Cleckheaton Writers Group meeting 31 March 2014

Another productive meeting of the CWG this evening where D, A, L, P and myself were in attendance, N and V having sent their apologies.

A informed the group that he has been doing a lot of editing since the last meeting and feels that he has his first three chapters of his story almost ready for submission.  I have also been editing and told the members that I sent the first three chapters and synopsis of T, my children's fantasy novel, to Jenny Savill, Agent at Andrew Nurnberg Associates.

Prior to the meeting I emailed the group details of the Wakefield Literature Festival (19-30 Sept) where Carol Ann Duffy will be in attendance, along with details of a funded projects/events possibility.  It was agreed that we as a group should apply for one of the £200 grants so the members should discuss this at a future meeting when we are all in attendance.

I also informed the members about a short ghost story competition that is being run by Saga magazine.  I gave all the details to the attendees, but for those not in attendance, the competition is in the March edition of the magazine.

We then had a timed writing session where we could choose from the following options:

1) Choose five words from the following ten to write the beginning of a story (whalebone, foxglove, Djinn, orphan, lollipop, casket, hermit, hound, acid and topaz)
2) A short story containing cyberpunk/steampunk/diesel punk (these 2 were from a fellow blogger)
3) Use the opening line 'The City burned, lighting up the night sky'
4) He'd never noticed a door there before

We then shared the pieces that we came up with.  Mine was a combination of the 1st and 2nd challenge with a dystopian world.  A's was hilarious, he had chosen the 4th option.  L chose the same option, but hers had an Alice in Wonderland feel about it.  D chose the 3rd option which was modern and quite dark, as was P's who also chose the 3rd option.  We all had felt that we had the beginning of a piece that could be worked on.

The next meeting takes place on 14 April.  New members always welcome.