The Cleckheaton Writers Group met last night at Cleckheaton Library, where Mandy, Sarah, Neil, Arline and myself were in attendance, Kathy having passed on her apologies. The minutes from the last meeting were agreed and it was also agreed that the 'extra' CWG meeting on Saturday should now be changed to a CWG outing to the Brighouse Sci-Fest for those members that wish to attend. The event is being held in Brighouse Library on Saturday and the following two events are free: 10.30-12.30 Mark Wright, Dr Who author - Reading, talk and workshop, 1-2.30 On fantasists and fairy tales - talk with local author Dan Micklethwaite on debut novel The Less Than Perfect Legend of Donna Creosote. An 'extra' Saturday morning meeting will be scheduled next month.
WIP updates were as follows: Mandy has been editing, as have I, Arline had listened to an excellent radio story read by Miriam Margolyes, Neil has started work on a short horror story for the anthology and Sarah has finished rewriting her WIP2 (a crime thriller), started submitting it and begun planning WIP3. Her WIP1 has been put to bed.
Sarah and myself had attended agent feedback sessions the weekend before, Sarah at York Festival of Writing and myself at the SCBWI Skylark event, so we fed back to the group on what it involved. We both received some excellent feedback which enables us to go forward with our WIPs. Sarah recommended attending York once you have a novel at the best stage, as it comes at a cost of £500, so you need to be ready to pitch/sell it to the agent. Sarah agreed to circulate her notes from the keynote speech by C.L.Taylor (author of The Missing, The Lie) about rejection, and also workshops on prose and editing using post it notes. She also informed the group about Bookouture an epublisher who are selling well on Amazon and a competition by Orion matching published writers with unpublished writers to collaborate on a book entitled Hometown Tales - write 15000 words on your home town - Sarah will send the link along to the members and the competition has a closing date of 1 January 2017.
Sarah and Mandy discussed short story writing and recommendations for a book on short story writing; Short Circuit by Vanessa Geddes, 26 essays published by Salt Publishing was suggested.
The Year of Runaways by Sanjeet Sahota was recommended also.
No-one had brought work for the feedback sessions and we discussed the upcoming Festivals, Sci-Fest Brighouse, Sci-Fest Huddersfield, Wakefield, Ilkley, Morley and Manchester Literature Festivals.
I was the only member who had completed one of the writing challenges, so I shared the last 100 words of my WIP2. The dual narratives style was reminiscent of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (which has been mentioned before and recommended) and Sarah recommended that I also read his Bone Clocks too.
It was decided that the writing challenge for next time would be:
1) a Haiku on the theme of nature (5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables with sentence fragments)
2) 500 words on the 'home town tales' fictional story on the place you were born or have lived
3) Any choice of your own.
The next meeting will take place on Monday 3 October 5.30pm at Cleckheaton Library.
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