MEETING REPORT FOR 19th JULY 2011

Apologies: Barry, Dick, Caz, Martin, Ruth
Present: Ray, Carolyn, Cathy, Sally, Sandy, Beryl, Les, Robyn, Liliane, Tony and Dave (chair).

The attendance was just a little lower tonight than expected. Unfortunately Barry is still suffering from hospital treatment in London last week and so we wish him well and hope to see him back with us next time.

Dick was double booked and involved with a ghost evening at Landguard Fort so no doubt he was at our meeting in spirit only. Hope it didn’t rain too much!

Ruth is heavily engaged with promoting and selling her latest novel, ‘The Sacrificial Man’. Tonight she was in Cambridge. An author’s life is a very busy one!

Caz is away for a few days whilst Martin was unable to attend.

Mention was made of an 87 year old writer Stateside who is just being published for the first time. This reminded us of our late member John Crowson who was to be published for the first time in our last anthology. John, 97 years young and our oldest ever member, lived in St Albans and was a regular guest at the Castle Lodge Hotel. He had written short stories and poetry over the years but his family failed to appreciate his talent. Invited along to a Scribblers meeting back in 2007, he jumped at the opportunity to share his work and was thrilled with the opportunity of having some of his work published in our anthology. So sadly John passed away just days before the anthology was released.

Tony had his annual Music and Mayhem night last Saturday when several Scribblers attended. By all accounts – from those who could remember! – a good time was had by all. There is a whisper that Tony’s massive fantasy novel based on our homework assignments might be considered by Ruth’s publisher. Good luck Tony, it really is a work of creative art.

News from Down Under our friend Chris is that he has another Book Creators Circle Book Expo coming up in September, and he says he’s ‘got a lot of 'stuff' to do’. Good luck Chris, hope the hard work pays off. Staying on the Australian side, Belinda and Geoff made it home again – they left England in the rain, stopped off in Hong Kong where it rained continuously then landed in Brisbane where they got another load of the wet stuff. Nice to hear they got back safely though and are waiting for the ‘skies to lay off the juice’. How nice it was to see Belinda at one of our meetings whilst over here on holiday.

Tonight’s meeting was a move away from the ‘norm’ dedicating the evening to hearing extracts from two novels, both of which are works in progress with working titles, followed by a discussion and feedback on each.

Both authors, Beryl and Ray, submitted their work in advance by email which allowed time to read their stories. This was very helpful, allowing members to get a first impression of their work.

Beryl: Entitled ‘A Sense of Justice’:

Beryl read a synopsis of the fictionalised account of the lives of her Russian Jewish grandparents who lived in London’s East End and her parents. The story is in three parts, and here Beryl gave a flavour of the first two, of Roma in the first part and Bascha in the second. Each part covers a different period of time and uniquely both women write in the first person. The complete reading covered a whole host of different situations, giving a real flavour of life within the Jewish community, the area where they lived, the sweatshops where they worked and references to Trade Unions and anarchy!.

Extremely well written with deserved positive feedback. We all learned a great deal from the enjoyable work whilst Beryl was very pleased with the overall comments and suggestions.

Ray: Entitled ‘Heavy Metal Cowboys’.

Again a fictionalised story partially based on real characters. Humorously written, the excellent description of the location, upmarket Acacia Avenue and its residents, revealed Lyn’s concern over the new arrivals at number 22. Had it been sold to a housing association? Was the new family coloured? Issues sensitively covered. The mystery soon began to unravel when the new owner arrived wearing jeans, leather jacket and Iron Maiden T-shirt, followed by his motorcycling daughter and friends. Lyn’s own ally, Shelley, is attracted to the new resident, her feelings seemingly reciprocated.

Excellent humour, believable characters and a flowing storyline. Again there was positive feedback from the floor including suggestions over chapter lengths. Like Beryl, Ray was pleased with the comments he received.

Ray has since sent in the following:

“I thoroughly enjoyed last night and all the comments about my piece. As you will appreciate this was a little out of my comfort zone and wondered if the story would work. Once home again I looked at the points raised and I've gone back to the point where I first asked if you wanted me to stop. New chapter starts there. So that's a positive then. So thank you all not only for the critique but for the encouragement. Ray.”

So ended a really good evening’s entertainment and discussion provided by two of our very talented Scribblers.

Cathy commented how good the evening had been and that every writer, given this opportunity would benefit and whilst everyone agreed that this sort of meeting should become a vital organ in our ever developing body of writers. In depth feedback such as this could never be given on the normal 1,000 word homework assignments, for a start there would be time issues, though Robyn suggested that everyone could provide their homework online three days before every meeting to enable their work to be read in advance.

In response most members are hobby writers and some are only able to create ‘last minute’ homework. Some are not computerised in fact they are not stereotyped so placing an additional onus on them to provide advance work could ultimately have an adverse affect on membership.

Feedback has always been an issue. Everyone likes receiving constructive feedback, but, such is the way in this beautiful county of ours, giving feedback in a limited time is difficult. We are too nice!!! In the last ten years or so (when Dave was secretary), many solutions were sought to provide this requested feedback. Suggestions included that copies of the work were made available to be taken home, digested, and comments fed back to the writer failed to work.

There were calls for work to be posted on line for feedback in a members only website – but the first, in August 2005, ‘Online Jotters’ failed, was replaced by Online Scribblers which again failed to attract input and also closed down. Next the more recent ‘Keep On Scribbling’ secure weblog had a promising start but there was a reluctance to provide feedback - the object of the site. Sadly this has been consigned to history.

Tonight’s feedback meeting worked well, it was a success just like the first one staged earlier this year. Perhaps this is a way forward but we must remember that our objective is to provide a varied programme of meetings to assist creativity for all writers. The programme is always open to fine tuning and suggestions on likes or dislikes are welcomed.

Our next meeting will be on 2nd August when the homework assignment for up to 1,000 words will be ‘Train Journey’

Until next time,

Keep Scribbling!

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visit your local Felixstowe Library
and the Suffolk Record Office .