General Chat

I shall sit at my keyboard tomorrow and write the first thing that comes into my head, and allow myself to ramble on. I often come up with some ideas when I do that.

I've done mine... LOL... which isn't what I intended to do !

Thankyou Jill you have given me the spur I needed to start writing up the family history...I hadn't a clue where to start , and here it is started :))

xx

Hi all, I don't come on GR as much as I used to do as my research has slowed somewhat and I have been busy doing other connected projects.
I too love to write and once joined a writing group briefly...until I moved house.
I started to write my autobiography several years ago but it came to a halt when I started my research.
I have completed a childrens story which I now feel needs revision and perhaps some updating.
I have also written quite a lot of poetry over the years.
I am very tempted by Mrs Grumpy's idea but like many of you here, am worried about whether I can commit to a time frame.
I'm almost 63, have 3 children and 8 grandchildren.

I'd like to join please - I'm Ann, widowed, living in Cardiff and absoilutely love writing - mostly write about things I have experienced - am very successful in getting my letters published in the South Wales Echo - have had three published in the last two weeks!!! Once was a runner up in a national writing competition in Good Housekeeping magazine - would have loved to have been a journalist but ended up being a secretary!!!!

List of topics suggested by Ann in Glos.

Hang on to these - or use one or more of them if you want:-

New life
Blue
purple
Trees
Sunrise

Jill

4 more members!!

Deanna, Gillian, Jen - please send me your e-mail addresses please so I can add you to the circulation list. I have Ann of Green Gable's e-mail. I'll send the e-mail round when I have all your addies if that's OK.

Don't worry about the timescale at the moment. Two weeks is what we will all aim for - don't worry if you can't meet that one - particularly the first one! It will get easier. And, after all, if you were attending a writing group you would not manage to make every single session and you won't always have written something - it happens. Relax.

Work will need to go round the group - if we post on here it will become long and muddly. Also, by posting it round, we don't have to worry about conforming to the T&Cs of the site, so the odd swear word for instance, won't matter. (I know we're none of us likely to swear in our work [cough] but you never know!)

Still puzzling slightly over feedback. I know that for me, personally, it will be easier to put the feedback into one document and circulate to all members - otherwise I will get into such a muddle! But, not sure how everyone feels about that. Have a think. We have plenty of time to decide the most logical way to do that.

Gonna be fun!

Jill

Jill, I think feedback in one document, split into individual sections would be easier. Otherwise we may forget who we have sent to/about etc.

Jill, I am down as a non writer, does that preclude me from 'having a go'?

No Ann - I think a few of the "non-writers" will join in at some stage.

I will move you across to the writing list ...

Jill

Thanks Jill, be prepared for a newby (at writing that is), always written a lot of letters, both to friends and family and magazines, and scribbled for my own benefit, holiday diaries etc. But never anything for criticism before.

Hello Jill and Ann ~~~ Just got in,

Was just wondering , Jill, are you going to set a date for everyone to send their piece on to others ? I know we're aiming for two weeks, but should we all send on same day if possible...or in dribs and drabs lol

Rose xx

I was thinking about that this morning Rose. We will have to allow ourselves a bit of time for all that reading won't we?

Would it be easier to send round as you go - so it arrives in dribs and drabs and spreads the load a bit for the readers? Might be confusing - and harder work - if it all arrives at the same time ...

What do you all think?

Jill

I thought that Jill...and then I thought again lol... for instance if you sent me what you had written a week before i finished mine, and yours was brilliant I might feel I shouldn't even be thinking about writing and be thoroughly discouraged:)

I was reading Bill Bryson last night , and know I will never write anything so funny .... I was like Mutley sniggering so I didn't wake Dan lol

xx

But if you were really worried about your work you could put off reading others' work until you'd finished your piece ... I know what you mean though! We will all have to be very brave, bite the bullet and send it all round!

Jill

Rose I've just finished a Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island, and like you, I was chuckling away as I read it. It's a really good lesson on how to write humour though, so always useful. Follow the example, don't be intimidated by it.

Jill, back to feedback, I agree it might be better all on one document. Perhaps, as we email the piece to all, perhaps feedback could be placed in the reply, and we could 'reply all', so we can all see that feedback and learn from it.

Deadlines, well they are not a bad thing. Many writers have to keep to deadlines, and it's not as evil as you might think.
Many find it daunting to write a lengthy piece, and often say 'I don't have time,' But if you wrote just 200 words a day, which wouldn't take long, you'd have 1000 written in just five days.

Some of you will have heard of NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, usually November. The idea is to just write 50,000 words of a novel between November 1st and midnight on November 30th. Sounds huge doesn't it? But break it down and you'll see that it requires just 1,700 words a day. I can usually write that much in an hour or two. So to write one 500 or 1000 word piece in two weeks means you only need to write for a few minutes each day. There is no need to worry about deadlines, just break it down into manageable chunks, and it will seem less demanding than you think.

Besides, as Rose has demonstrated already, once you start writing, and let it flow, you'll have far more than that in no time at all. Many people set aside just 30 minutes or an hour a day for their writing, slotting it in between their other commitments, you can do it too.

What a talented bunch you are...I wish I could write but I am useless. I do read a lot though and I look forward to reading your stories. xxx

lol Posh you haven't read anything yet ;) you might sit there afterwards and think " I can do better than that " . Please have a go anyway if you have time

Teresa I finished re-reading 'Small Island' and went on to "Notes from a Big Country ' had them both for years and re-read from time to time :)

Jill , will bite the bullet soon then

xx

I bet you could Posh.

Why not try it, just write a little something, an experience, a place, anything. Write what you know, and use as many of the five senses as you can to describe it.

That's the idea of the group, to give it a go, get the feedback, learn from it, and improve, all the while learning the craft. It can be done, but won't be done unless you write.

I think that it what holds a lot of people back. Seeing the written work of others, whether it be an article in a magazine, or a book from the library, they feel intimidated against such well written work, but what you read is often several drafts down the line from the original work, which is probably complete crap, with spelling mistakes, grammar and punctuation mistakes or missing, lack of prose or too many adverbs, repetitions, all of which have to be polished again and again until the writer feels it is right, readable, and says what is intended without going on and on.

I know I felt like that until I read 'On Writing', by Stephen King, ironically, the one writer who really intimidated me and had me talking myself out of actually trying. That book really showed me that good writers don't get it right first time, nor the second time, in fact, probably not until they have revised and polished several times, even Stephen King himself!

Tell me when a number of words is set, is it stuck to rigidly? And, if so would you count don't as two words?

As far as I know Ann, don't and words like it, (that'll, I'll, isn't etc.) count as one word.

I'm not sure how rigid Jill is planning to be regarding word count, but I am being rigid with it myself because I have to for my course work anyway, though there is a 10 per cent margin either way. ie, a 500 word request could be 450 to 550 and still be acceptable. But I think it's fairly open here, with a word count being a rough guideline. I'll leave it to Jill to confirm though.

thanks TW that is what I wanted to know, and sorry for the questions but should the finished piece, if prose, be spaced at 1.5?