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Social meetings
It can be challenging joining a new group. With this in mind, you can meet us socially, if you like, at 7pm in the Lamb, before the critiquing of writing begins half an hour later out the back. If you’re thinking of joining us, we’d love to see you before coming to a meeting proper…
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Meeting in the flesh
We really pleased to be meeting in The Lamb again after more than a year’s break. Lockdown has shed a few regulars (for non-fatal reasons before you worry!) so we’d love to hear from any new writers, fiction or non-fiction, playwrights, novelists, poets – we like a good variety. You can join us on Signal…
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Coronavirus update
While Coronavirus restrictions are in place, we are meeting online. if you would like to join us, please get in contact and we’ll share details with you.
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Writers’ Day at Salisbury Literary Festival
As we approach the second run of literature festivals, I’m thinking of the different kinds of festival within easy travel of Marlborough. Swindon (okay, it’s in May), focuses on ideas and has a lot of intellectual non-fiction catering to a city-sized town (and county) missing undergraduate education. Cheltenham (October) has grown into a mega book…
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Describing the appearance of characters
I won’t lie. Description is my Achilles’ heel. I’m terrible at reading it too, skipping over swathes of it. I like it short and sweet; to know the character in as few words as possible. (Yet Lord of the Rings is one of my favourite books. Go figure.) Every writer has strengths and weaknesses. But…
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The art of critique 🤔🤗🤨😫🧐😕😖🤪😀😍
Back in the day when I did a bit of training in research, we were taught that discussion groups work best in groups of eight to twelve. Less and you can’t get a good discussion going, it can be awkward, or it’s easily skewed by the potentally odd opinion of one. More, and some don’t…
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Colonised writing
After inhabiting the polar south with my 1914 horror noveletta, The Crate, I’m up in the north, sucked into the 1845 ill-fated Franklin expedition to find the North-West Passage by way of horror fictionalisation The Terror, by Dan Simmons. Anyway, Google meanderings through the historical background found this in The Conversation, by a Canadian Inuit…
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Poetry Swindon Festival
So today I was in a cow onesie outside Swindon town centre M&S reading The Cow by Roald Dahl, with a bunch of other onesie animals. (The other option was to read An Ode to Autumn by Keates with added moos). The point of this stunt – and believe it or not this was the…
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Competitions and submissions
Budding writers! Just six days to go to enter Poetry Swindon‘s BATTERED MOONS POETRY COMPETITION and submit to DOMESTIC CHERRY magazine. Battered Moons only costs £5 to enter per poem, and has a top prize of £700. Domestic Cherry invites submissions of Poetry, Flash Fiction, Playlets, Shopping Lists, Inner Leg Measurements, First Borns and Bribes!…
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Words, Pictures, Publishing
Just met former primary school deputy head and children’s writer, Vicki Watson, who runs a publishing company, Callisto Green. They offer a full service from editing to book design to book coaching. Always handy to know these kind of people when stuck or want a book to look as well as read professional.…
Marlborough Writers 