The Cleckheaton Writers Group (CWG) met this evening Sam, Neil, Cassie, Karen, Mark, Pauline, Sarah, Kathy and Gemma in attendance, Mandy and Alice having passed on their apologies.
We welcomed Sarah back to the meeting, introducing her to new members and congratulating her on her publishing deal.
WIP updates: Pauline has decided to start a new WIP rather than continuing with her Bickerman WIP for now and will also be revisiting an earlier writing idea. Gemma has been editing her WIP following the beta feedback she has received. Kathy has finished her Tobias WIP. She now needs to check some details such as story arcs for each character following the path she intended and then she may go back to look at her short story collection The 12 Dates of Chris Moss. Sam has scrapped his serious fantasy WIP and changed it to a comedic novel. He has finished chapter one and half of chapter two. Mark has written half of a chapter from the POV of the character he had been struggling with which has generated more ideas. He is now 50% into the story and feels he solved a returning character problem. Neil has been to EdgeLit and been blogging about it. He is looking to get back into his Colony X sci-fi WIP. Sarah has secured a book deal and been working on structural edits which were due at the end of July. She is now awaiting the copy editing stage. Having been unsuccessful in gaining an agent, she open submitted to five publishers and has an ebook deal with Harper Collins. The ebook entitled 'The Beach' is available in November, and hard copy in February. She has also written 60% of another psychological thriller which is 30% altered from when she shared it previously with the group and is now researching. Cassie has not written anything since the last meeting and Karen has continued to edit her WIP, now with just seven chapters left to revise before sending to beta readers.
Feedback sessions: Sam shared the first chapter of his book, the first in a trilogy called The Realms of Farscaithe, entitled The Watcher which he had already shared with some beta readers. The group felt it had some excellent world-building and foreshadowing but that some of the dialogue tags were not necessary, which would be picked up in the editing process. We look forward to hearing more.
CW comps, workshops and events: The Write Mentor writing weekend on 8-9 February is now available to book. It is £200 for the weekend, £100 for the day or £50 per half day and there are a small number of scholarship places available. The Curtis Brown novel competition is still available to enter up until the end of August. Gemma and Sarah attended Harrogate Crime Festival and informed the group about the Northern Writers Conference in Manchester in September (£35) and York Festival of Writing (£500 for the full weekend) also in September. The headline acts have now been announced for Ilkley Literature Festival which takes place in October, and also in September there are both Bloody Scotland in Stirling (20-22nd) and Bronte Festival of Women's Writing (20th).
Due to the Ribbon Tree cafe closing for rebranding, the next Monday CWG creative writing session will take place in Brighouse at Cafe 139, which is located opposite the police station and swimming pool, at 2pm. All members welcome to attend.
The next CWG meeting will take place on Monday 19 August at 5.30pm at Cleckheaton Library.
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