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July 27, 2005
Writers’ group
Yay I did it! I finally took the plunge and turned up to the Cambridge Writers Long Prose group last night. There are so many members that in order to retain intimacy the group is spilt into two separate meeting places. There were seven of us last night and out of that three of us were new. (Blimey there certainly seems to be something in the air right now a hell of a lot of people I know seem to be trying to grab hold of their lives and follow their dreams. Coming to think of it all the newbies last night seemed to be roughly the same age as me, maybe it’s that familiar Shit!-I’m-thirtyish-and-what-the-hell-have-I-done-with-my-life? feeling.)
I didn’t read partly because I wanted to get a feel for what (and how much) everyone else was reading and partly because I haven’t got round to buying some printer cartridges yet.
The quality of writing was exceptional and the subjects were wide and varied, two futuristic stories, one set in the Spanish civil war, one in the first world war and another lady who was writing an autobiographical piece about her sister’s murder. I’m looking forward to hearing more from all of them. I would say the size was about right, any larger and we could have gone on all night, any smaller and it could have been awkward. Everyone was welcoming and friendly but also encouraging and helpful. As I have said I didn’t read but I did give a brief synopsis of my work in progress and everyone seemed interested in what I had to say.
It did make me think about what a difficult job agents and publishers have, what with more and more people writing good quality fiction it must be heartbreaking attempting to sort the rough from the smooth. For instance if I was presented with all the above extracts I really don’t know who would get the push. Not that publishing is an indicator of quality, I’ve read published work of a poorer quality than what I heard last night.
Posted by purple elephant at July 27, 2005 10:32 AM