No meeting on Thurs 27th for the Word watchers!!

Hi all,, especially Tony to whom we send our regards. 


Please note that the meeting originally planned for this Thursday will not now be going ahead.


Can we agree on a date at the end of November when we can hold our wordwatchers meeting over a few festive drinks at Jurnets Bar?


Please come back with some ideas everyone and keep accessing the blog !


Keep writing everyone:-)

Info for Peter from Lynn

Below is the schedule for the script hand-in dates, plus actual workshopping dates. I hope it makes sense. Please email me if you're confused and I will attempt to enlighten further:

 BEN/PETER: Hand in scripts 25th Oct. These will be workshopped on 1st Nov.

JULIE/MARGARET: Hand in scripts 1st Nov. These will be workshopped on 8th Nov.

CAROLINE/HILARY/RICHARD: Hand in scripts 8th Nov. These will be workshopped on 15th Nov.

BEN/PETER:Hand in scripts 15th Nov. These will be workshopped on 22nd Nov.

JULIE/MARGARET: Hand in scripts 22nd Nov. These will be workshopped on 29th Nov.

CAROLINE/HILARY/RICHARD: Hand in scripts 29th Nov. These will be workshopped on 6th Dec.

Scripts should be : 1000 – 2000 WORDS MAX . ALL SCRIPTS TO BE PRINTED ON ONE SIDE OF PAPER ONLY (which makes them easier for photocopying), A4 PAPER, DOUBLE-SPACED, PLUS ADD A CONTEXTUALISING NOTE LETTING YOUR READERS KNOW  WHERE THE EXTRACT APPEARS IN YOUR NOVEL. EG. LET US KNOW IF IT'S THE START OF THE NOVEL, FOUR CHAPTERS IN - THAT KIND OF THING....

Ben and Peter - I think it'd make sense if we looked at your summaries next week so as a group we can get some idea of what your books are about, in preparation for the workshopping of your scripts.

Caroline - I hope you don't mind putting this on the blog for Peter. Cheers.

On our final meet on the 13th Dec we shall have a mini-party come reading-of-our-best-bits!

Until next Tuesday. Have a good weekend.

Lynne

Human Glue - - Hilary Hanbury

Synopsis - 

You can never remove yourself from who you are. You can embrace it, run from it, pretend it never existed but what you can never do is stop it from being a part of you.

A family is the sum total of all its constituent parts like a jigsaw puzzle.  Unlike a proper jigsaw puzzle, they seldom fit together neatly, but are random pieces, touching at the edges and sometimes curving around one another snugly, but the whole picture is never revealed. People try to make them fit by forcing the pieces together, but that can be painful for the doer and the done to.

Other bits are sometimes thrown into the pattern to fill the gaps. This changes the whole thing and occasionally a small corner looks as if it might work. It depends on whether the random piece is captured or gets lost.

When a piece gets lost it affects the rest. The pattern must then cast around for other pieces to try to make it whole, then, all of a sudden the random piece is found and now, there is no room for it.

How does the final pattern arrange itself? What pieces of the puzzle will form part of the whole and which ones will never be found?

This human jigsaw is like the one that Grandmother had on the table for years, trying to find those random pieces and refusing to throw it away because she knew that one day they would turn up. Once they did, the whole thing would be glued together and put on display under a big plate of glass.

Margaret and Tony: Meeting tonight (13th October)

Hello everyone,

Margaret and I have arrived at Wensum and read your blog messages!  I hope you both get better soon, Hilary and Caroline!

We will both keep an eye on the blog ......

Very best wishes,

Margaret and Tony

Oh dear, message to the Word Watchers too...

I am afraid I won't be able to make it either tonight for our little gathering on 13th September. I have  had some kind of tummy bug since  the week –end and it progressively got worse.
 Pity I had done quite a bit of writing and I was so looking forward to sharing it with you all.

The course on Tuesday evening went well (although when we arrived at reception we were told that the course had been moved to Wednesday nights). That did send the four of us, present on Tuesday, in a bit of a panic (Margaret, Ben, Richard and I). Fortunately Lynne Bryan, the tutor wasn't told either, so they eventually found us a room (no room was booked for 11th September) and the course went ahead, thank goodness!!

My feeling and, it is only my feeling, is that the course is quite a big step up from last year's. Ben has already got a whole first draft of his novel and Richard, the other new person has his plot outline and a few scenes written, which is kind of where I am.

Lynne, the tutor will be far more hands-on and will request far more work from us, I think, compared to last year.
She is used to mentoring writers and script writers, who have already done a fair bit of their work. She is very nice and funny but probably might be less gentle with us than lovely Gary was. I must admit that it is what I was after and if, by the end of the course, I could arrive to a first draft of my masterpiece, then I will be a happy customer!!!!

On the night itself, we did a few exercises mainly interviewed each other in pairs then we introduced the person we had interviewed to the group. We also told Lynne what we expected from the course and she told us what she was expecting the course to be about. She is really going to try to work with each other and our ‘masterpieces’, almost on an individual basis, which I think in fantastic.  We also talked about all the things that stop people from writing and Lynne read to us how some famous writers wrote. Some in bed, some using always the same kind of notebooks, some using only fountain pens, etc.

Julie, if you are reading this, I know that you can't make Tuesdays, but I think you would have liked it.

Message for  HILARY and PETER: HOMEWORK  for next Tuesday:

Lynne asked us to put it on the blog for you, as we discussed what experience/what courses we did before. And she knows some of us have done Gary’s course.
Margaret please do feel free to edit this part if you understood the homework a bit differently!

1)      Write the summary of your novel (maximum: 1 side of A4).

A few pointers to help us:

Try to reveal the ‘heart’ of your plot.

Try to convey what kind of genre it is.

Give names of writers who write the same  kind of things as you are writing.

What is your book about?

Maybe condense the plot to its essence.

2)      Write the first sentence of your novel.

I will see some of you next Tuesday at Wensum Lodge and the others on Thursday in 2 weeks time, I guess.

Caroline

Will Anyone Be There?

As Hilary and Peter can't make it, and I have quite a way to come, I just wanted to make sure someone else will be there tonight.  Please reply to this blog, email me (I shall email you all as well) or text me on 07833 998545.  If I don't hear from anyone I may not come, so please get in touch.

Thanks

Julie

wordwatchers - message to everyone from Hilary

Hi all,
Sorry I have the most awful flu type symptoms so would hate to give what ever it is to everyone else. I hope the meeting goes well this evening and hope to see some of you next week at the course on Tues ( Caroline and Margaret, how did it go on Tuesday?) and the week after ( 27th Oct) at Wensum Lodge for our wordwatchers meeting as usual. Should have no probs getting a room as its half term.
Sorry to let you down this week but really do feel awful. I will post my contribution to the blog at some point so you can all give me some feedback.

I'm off back under my duvet folks. Have a great meeting.

Word Watchers - The Next Meeting l3th October

Dear Hilary, Caroline, Julie, Margaret and Tony,


Good to see you all  in the conspiratorial candle light of the Bicycle  Shop.  Unfortunately,  when I got home my wife reminded me that I would be away on the date set for the next meeting on l3th October. Please accept my apologies. I  hope the meeting goes well.i  I will be  available for a future  meeting.

Keeping writing,

All  Good Wishes,

PETER.

Meeting on the 29th

Hello fellow Word-Watchers!

Looking forward to the meeting tonight at the Bike Shed.  Thanks for the offer, Caroline, but I plan to park near ToysRUs as I will have the car anyway.  See you later.

Julie

Meeting at the Bicycle Club on Thursday 29th Sept.

Dear Hilary,

Thank you for organizing the next meeting at the Bicycle Club.   I am looking forward to being there  and shall bring some written work along.  I've got a couple of books  too.  One is by  William Boyd  which might be of interest  because of the different  Time Cycles.  The other is a book mentioned by Gary giving tips, which is beautifully set out  so that you can retrieve information as you are writing yourself.

Did anyone have the chance last  week to listen to some of the BBC's  dramatized  excerpts  from the book  I referred to  'Life and Fate' by Vasily Grossman.

Keep  Writing!

Looking forward to seeing  you all,
PETER 

Hello Word Watchers, just a few thoughts

Thank you very much Hilary (I guess!!!) for all the info about the next meeting place.

For the 29th September, I am quite happy to pick up people from the County Hall or Wensum Lodge area.
My car can easily sit 3 passengers, so please let me know if that could benefit any of you.

Also just a thought I had, but maybe on 29th September we could/should discuss what to do if the 'materclass for novelists' course doesn't run. For those who enrolled, obviously!! I hope, whatever happen with the course, we will still meet maybe every two weeks to help each other out...
Hilary - for the 'masterclass for novelists' course, to you think we should either suggest to Adult Ed advertises it on the NCC marketplace, our even take matters in our own hands and do this ourselves??!!
Finally, does anyone know if Gary's course is running tomorrow (22nd Sept.)? there are also only 5 people booked on it, but the start date hasn't been changed....

See you all on the 29th September.

Caroline

Thursday meeting on 29th Sept.

Hello everyone,
There are no free rooms at Wensum Lodge for the Wordwatchers meeting on 29th. I think, therefore, we should go with Plan B ( unlike the present government!!) and meet at the Bicycle Shop on St Benedicts Street.
In case anyone is not familiar with St Bendicts, it is the road which runs along the bottom of Pottergate and is home to the Norwich Arts Centre at the far end, and Cookes music shop nearer the city.
The Bicycle Shop is close to the city end being a little way up from Divas hair dressers and the Pizza Express. We will be able to use their upstairs room.
You can park on St Benedicts but there are parking meters. The best place I have found at that time is to park on the car park where TK Maxx and Toys R Us is situated which is accesible from Grapes Hill.

Let me know if you need any further information.

Looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible with some written work to read out as we agreed at the last meeting.

Tony, Margaret and Sandra - where are you? Hope to see you on 29th It was a really good meeting last time and we all read and discussed each others work. Really useful.

An Evening With

As you're not going to the Course tomorrow, just to let you know there is a local author - Rachel Hore - appearing at Jarrolds on Tuesday 20th Sept, 6.30 - 8.30pm.  She writes the sort of novels Hilary and I are trying to do - set in two time periods with some sort of link.  I gather she has written around five, I've not read any but will go along and see if I can get some tips.  Tickets cost £5.

Julie

Masterclass course

 When Adult Education called me today to say the materclass course is postponed until 11 October.  I was told 5 people had sign up, the delay will let them advertise more widely.

Word  watchers
I am sorry I did not get there on Monday, I was not feeling well enough.  Please let me know when the next one will be. 

Materclass for novelists - course start date postponed

Dear Word Watchers,

This is mainly for people who have enrolled on the above course.
The masterclass for novelists course which should have started on Tuesday 20th September 7-9pm at Wesum Lodge has been postponed until Tuesday 11th October 7-9pm.
I guess it's due to the lack of interest, but I am not am sure.

The next Word Watchers meeting will be on Thursday 29th September, I believe - lacation to be decided, I am sure Hilary will let us know.

Bye for now.

Caroline

Monday it is then - from Hilary

Hi everyone,
I understand that the next meeting is tomorrow evening. Sorry about the confusion. I must have not been concentrating!
Will meet in the reception area then. See you at 7pm.
Hilary

Word Watchers

Hilary

I definitely have it down for this Monday, the 12th (Thursday is my wedding anniversary, so wouldn't have agreed to meeting then!)  Peter and Margaret both mention Monday 12th Sept on the blog as well.

Julie

Hello Wordwatchers

Just a reminder that we are meeting next Thursday at 7pm in reception as we did last time. I have not yet booked us a room but will do so next Monday. Hopefully, we can have Crawshay again.


I hope we will see Tony at the next meeting as he dropped me an email regarding the last meeting when he was on holiday.


Sandra, If you are still reading this Blog - we miss you too! Do come and meet with us and celebrate our new 'moniker' The Wordwatchers group.


I have to confess to not having even looked at my novel, but I do have an excuse - I only got back from Singapore on Tuesday morning and had not seen a bed since Sunday night!


 I promise that by next Thursday I will definitely have something to read at the meeting.


I checked on the enrolments and only 3 people have enrolled so far! Where are you all?


Am looking forward to catching up with everyone's writing on Thursday and maybe seeing a couple more of the group maybe.......?


Peter and Julie, I haven't yet had an opportunity to read the chapters you have posted, but am writing on Sunday morning and will set aside some time to read then. I so enjoy it that I want to make proper time to take it all in. 


Caroline, thanks so much for asking your Dad about the 'arondissements' this is so useful as I am writing part of the 'Paris events' on Sunday. Please thank him for me, or if her reads the blog, Mercie Carolines Dad!


Keep writing folks - and see you on Thursday.

Chapter 2

Just so Peter doesn't feel so bad about posting on the blog (we love to read it, Peter), here is the follow up to my new start.  Comments gratefully received.  I will bring part three with me, printed out, on Monday.  Hope to see you all then.

June 1956

The village policeman arrived on his bicycle half an hour after Mary had sent the cook’s son off to get him.  Mary felt sick to the pit of her stomach, imagining the reaction of the villagers and, most of all, dreading how she would tell Charles.

PC Morrissey stood in the hallway, holding his police helmet and his bicycle clips in what Mary supposed was intended to be a respectful way.  ‘I hear there’s been an incident, Mrs Fletcher.’

Mary nodded.  ‘You’d better come upstairs.’

She led the way up the sweeping staircase, past the familiar portraits of Rupert’s ancestors, to the first floor landing and the entrance to Rupert’s bedroom.  She had shut the door earlier and, as she hesitated outside, she half-wondered whether she had made a terrible mistake.  Could it be that her husband was not really dead, but that she had been the victim of some awful hallucination?  Reluctant to find out the truth, Mary stood, her eyes shut tight, willing for Rupert to be sitting at his writing desk by the window when she opened the door.

PC Morrissey cleared his throat noisily and shuffled his feet on the wooden floor.  Mary opened her eyes, slightly annoyed at the interruption, and turned to look at him. 

‘Shall we, Mrs Fletcher,’ he asked, indicating the closed door.  She bit her lip and turned the handle.

A quick glance indicated that Rupert was lying exactly as she had left him.  She waited by the door while PC Morrissey took out his notebook and pencil.  ‘So you found him like this?’ 

‘Yes,’ Mary replied quietly.  PC Morrissey strode up to the bed and peered intently at the occupant.  With a thoughtful ‘hmmm’ he walked around the other side.  He prodded Rupert in the ribs with the end of his pencil and then tapped it on the stock of the shotgun.  ‘Is this your husband’s gun?’

Mary nodded, trying to avoid looking at the bed.

PC Morrissey licked the other end of the pencil and wrote something in his notebook. ‘Did he leave a note?’ he asked, staring pointedly at Rupert’s writing desk.

‘He was hardly up here long enough,’ Mary replied, but she went over to check.  The only items on the desk were a sheet of blotting paper, a large bottle of ink, and a selection of pens.

‘Did he say anything to you?’

‘No.  He came straight upstairs.  He’d just got back from London.’

PC Morrissey made another note in his book, then he looked up, as a sudden question seemed to strike him.  ‘Were you surprised he didn’t speak to you?’

Mary shrugged.  She hadn’t considered it odd at the time.  ‘He probably didn’t know where I was.’

‘I will have to speak to other members of the household.  Could you give me their names, please.’

‘Well, there’s our son Charles, and there’s Rupert’s sister Annabelle and her husband Peter Welch, they live in the East wing.’

PC Morrissey frowned and looked up from his writing.  ‘East wing?’

‘This is the West wing.  They live the other end, over there.’ Mary indicated the general direction with her arm.

‘I see.  Who else?’

‘No-one else lives in the house.  Rupert’s father passed away some time ago.’

‘What about the staff?’

‘Is this really necessary, Herbert?’ Mary asked.  PC Morrissey had lived in Hayton almost as long as she had and he knew perfectly well who lived and worked at the Hall.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Fletcher, but I must take a note of everything.’

She sighed.  ‘There’s Mrs Parsons, the cook, and her husband, who manages the estate.  They live in a cottage in the grounds with their four children.  Or is it five?  Other than that, there’s just David Mitchell, the stable boy.’

PC Morrissey stopped writing and raised his eyebrows.  ‘Boy?’

‘Well, the position is called stable boy, but he’s nineteen, the same age as Charles.’

‘And where is master Charles now?’ 

Mary sighed again.  ‘He is travelling back from University today, for the summer break.’  She felt tears pricking and took her handkerchief out of her sleeve, dabbing her eyes.  ‘He should be home soon.’

Right on cue, she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.  A voice, which she thought was probably David’s, called up ‘No, Charles, wait!’ then there was the sound of a second set of footsteps running upstairs.

Mary turned towards the doorway as first Charles appeared, then David, looking over his shoulder.  Both young men took in the scene before them with horrified expressions. 

Charles broke the silence with an anguished question.  ‘Oh my God, Mother, what have you done?’

Julie

Another message to the Word Watchers

I will be enrolling on the Tuesday night masterclass.  I have just tried on line and have forgotten the password, so I will do it by phone this week.

Peter,  Don't worry about putting things on  the blog, that's what it is there for.  I am waiting eagerly for the next instalment. 

Looking forward to seeing you all again on the 12th.

Margaret