Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Adele, Gill, Harry, Jenny, Jonathan, Kaz, Laura, Michele, Ian (chair).
Apologies: John, Karen, Lesley, Pip.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
Ian welcomed members to the last meeting of the year. The Calendar page now shows the dates of meetings for 2024.
Jenny said that 12 people were booked for the Christmas Lunch at the Magpie Cafe, which is booked for 2 PM after the meeting.
Members’ Readings
Gill — continued reading from her YA novel: Fabric of the Earth: Seven Witches and a Boy.
The action moves to the Blue John Mine, near Castleton. The Warrior reappears to menace the witches, who attack him with the Mole-Maggot, which can drill through anything.
Michele — read a further instalment of her novel in-progress: The Undesirables, set in Southern Africa during the Boer War, 1898-1902.
Gossip in Camp Irene hints that the War may be ending soon. Staff at the hospital are having to think about their future. The Superintendent is loth to let his probationers go, and wants to take them with him to his new position. Finn (Dr Milne) is due to return to Scotland. He and Anna say their painful goodbyes, no longer able to conceal their love from each other.
Harry — handed-out a copy of the next instalment of his seafaring memoir, which he read aloud. The newlywed author buys his first life-insurance, having someone else to think about these days. He also describes doing the football pools, and how this led him to listen-in avidly to the soccer results broadcast by the BBC, once even being convinced he was about to become immensely rich. His hopes being unexpectedly dashed, he sadly concludes he is condemned to a lifetime of having to work for his living.
Adele — read a further instalment from her Covid Diary. It is now 1 December, 2020. Hospital admissions for new cases are down 11%. Restaurants are only allowed to stay open if they are serving a “substantial meal”: the criteria for such a thing are absurd. Debenhams announce that it will be closing 124 shops in the New Year. In Whitby it is estimated that 50% of small businesses may go under. Boris had intended a 5-day break from lockdown so that people could celebrate Christmas, but rises in cases and a new strain emerging are making this seem increasingly ill-advised. New restrictions are belatedly brought in, ruining most people’s holiday plans. The 3-tier restriction regime intended for finer control of lockdown based on reported cases is augmented with a 4th tier in the South of extreme measures.
Tuesday 8 December: a gleam of light in the gloom appears with the administration of the first dose of the new Pfizer Biontech vaccine. This will be available to all at-risk people in the NHS and the elderly.
Kaz — read 3 short pieces: (i) Key: a lament for free association giving way to the computer-administered social bubble. (ii) A family home is raided by the police. The husband was an abuser and his child has been taken away: she has now gone missing. (iii) the author laments the shabbiness of her childhood, and asks how anyone could ever have believed that children in some way chose their parents? This prompted a discussion on the history of notions of karma-influenced rebirth in Christendom, as opposed to Hindu and Buddhist traditions where this notion is fundamental.
Laura — raised her writing dilemma as a topic for discussion: she has been trained as an opinion pollster, which has emphasised the objective study of topics on which most people hold strong subjective views. This she feels has disqualified her from entertaining any strongly-held attitudes herself, which might render anything she writes either colourless or unattractive. She is a diarist, which she feels has trained her adequately to put words on paper, so this is not the problem. Is it possible (for her) to write appealing fiction without it being opinionated?
This did indeed lead to a wide-ranging discussion. Writers talk about “finding your voice” – what exactly does this mean? Is it merely a way of saying that finally you have written something saleable? Ian recommended an autobiography by Maxim Gorky entitled (in English) My Childhood, for its being notably egoless. D S Mirsky describes it thus: “This makes his autobiographical series one of the strangest autobiographies ever written. It is about everyone except himself. His person is only the pretext round which to gather a wonderful gallery of portraits.”
The meeting closed at 1:10 PM.
Whitby Writers Group 