10 Feb 2009 - Writers Circle
The Writer's Group has been meeting for five years now. Hetty Staples convened the group and led it for two or three years after which Tanya Neave took over.
We are a very democratic group, choosing a title to write about for our next session.. We then meet at 2.30pm in one another's houses on the last Friday in the month,when we read our pieces to one another. We like to choose a title that has many possible interpretations. For example we once chose "The Fall" and had offerings ranging from thoughts on the season, to parachute jumping, life changing accidents, and, more philosophically, a fall from grace.However whatever subject is chosen we manage to produce poems, short stories or more factual observations with characteristic style and it is fascinating to see "the Take" people have put on each idea.
We have had a membership of around ten members with some changes over the years, but have now gone down to eight. so, if you fancied trying your hand at putting pen to paper in a warm and welcoming group, please feel free to contact Tanya Neave at tanya.neave@ntlworld .com or by telephone :- 023 9264 9265.
Writers' Workshops
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At the end of last year I attended a Writer's Workshop run by Maggie Smith, in London.I found it stimulating and enjoyable and was, therefore, eager to accept her offer of coming to our local groups to do something similar.The session in London consisted of several 10 to 20 minute exercises which we then shared with the people on our table, about six in number.There were about 40 people present, so it would have been far too time consuming to have read our offerings to the whole group. On our day in Petersfield we had only 15 people and I am afraid we succumbed to the temptation of wanting to hear what each person had written which cut down on the number of exercises we did .However Maggie had brought several copies of her excellent hanbook for "U3A CREATIVE WRITING GROUPS" which is brimful of ideas for stimulating writing and is so modestly priced at £2. 50p that we will be able to continue what was started on the day for many months to come.
We had also asked Maggie to specifically help us with "Constructive feedback" ,not you will notice, CRITICISM, a somewhat negative and unhelpful term . To this end we had all brought a very short piece of prose and after Maggie demonstrating how to negatively criticise and then how to feedback with a piece of her own writing, we split into groups of three and attempted to make constructive observations with one another.
I would encourage groups to avail themselves of all that is on offer, we thoroughly enjoyed our time together with the added bonus of input from Maggie. It is perhaps difficult to ascertain the optimum number for such a day in order to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to share one's own work and hear others. The room needs to be large enough to accommodate groups of people without disturbing one another. Obviously different groups will have different objectives but as we are all in the business of writing I would encourage everyone to "have a go!"
Tanya Neave Co-ordinator for Petersfield U3A |