Tuesday 28 January 2014

Writer's Group

Yesterday evening, at Watford Writers,  I read an extract from my medieval novel. It's amazing how many flaws I find when I read to an audience. I'm also grateful to members of the groups who pointed out repetitions and suggested I divide one scene into two.

Whenever I listen to other authors read their work I am always impressed by their imaginations and talent. A young lady who attended for the first time read a short story which was modern, unusual and succinct. It was a prose snapshot of a significant factor in the character's lives. A member read from her biography of a lady, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th century, and two other talented members read their poems.

Later there was a quiz. Here are a few of the 20 questions. Who only had a vocabulary of 32,000 words? What did Big Ears and Noddy quarrel about? Which two things do the castaways on Desert Island Discs always take with them? And in which year were television programmes first broadcast?

I went home happy and relaxed and woke this morning keen to get on with the galley of The Captain and The Countess.