Writing groups, so inspirational.
I’m planning on heading down to Belfast tomorrow for a couple of workshops, one on fiction and one on poetry. The workshops are being taken by Ruth Carr my first ever creative writing tutor.Thinking back my mind has started to wander and remember a few memorable people and events at or connected to writing groups I’ve attended.They include…An amazing writer who was dyslexic, who had major problems writing but from memory could tell a story better than I could.Another amazing writer who’d mental health problems and a year or two later I found out that his sister was a good friend of my sisters. A guy whose stories were very bloody and gruesome and sadly he ended his life just like a character would have in one of his stories.A secretary in a writing group who couldn’t define the word prose.If you type in WRIOTING instead of WRITING a spell check option to correct the mistake is RIOTING :-) A teacher I was scared of at school turned up at a group I was at once and yes, I was still scared of him.A chairman of writing group admitted to me that he hadn’t written anything in 6 months, Ummmm? One of my favourite writers turned up at a group and she didn’t look very well and after 3 or 4 minutes decided to go home, but not before leaving an article she’d written on how she thought she might’ve had swine flu. Another leader of a writing group ( sponsored by a local council) who enjoyed coming to the group because she hadn’t much time to read and liked listening to all the stories the other writer read.A writing group had split, the smokers stayed and the non smokers started their won group.The nightmare of every writing group and writing workshop, a man called Sean
