriguing (and enjoyable) exercise.

TJ followed that with a lovely poem for children about a train ride; plenty of fun here too, but malign malevolence was (quite rightly) abjured.

Other biz:

To read or not to read: after discussion we agreed ‘to read’ and unanimously approved Alison’s suggestion that the reader should be someone other than the author.

Meeting plan: again we were unanimous in feeling that one reading plus critique was sufficient but there should always be additional diversions (flash fiction, poems, whatever).

Blog: we agreed to carry on with it but to rotate writing duty. Tim is to investigate (or get on with) the creation of a new site to which we can all have editing access.

Next meeting: venue Taliah’s house; date Thursday March 8^th; time 7.30; author : Taliah; reader tbd.