Writing Buddies February Meeting

Writing Buddies will meet for the opening of the 2016 season at 2.30pm at the Central Library, Southampton on Friday 5th February. Everyone welcome.

New Year, New Leader

A new year and a new beginning for Writing Buddies as founder Penny Legg takes a short sabbatical and Christine Donovan takes on the mantle of leader until June 2016. Christine is a long-time member of Writing Buddies and is looking forward to the challenge of leading the group.

Writing Buddies at SO:To Speak, Southampton's Festival of Words: Authors on the Water

Authors will be on the water as they join Red Funnel Ferries' ships as they cross between Southampton and the Isle of Wight on Monday 26 October.  Writing Buddies Jacqueline Pye, James Marsh, Eileen Long, Christine Donovan, Richard Hardie and Geoff Parkes will join authors Carole Burns, Ann Victoria Roberts and Tracy Gorman on selected crossings.  Passengers will be able to join the authors as they read from their work, answer questions and sign copies of their books during the crossings.  A fun event!

Writing Buddies in the Daily Echo!

We made it to the Daily Echo! 

2 June 2014

Pan Whittington; The Right Worshipful The Mayor of Southampton, Cllr Ivan White; Penny Legg cut the cake

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WRITING BUDDIES!

It was party time for us at our May 2nd meeting. We celebrated our fifth birthday, with more than thirty members at our regular venue, The Dolphin Mercure Hotel in Southampton. As we were a larger group than usual, the hotel very kindly allocated a delightful upstairs meeting room, one in which Jane Austen once danced the night away!

Penny, who with Pam founded the flourishing group in 2009, treated us all to wine and luscious cake, so it was quite an event. Even Catherine’s young twin girls were able to join us!

Group News

Former policeman Jim Brown’s talk on Murder in Southampton was to take place on May 7^th at Portswood Library.

Jimmy’s latest book for The History Press, A 1940s Childhood, From Bomb Sites to Children’s Hour, had just been launched, with a foreword by famous crime writer Peter Livesey.

Mo had given a reading from A Blues for Shindig  at the Cockpit Theatre in London, and her next reading will be from her forthcoming new novel.

Jim Brown has a new book out, Southampton's Lucky Jim: A County Borough Copper in the 50s and 60s. 

Catherine has a story in The Romaniac’s collection of stories and flash fiction, Romaniac Shorts. The Romaniacs are members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA). Catherine recently won a place on a very enjoyable writing course through the RNA.

Gerry, who now lives in Alicante, belongs to a writing group there - Wordplay Writers’ Forum. Not long ago the group won Writing Magazine’s Writers’ Group Award. Gerry recently published his novel Farrell’s Last Case, and offered members a free download. He is currently writing the sequel, Witches’ Mountain.

Lisa informed the group that http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom was accepting comedy scripts for the next few days.

Jacqueline and her husband each entered the local Union Learning Centre short story competition; results are not yet out.

Barbara Dynes has a new book out, Masterclasses in Creative Writing . Barbara writes for Writers’ Forum and for The Voice.

Robin is writing on health and social care, and education. He edits and distributes the internet newsletter The Voice, with articles on the written word from both reading and writing perspectives. Several Writing Buddies have been interviewed by Josephine for The Voice. The newsletter is free to receive by email; contact robin@robindynes.co.uk

Bill attends Southampton Sight Writing Salon; he suggested Buddies might consider individual podcasts.

New member Margaret used to write, and is back again now and keen to restart.

John has just released an ebook of his poetry: Love Poems by JPF Goodman. (http://jpfgoodman.wordpress.com and scroll down.) He read some of his work at the final day of the Ship to Shore event at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, and was soon to read again at Write Angle, an event in Petersfield. Podcasts of both these readings can be seen on his blog as above.

General discussions followed. These included whether we should do individual podcasts and who might help with these. Lisa mentioned she had marketed a book she’d written under a different name, promoting it in both names in social media. It was initially offered free, and entered Amazon’s top 100 free books. She recommended low pricing for better overall revenue.

Calvin runs Friends of Portswood Library. He hopes the library will become a community hub including for writers, and any members wanting to promote their books by readings or launches can contact him at calvin@calvin-smith.co.uk Several members had given talks or readings there already, and more are to come.

Our forthcoming exhibition at the Central Library was discussed. Members would jointly set up the books, articles etc on Monday 12^th May in time for the opening by the mayor Councillor Ivan White at 2pm. The exhibition would close on the 17^th. Christine planned to make a celebration cake for the event and there would be wine too.

Josephine then gave a very helpful talk on administration for writers. She reminded us of the importance of documenting every event and all income and expenditure, and suggested ways of doing so. Questions followed and the group thanked Josephine for her advice.

Writing Buddies will meet again at The Dolphin Mercure Hotel, High Street, Southampton from 2 to 4pm on Friday June 6^th. The last half hour will include a talk by Lisa on the topic of copyright.

Blog notes by Jacqueline Pye

Writing Buddies, 2 September 2011

The Southampton Writing Buddies met at The Art House Café on 2 September. New faces were present along with regular members to discuss writing matters.

Josephine has finished her last but one book and has ideas coming quickly for the one she is working on at the moment. A local radio station in the New Forest has been asking for volunteers and when Josephine mentioned her text books they showed great interest. They said that they could fit a business section into their programme. The radio station is on 96.9 FM www.thepark.fm

Lyn came to the last meeting and gained a few ideas. She looked at the suggestions of Suite 101 and Motion on Line for practicing her writing and liked Suite 101. Lyn is working on ideas for newspapers and has started the first assignment of her Writers Bureau journalism course.

Tony had two local history books, published years ago. He uses Authorhouse to publish his books, www.authorhouse.co.uk, who, he says, do deliver, although they are a little on the slow side. However, they do put things right quickly and are reasonably priced. Tony has given up with The History Press as they quoted him £10,000 to publish his book on the American Civil War.

Elizabeth is continuing with her Writers Bureau course. She received an email from Sainsbury's magazine, regarding a letter she sent for the 'News and Views' page confirming that it would be published in the November edition.

Jimmy brought his book, Growing up in Wartime Southampton: Someone Else's Trousers to the meeting, together with flyers that his publishers, The History Press, have issued for his talk at Woolston Library on Friday 7 October, 12 – 2.00pm. Tickets are available now (contact: Carolyn.Taplin@southampton.gov.uk). He contacted The History Press to accept the commission to write Miscellany of Southampton. He has also been approached about writing a book about 1950s childhood.

Catherine (Miller) is a member of The Romantic Novelists' Association under the New Writers Scheme, where she submits work and receives feedback. Catherine is now in the scheme until her book is published. Although Catherine believed she was more a chick lit writer, she has been informed that she is a woman's fiction writer. She has been published in Prima magazine twice this year. The magazine pays £25 per comment. Prima can be followed on Facebook and will give an indication as to what they are looking for.

Catherine, joining the group for the first time, explained that she was brought up in Zimbabwe and has written 260 pages so far of her memories and reflections of her life there. When she has finished the book she would like to pass it to people for their comments. It was suggested that, as family and friends can often be too 'kind', it be given to friends to ask them to pass to people they know, but are not known to Catherine, for a more critical opinion.

Christine will be performing at the Big Oak Literary & Arts Festival in Derry, Ireland www.bigoakartsfest.com which takes place from 9^th - 11^th September 2011. She will be one of several featured authors and at the moment is unsure what is expected from her. The street in which the festival is being held was the setting for her book, Jump Derry.

John is still writing amateur dramatic reviews for the Echo. He has thoughts about resuming his play and novel. He is presently assisting Penny typing up her tapes.

Jacqueline is still awaiting a reply from Nosy Crow. She is editing her children’s book, which she now thinks could be a series. She was not short listed for her Humble Boy entry, which was apparently judged by the amount of laughter each entry received. Penny's introduction of the recordings made by Writing Buddies' members for The Talking Echo is to go out on memory stick together, with Mo's two-part story. Half an hour of Writing Buddies work (approx. 3 stories) will be sent out every four weeks. Chris Litton thanked the Writing Buddies for their efforts and they will await feed back from the listeners. Jacqueline's submission to People's Friend has still not been published, although she has been paid. Jacqueline had a letter printed in the Echo and she is also pitching ideas for self marking quizzes.

Alan brought in his story The Adventures of Sniggles, as he needs advice on what to do with it. He was extremely impressed by Karen's art work.

Mo praised Christine’s book, Jump Derry, and mentioned that Christine will be at the next meeting of Writers in Southampton www.writers-in-southampton.org.uk on Thursday 6 October, which will be held at the Richmond Inn, Portswood, (opposite Waitrose).

Alex, new to the group, has been blogging for four years and has had two pieces of work published. Alex has entered a 60 minute play for the Bruntwood Prize for playwriting. It is a send up of cookery programmes. The closing date was in June and the results will be announced in October 2011.

Karen is applying herself to a 30 day writing challenge and everyday she writes a piece based on one word.

Jan is progressing with her writing about growing up in a mining community.

Penny, new to the group, attends a writing course run by Penny Legg at Age UK. She had a blog published in Woman's Own magazine.

Penny (Legg) is running a new class at Age UK and is launching a new magazine titled, Life to the Full. She is still interviewing for her Diamond Jubilee book, Under the Queen's Colours, the deadline of which is 1 December 2011.

Richard is still editing the U3A magazine for his area but will soon be giving it up.

General discussion ranged from how to cut and paste, to the practicalities of running a twitter account from a mobile phone. Christine was concerned about what she should talk about at the Literary Festival and Penny (Legg) suggested that she focused on a particular aspect of her novel. The merits of blogging were also discussed and it was thought to be a very good tool to get your name known. You Tube is also another way of advertising your work.

The next meeting will be on Friday 16 September at 2.00pm.

Post by Elizabeth Streatfield.