Minutes of Scribblers meeting held on 22 January 2019
Present: Dave, Tony, Beryl, Liz, Kay, Georgina, Liliane, Jim, Anne, Derek, David, Carole, Cathy
Apologies: Jane
Business:
We were delighted to welcome two new members, Carole and David.
Poetry reading - Dave had been contacted by a local poet asking whether or not we would be interested in having her attend a meeting to read one or two of her poems. The general feeling was that as we are essentially not a poetry group, it wouldn’t be appropriate, so Dave will decline.
Felixstowe Book Festival (FBF) – Scribblers and Orwell Writers’ League have offered to share a two hour slot at the festival, and Meg Reid has agreed to this. Scribblers will run a flash fiction session, while OWL will do a light hearted ‘fun’ session of some description. Cathy did remind members that volunteers are crucial to the successful running of the FBF – if anyone can spare even one hour to help out, then they can contact Meg.
2019 Anthology – Gipping Press have given us a very reasonable quote, so we will be using their services again. Stories for inclusion need to be emailed to Dave, either as an attachment or within the body of the email, quite soon. As a rough guide, each member of the group can have about 2000 words to work with, whether as one long story, or as a mix of shorter ones. Competition winners and runners up were asked (told!) to offer their winning entries for inclusion.
Post Christmas meal – Liz double checked orders. Tuesday 29 January at the White Horse pub, Church Road, Felixstowe, 7 for 7.30.
Review needed - an undisclosed magazine wants to print a review of Tony’s recently published book. If there is anyone in the group who can do this review for him, he would be grateful.
Flash fiction:
Writing ‘on the spot’ isn’t everyone’s favourite pastime, and we had to admire our new members’ courage in joining us for this session – talk about throwing themselves in at the deep end! The topic drawn (‘You are the world’s worst …’) drew groans from most of us, but as ever, we buckled down for a little over twenty minutes to see what we could come up with.
The results were very satisfying. It’s always amazing to hear how differently we use the topic, and impressive that we almost always achieve complete stories. And congratulations to new members David and Carole, who did themselves proud.
Next meeting: 5 February 2019, when the homework topic is ‘My best friend.’ in stories of up to 1000 words.
