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| photo: Adenike Knudsen |
Hightown Writer’s Workshop Meeting
Tuesday 26th October 2021 at 7.30pm in the Spirit
Room at Peepo
Present: Paul, Liv, Martin, Adam, Sue, Liz, Jennie
Apologies: Marie, Andy, Kath
We moved back to our roots this meeting. Hightown Writers started
in 2014, in Peepo, led by Jim Brettell and Julia Buckley following a creative
writing course they had both attended in Wolverhampton. Now we enjoyed being
back in the wonderfully restored ‘upstairs’ – now the Spirit Room - where we
enjoyed comfort, quietness for writing and excellent company.
We have had several enquiries about the group following our return to Peepo and we were delighted to welcome two new members Paul, from Telford, and Liv, recently returned to Bridgnorth after living in France. Paul’s focus is on writing for performance gigs and Liv is a published writer with a focus on maternal mental health.
After introductions all round we explained how we are a bit
different to other writing groups as we try to follow the founders’ method of
actually writing something during each meeting to explore new techniques and to
warm up the writing ‘muscles’ before going on to hear writing by members on the
month’s theme and updates on personal writing projects members are engaged in.
As a group we write for a wide range of genres.
Our writing ‘warm-up’ for October was our old favourite, a
word maze. Each person suggests a word which has to be incorporated into writing
which should not take more than 5-10 minutes. Five words, doorstep,
tapestry, ambulance, abandoned and bottle were suggested and as
always everyone came up with different interpretations: Sue wrote about lost
keys, Paul had a wife disposing of the body of her ex-husband rolled up in a
tapestry; Liv also took a crime angle with a wife watching her injured husband
go off in an ambulance wondering whether her life would end there or begin
there … it all depended on finding the weaponised bottle with her fingerprints
on it; Adam evoked Halloween in an abandoned mining village and Liz described a
destroyed mansion in a war torn city where a news crew was setting up a broadcast.
Martin then kept us all entertained with tales of how he’d
almost met Bridget Bardot as a youngster!
We took a break for liquid refreshment and then moved on to
hear how people had interpreted the current writing them, ‘The Closed Door’.
Adam wrote a gothic story about a private detective who when he has cornered
his suspect discovers that the suspect had honest intentions and so Gerald
Mason, the detective, takes up his ‘suspect’s’ case and embarks on a quest to
nail the real villain. Liz wrote a modern Halloween story featuring a teenage
girl, contemporary social concerns mixed with a whiff of gothic imagery and Sue’s interpretation of the theme was completely different, a poem about the ‘closed
door’ immigration policies and traumas facing members of the Windrush
Generation. Martin opted for sci-fi set in mankind’s distant past inspired by
his reading of ‘Sapiens’ by Yuval Noah Harari in which Aquila, an early human,
encounters a dying alien humanoid. Martin said this story had partly inspired writing
his thriller which then inspired us to say
1.
CONGRATULATIONS !!!!!!!! to Martin for writing
the final chapter of his thriller – which is contemporary and set along the
east coast of America and Latin America … and …
2.
How on earth does this sci-fi story link with
his novel??? We look forward to the unravelling of this mystery …
Each member’s writing triggered discussion both on the
themes, topics arising and on the choices of writing techniques. It would be
good for any member to email hightownwriters@google.com
if they want future meetings to focus on anything particular they would like to
explore or learn more about.
Paul had brought along the draft of ‘Murder at the Manor’, a
spoof 1930s radio ‘who-dunnit’ play for friends to perform in an upcoming
weekend away in a remote manor house. It was written for laughs and had many
wonderfully topical references. We look forward to hearing how the real
performance goes and hope we also get a chance to read through the final
version at our next meeting – or at the Christmas meal!
Jennie joined us after partying at an 80th
birthday celebration and brought her ‘Equinox’ (September’s theme) story which
she will share with us next meeting.
We decided to book a table for our Christmas meal downstairs
at Peepo for 7.30pm on Tuesday 14th December.
Next month’s writing theme: Under The Water
Next meeting: Tuesday 23rd November 2021 at
7.30pm at Peepo
Chair: Liz
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