Not a blog as such, but a heads up for anyone around Tunbridge Wells catchment area for a writing group that meets a couple of times a month in a local pub.
This is a 'blog' entry about their latest meeting on Tuesday of this week. It's a direct grab from their website, so refernces to 'site' etc are that one, not this one, iyswim. I'll post a link to their website at the bottom. The website is pretty new and very much a work in progress, but eventually will include articles, short stories, flash fiction etc from local group members as well as, hopefully, a wider online community of members.
If you're interested in any of the above, use the link to the site and drop the group a line, or feel free to jump in and join up.
Anyhoo, enough preamble: Here's the 'blog', and the link, once again, is at the bottom:
Having finished my latest OU assignment and sent it winging through the ether to my tutor I am now ready to plunge myself back into the real world. Well I would be, if it wasn’t for the fact that I told everyone at our meet-up on Tuesday that I’d bung something up in the café to let anyone who wasn’t there know what we discussed. Chiz Chiz, as my old mate Molesworth would have said (probably while drawing beetles on his scabby little unwashed knees). Anyhoo, having said I would ‘bung up’, let’s get on with the bunging.
As usual I was the first to arrive, and availed myself of a lovely Guinness from the very nice chap behind the bar of the Black Pig. He seemed quite surprised to see me, as Chris had forgotten to update the block booking for our table (hem hem), but was most accommodating and helpful in pushing tables together to provide us with an area for our louche lounging and literary jousting. Nice bloke, and he and the pub deserve a heads up.
Despite two of our regulars being missing in action we still very effectively filled our corner thanks to two new members joining us – Martin, who has just rediscovered his muse following a period when life, the universe and everything chose to rudely intrude, and Bridget, who has mused very successfully to date with several ‘young adult’ titles under her belt and her first not-so-young adult novel hitting the presses as I type. Bridget has a presentation at Waterstones in Tunbridge Wells on the 27th of this month, and we’re all on a promise for cakes and alcopops, which is never a bad thing, is it? As this coincides with our next Black Pig meet, we should be set up nicely for some extra-louche lounging and extra-loud jousting by the time we get to our usual table.
Scene set, here’s what we dun talked about: Ernie Hemingway once said; ‘When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature’. Discuss.
And discuss we did. Cutting to the chase, after some mild jousting trying to come up with definitions of ‘character’ and ‘caricature’ that proved acceptable to everyone it was pretty much agreed that Ernie, possibly pissed, was talking out of his bum. The undeniable importance of caricature in literature – whether considering Shakespeare’s Falstaff, almost anyone penned by Dickens, or Lee Child’s caring, sharing sociopath Jack Reacher – is, erm, undeniable, so we concluded that Ernie was PROBABLY (heaven forefend we should be so pompous as to claim any sort of authority when putting words in the great man’s mouth) talking in terms of one-dimensional or poorly realised characters rather than ‘caricatures’ per se. And let’s face it, if you needed any evidence that caricatures are ‘real people’ too, you don’t have to look too far too find an example when uncle Ernie is in the room, now do you?
Moving on from the ‘set piece’, there was some discussion of this website (yes THIS website – the very one you are reading and have enjoyed/not enjoyed (delete as appropriate) wot I am writing at this very second!) and what we could do to make it more useful or interesting for prospective readers. If you (yes YOU!) have any suggestions that aren’t abusive feel free to get in touch via any of the many ‘contact us’, ‘get involved’ buttony/linkyplinky things that abound around the site, or come along to one of the meet-ups and tell us in person. We have some ideas of our own, but won’t mention them here because we may be a bit slow in putting them into practice and wouldn’t want to whet your appetite only to fail to deliver the first course.
After that, things went the way they usually go (and what a lovely way that is) and discussions pretty much took their own course. I remember the mating habits of mallards and dolphins (not mallards mating WITH dolphins – just the similarities in their respective chat up techniques) coming up at one point, and a rather meandering anecdote of Jess’ involving an unscheduled trip to Hoo nr Rochester and a cup of tea she enjoyed with the members of the Village Green Preservation Society she met there. (That, by the way, was an example of ‘intertexuality’, as was the reference to my mate Molesworth in the opening paragraph. Perhaps we can discuss that at the next meet-up: ‘Intertextuality – powerful literary device or just David waffling again?’ Discuss.)
Right, the birds are singing, the sky is blue (‘Hello birds, hello sky, hello tree’ – more intertextuality on a Molesworth theme in case you were wondering) so I’m outta here...
Ciao for now,
David (for and on behalf of louche loungers and literary jousters everywhere...)
Tunbridge Wells Writers...
Not a blog as such, but a heads up for anyone around Tunbridge Wells catchment area for a writing group that meets a couple of times a month in a local pub.
This is a 'blog' entry about their latest meeting on Tuesday of this week. It's a direct grab from their website, so refernces to 'site' etc are that one, not this one, iyswim. I'll post a link to their website at the bottom. The website is pretty new and very much a work in progress, but eventually will include articles, short stories, flash fiction etc from local group members as well as, hopefully, a wider online community of members.
If you're interested in any of the above, use the link to the site and drop the group a line, or feel free to jump in and join up.
Anyhoo, enough preamble: Here's the 'blog', and the link, once again, is at the bottom:
Having finished my latest OU assignment and sent it winging through the ether to my tutor I am now ready to plunge myself back into the real world. Well I would be, if it wasn’t for the fact that I told everyone at our meet-up on Tuesday that I’d bung something up in the café to let anyone who wasn’t there know what we discussed. Chiz Chiz, as my old mate Molesworth would have said (probably while drawing beetles on his scabby little unwashed knees). Anyhoo, having said I would ‘bung up’, let’s get on with the bunging.
As usual I was the first to arrive, and availed myself of a lovely Guinness from the very nice chap behind the bar of the Black Pig. He seemed quite surprised to see me, as Chris had forgotten to update the block booking for our table (hem hem), but was most accommodating and helpful in pushing tables together to provide us with an area for our louche lounging and literary jousting. Nice bloke, and he and the pub deserve a heads up.
Despite two of our regulars being missing in action we still very effectively filled our corner thanks to two new members joining us – Martin, who has just rediscovered his muse following a period when life, the universe and everything chose to rudely intrude, and Bridget, who has mused very successfully to date with several ‘young adult’ titles under her belt and her first not-so-young adult novel hitting the presses as I type. Bridget has a presentation at Waterstones in Tunbridge Wells on the 27th of this month, and we’re all on a promise for cakes and alcopops, which is never a bad thing, is it? As this coincides with our next Black Pig meet, we should be set up nicely for some extra-louche lounging and extra-loud jousting by the time we get to our usual table.
Scene set, here’s what we dun talked about:
Ernie Hemingway once said; ‘When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature’. Discuss.
And discuss we did. Cutting to the chase, after some mild jousting trying to come up with definitions of ‘character’ and ‘caricature’ that proved acceptable to everyone it was pretty much agreed that Ernie, possibly pissed, was talking out of his bum. The undeniable importance of caricature in literature – whether considering Shakespeare’s Falstaff, almost anyone penned by Dickens, or Lee Child’s caring, sharing sociopath Jack Reacher – is, erm, undeniable, so we concluded that Ernie was PROBABLY (heaven forefend we should be so pompous as to claim any sort of authority when putting words in the great man’s mouth) talking in terms of one-dimensional or poorly realised characters rather than ‘caricatures’ per se. And let’s face it, if you needed any evidence that caricatures are ‘real people’ too, you don’t have to look too far too find an example when uncle Ernie is in the room, now do you?
Moving on from the ‘set piece’, there was some discussion of this website (yes THIS website – the very one you are reading and have enjoyed/not enjoyed (delete as appropriate) wot I am writing at this very second!) and what we could do to make it more useful or interesting for prospective readers. If you (yes YOU!) have any suggestions that aren’t abusive feel free to get in touch via any of the many ‘contact us’, ‘get involved’ buttony/linkyplinky things that abound around the site, or come along to one of the meet-ups and tell us in person. We have some ideas of our own, but won’t mention them here because we may be a bit slow in putting them into practice and wouldn’t want to whet your appetite only to fail to deliver the first course.
After that, things went the way they usually go (and what a lovely way that is) and discussions pretty much took their own course. I remember the mating habits of mallards and dolphins (not mallards mating WITH dolphins – just the similarities in their respective chat up techniques) coming up at one point, and a rather meandering anecdote of Jess’ involving an unscheduled trip to Hoo nr Rochester and a cup of tea she enjoyed with the members of the Village Green Preservation Society she met there. (That, by the way, was an example of ‘intertexuality’, as was the reference to my mate Molesworth in the opening paragraph. Perhaps we can discuss that at the next meet-up: ‘Intertextuality – powerful literary device or just David waffling again?’ Discuss.)
Right, the birds are singing, the sky is blue (‘Hello birds, hello sky, hello tree’ – more intertextuality on a Molesworth theme in case you were wondering) so I’m outta here...
Ciao for now,
David (for and on behalf of louche loungers and literary jousters everywhere...)
http://tunbridgewellswriters.moonfruit.com