ESCWW: First Meeting

(Originally posted on the 24th of June, 2009)

Today was the first meeting of the East Surrey Creative Writing Workshop.

Attending: Alex and Tannice. Absent: Vicky and Susi.

We met in the Bull's Head pub, in Reigate High Street, at 7.30 PM.

Alex and I went through introductions and we discussed books and genres that we enjoyed. Alex noted that she was most interested in discussing and practicing fiction.

I also enjoy writing fiction but would also like to do some non-fiction writing, such as essays, articles and features. I may even bring copywriting to the group to get feedback. More details on non-practice discussion is below.

Alex hadn't had time to do the nature practice exercise but did read mine (which you can read here) and we discussed the potential of developing it into a longer short story instead of a flash.

We discussed the structure of the workshop and decided on the following:

Practice exercises, submissions and criticisms

Exercises will be sent out on the Wednesday we meet. Members then have one week to submit their writing to the list (until the following Wednesday). Members will then have one week to write crit notes, which will be presented at the next meeting.

Email-only members can submit their criticisms via email to all members.

I would encourage members to ensure that their criticisms are a good balance of positive and constructive. Crits may include notes about style, grammar, what you'd like to read more about, what you liked and what you think could be improved.

Meeting structure

We will start by presenting crits of the submissions.

The next section of the meeting will be for members to present a piece of writing as a discussion point.

The writing may be from a book, article, short story or any other piece of writing that you like. Members should start with a small introduction on why they've brought the piece to the meeting and a brief synopsis of the story if it's an extract from a book or a longer piece of writing.

We want to know:
- what you like, and why
- what you think works, and why
- what you think should be changes or could be improved upon
- anything else you want to say about it.

The third and final stage of the meeting is for the discussion of anything non-practice we've written, discussions of style and any grammar queries you have.

You will receive the details of the exercise via email.