The Cleckheaton Writers Group (CWG) met at 5.45pm last night via Zoom with Alice, Andrea, Karen, Sarah, Ashley and Gemma in attendance, Daniel and Neil having passed on their apologies.
The minutes from the last meeting were passed.
WIP updates: Karen has written more chapters on her current WIP, Book 8, completing a first draft at just over 81.5k words. She has submitted her first RS MS to an agent following a 1-2-1 request and entered the Penguin Michael Joseph Christmas Love Story competition with the first 1k words of her romantic comedy MS. Karen has also submitted the first RS MS to the RNA Books in the City opportunity and entered the Jericho Writers Valentines Giveaway Twitter competition. She has also started reworking one of her old scripts into a MS.
Alice has been editing her GEA book to hand in by the deadline of last Friday lunchtime and restarted her Project Nightmare WIP, having thought of a new direction for it.
Andrea has had many story ideas which she has been adding to a notebook, feeling that three of the four stories may feature the same characters. We look forward to hearing more.
Sarah has finished the sixth draft of Book 2, and resubmitted it to the agent with the suggested revisions as requested. She has been looking at Book 3 but been finding it hard to switch between projects.
Ashley has written up to 13k words (aims for a thousand a day) and has written every day which is an excellent achievement.
Gemma has taken a break having finished the first draft of Book 2 and is leaving it to rest. She has been reading Writing Magazine and had a massive sort out of the sheets of paper from Book 1 etc. She has also written a short story for a writing group competition with a 'bad women' theme that she brought along to share and written an article on editing (see below for link).
This led to a discussion on writing procrastination and regular writing habits. Alice recommended a timer for writing in 15 minute bursts as it puts less pressure on and can encourage a writer to do more. Alice also screen-shared a writing resource she finds useful.
Feedback sessions: Gemma shared her short story The Twilight Years which was well recieved by all the CWG members. It was felt that it could be the beginnings of a longer story, reminiscent of the Thursday Murder Club novel, and that with some light editing, is ready for submission should she feel it appropriate.
Karen recommended a useful writing book she'd had recommended to her and just received on screenwriting that could be used for any/all writing as it dealt with whether a writer had a story or a situation: The Nutshell Technique by Jill Chamberlain.
CW comps/workshops/events:
The 19th of February is the deadline for the New Writing North Awards: http://northernwritersawards.com/
21 February for the Curtis Brown Creative HW Fisher and TV Drama scholarships
26 February for the Neema Shah mentoring opportunity on Twitter
28 February for the Owned Voices Novel Award: https://ownedvoices.com/novel-award
5 March London Library Emerging Writers programme: www.londonlibrary.co.uk
28 March Curtis Brown Creative Breakthrough Writers Programme
11 April Curtis Brown Breakthrough Mentoring
End of August deadline for the Hachette pitch your story children's virtual open days (editing a MS)
The Leeds Literary Festival is in March with events such as an anthology launch on the 3rd of March, Writing the Landscape on 6th March and on 8th March, International Womens Day, a Bluemoose Books authors event: www.leedslitfest.co.uk
Huddersfield Literature Festival is in March and events include Saima Mir: The Khan with AA Dhand, Peter Robinson: DI Banks both on 27th March and a talk by Alexander McCall Smith on the 28th of March: www.huddlitfest.org.uk
Sarah recommended the writers podcasts that Marian Keyes has been conducting on Instagram (available on YouTube also) and the older Joanne Harris podcasts on YouTube, though Joanne may be doing some more soon.
Link to Gemma's editing article: https://huddersfieldauthorscircle.co.uk/2021/02/07/after-the-first-draft/
Writing plans: Gemma will be working out a list of scenes in excel spreadsheets with character, motivations, flaws etc. Ashley will stick to writing each day, intending to get back up to 1k words per day, and entering a couple of the aforementioned competitions. Sarah will be finishing Book 3, as there is just the ending to write. Andrea will keep going as inspiration strikes and read more. Alice will continue planning then start writing her new WIP. She is also starting on the Write Mentor picture book course. Karen intends to start editing her picture book, crime novel and YA fantasy, but is tempted to start planning/writing the sequel to her romantic comedy that she just completed.
Alice recommended the Story Grid excel sheet on character motivations, feeling that this can be adapted and Sarah recommended Revision Cards, with characters in different colours, that can be purchased from B&M at £1.
Writing challenge: Should any CWG member wish to rise to a writing challenge, the theme is Love, it being the day after Valentine's Day. This can be interpreted in any way and doesn't have to be hearts and flowers.
Next meeting: The next meeting will take place on Monday 1 March at 5.45pm on Zoom using the same links as the meeting this time.
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