Wednesday, 26 February 2025

February 2025 Meeting

House in Winter by John Bowler

Minutes of High Town Writers' Workshop
7pm Tuesday 24th February in The Spirit Room of Peepo's

Present: John A-S (chair), Adam, Liz, Irena, Sue, Suzie, Fiona

Apologies: Jennie, Kath, Ann, Ruth, Marie, Andy, Emma, Kath, Andy, Marie

John opened the meeting with a couple of questionnaires for members to fill in: one with their details and the night's agenda and another with a yes/no + suggestions list of how they felt about the group and how it could be improved. They provided some lively discussion.

Suzie offered to develop a WordPress site which would be private and password protected for group members only where they could post (and remove) writing which members wished to share with the group and wanted enhanced positive and negative feedback about. We all thought this an excellent idea and she said she would work on it. It would complement the existing 'High Town Writers Workshop' blog which is a public record of writing that members wish to share more widely.

John set an opening writing activity to produce 750 words in 20 minutes on either a personal funny story or a happy personal moment. He asked Suzie and Sue to share their pieces.

The meeting continued with sharing our 2025 writing on the theme of 'Light' and/or writing inspired by the 5th line of the 5th page of the 5th chapter of any book. 

Ann had shared another chapter of her DC Chalmers story and Adam brought along the first chapter of his SciFi story, 'Spacebound' for sharing and comment from members. Both will be shared on the blog, along with writing inspired by the 2025 tasks so far set.

We congratulated Emma on the publication of her first Victorian themed novel, The Prendergast Watch and look forward to the release of, 'Mercy', her Bridgnorth based second novel in July. A fantastic achievement. We also thanked her for offering to lead our next Saturday workshop on 12th April on the theme of 'Writing Creative Non-fiction'.  
 
Next meeting : Tuesday 25th March at 7pm

Chair: Suzie

Writing task for March is to critique other members writings - to be circulated to members by John A-S

The meeting ended at 9.30pm (ish!)

4 comments:

High Town Writers' Workshop said...

Well Done Suzie for getting 'stage one' of the WordPress site up and running so quickly. It is needed. Looking forward to to members using it for constructive, more in depth critique and help in their writing. Members can also still post work for public sharing and less detailed comment on this blog - either by posting independently or by sending it to hightownwriters@gmail.com to be copied on to this blog.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Liz for doing the round-up of Tuesday 25.2.25 meeting I chaired.

Suzie Pearson said...

For anyone wondering about the feedback site - currently the Feb meeting attendees have been given access, so I can see what kinks need to be ironed out. Wider roll out will follow!
Stage 1 is me uploading your work
Stage 2 is giving you your own logins so you can upload your own work, as well as comment on others

Irena Szirtes said...

Sounds great Suzie, thankyou 😊