Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Gill, Harry, James, John, Jonathan, Laura, Pip, Ian, Jenny (chair).
Apologies: Adele, Kaz, Lesley, Michele.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
Ian announced apologies received.
Jenny said the RNIB celebratory concert planned for this coming Sunday evening had been cancelled due to lack of support.
Harry has joined Critique Circle (costs from 50p/week to £2/week for premium membership). He is getting about 2 or 3 crits a week from it at the basic membership rate.
Harry also gave out complimentary copies of the latest edition of his novel: Tom Fleck.
John announced a performance of The Vicar of Dibley at Whitby Pavilion over Easter weekend. (John is playing the part of Hugo.)
Ian warned members he was not buying scratch cards this year. Members should come prepared to use the meters (which stop being free from tomorrow 1 March until next winter), or use the disk parking areas. Take care to note where these are! Details of parking for La Rosa meetings can be found on our website at Venue in the top-bar (bottom of page).
Members’ Readings
Harry – handed-out copies of the next instalment of his 1960 seafaring memoir, which he read aloud: Chapter 11: Milder Seas. He describes how the ships of his line communicated directly with each other to relay news and telegrams ship-to-ship, avoiding the costs of using shore stations. But most of the passage is about his family reflections while on watch.
Some discussion ensued on how best to identify the author’s thoughts back during the times he writes about, as opposed to his thoughts at the time of writing.
Jonathan – read two short pieces:
1. a lyric from The Pirates Of Penzance in recognition of it being 29 February. The hero Frederic’s indenture specifies that he remain apprenticed to the pirates until his “twenty-first birthday”. Since this falls on the 29th of February, it looks like he must serve for another 63 years.
2. a classroom exercise by an eleven year-old relative is set in some bizarrely imaginative choices of context.
John – read a poem/lyric: Where have all the Garfields gone? about the strange absence of the once-common pendant furry car ornaments, to be sung to the tune of the Pete Seeger folk song of 1955.
James – read a poem intended to take a prescribed form on the page. When travelling in strange parts, be wary of accepting food from strangers, who may be elves who will steal your soul – and similar folksy warnings.
Laura – discussed her commonplace diary ( Ian volunteered the alternative term: Zibaldone) – an ancient practice enjoying a revival. She offered seven rules for a good commonplace:
- Write by hand
- Always have it with you
- Don’t be too restrictive in topic and format
- Add references and citations
- Create an index
- Be flexible
- Expand items or add explanations at leisure.
Pip – read a further instalment from Caicos Moon, her memoir of coming-of-age in the 1960s on the Caribbean island of South Caicos, where her father was the DC (District Commissioner). She was the only white girl on the island, which hosted an all-male US Coastguard detachment crewing a LORAN beacon. She declared that the “coasties” took care to protect her (…from each other, as Ian conjectured).
Gus, her boyfriend, has been posted to mainland USA, but before he leaves he gives her his entire record collection. Tony (an Italian-American coastie) hopes to fill the gap, but the author insists their friendship remains platonic.
In spite of starry skies and a magical moon each night, plus beautiful flowers, the author grows bored with life’s sameness. The tedium is dispelled when a seaplane brings a new family having an autistic son, who proves to be a talented artist.
Gill – passed round pictures of Skelly, her sartorial skeleton originating as a Hallowe’en decoration. It now gets a regular change of costume in her garden, and has become the hero of a children’s book in-progress, which recounts his exploits once he escapes his cable-ties.
Skelly might be a guest at a future WWG meeting.
Jenny – admitted to experiencing Writers Block with her period novel based on the historical figure of Mary Eleanor Bowes, the heiress of a vast fortune from the Durham coalfields. Mary is just about to encounter the morally challenged soldier of fortune Andrew Stoney, who has already outlived one heiress: the hapless Hannah, without managing to lay hands on her fortune through failing to father an heir by her after a string of miscarriages.
Jenny has just completed a major project on her family’s ancestry. This has inevitably robbed her novel of impetus which she is finding it difficult to recover. She invited ideas from the meeting.
Ian, in a comparable situation with his space opera: Anitra’s Petition, made a suggestion which he claims is working for him: convert the ms into a quasi-finished first-draft with gaps (maybe with a big gap at the end); bridge each gap with a bare summary of the missing action; then set about revising the ms from start to finish. A bit like hiding a shallow grave in a lawn by mowing the whole lawn. When hitting a gap, treat it as just another rewrite of existing material. This may well yield a far shorter passage than the author planned, but who’s to know? A fresh eye will either spot certain passages as crying out for expansion – or the draft may read well enough as it stands.
Ian admits he has yet to carry his plan through to a successful conclusion, but draws confidence from knowing how his story ends, which goes for Jenny’s opus too.
The meeting closed at 12:55 PM.
Whitby Writers Group 