End of Session Garden Party

What a wonderful day we had for our closing event of the season! The Garden Party in the beautiful garden filled with sunshine, bird-song, laughter and chatter at the home of Sandra, our gracious hostess, was enjoyed by all. A fabulous lunch was laid on: contributions by all members of Erskine Writers who were able to be present. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. I hope that you all have a regenerating and inspiring summer break. Keep the creative juices flowing and the fingers darting over your key-boards until we meet again in September to share our stories.

God Bless you all,
Joan Lougheed

Report on Writing Day

One of our newer members, Elspeth Munro, kindly wrote the following piece about the one-day writing course she recently attended.


I went along last Saturday to Kilmacolm Community Centre for the Creative Writing Workshop. There SHOULD have been eight of us, but only four turned up. It was, however, an interesting morning, with not just tea and coffee but SANDWICHES to fuel the Muse... I've written here what I can remember.

Kirstin Zhang was leading the workshop titled "Creative Communities". It was part of St Columba's school's outreach programme, with funds made available from the school.

Of the four of us taking part, one lady (Pat) has written several books for children about horse-riding. One lady was considering re-sitting her Higher English, and the other two of us are recent returners to writing. Kirstin herself is a prize-winning author with various projects on the go.

We started off with a game of Call My Bluff (but more like "Would I Lie To You"). We each had to write three sentences about ourselves, one true, two false. The others asked questions and we had to lie convincingly - very interesting seeing what rubbish we could make up and how genuine we could make it sound.

We then spent some time writing about People (we ran out of time for Places) with all of us having to write about someone we remembered from the past, someone who had some sort of influence over us or who triggered some interest etc.

We all enjoyed ourselves and managed to organise a second meeting on 19th May in Kilmacolm.

We also talked over the possibility of running a six-week evening course in September (probably) which would (again probably) cost about £45, and would be within St Columba's School. It's under investigation at the moment… If and when I hear more I'll let you know.

Elspeth

Change to Syllabus

The next two meetings are being changed around as follows:

24th April: Promoting Work and Blogging - Rosemary Gemmell

1st May: Genealogy - Myra Duffy

Advance Warning: 15th May - AGM

Poetry Competition Results

We were delighted to welcome Marc Sherland to Erskine Writers yesterday, with the results of our annual poetry competition. Marc kindly stepped in to adjudicate the competition and delivered an interesting overview about the types of poetry being published today.

Well done to the following:

Winner                         Morag Moffat

2nd                              Rosemary Gemmell

3rd                               Morag Moffat

Highly Commended       Helen Baxter

Commended                 Myra Duffy
                                   Elizabeth Gillespie
                                   Morag Moffat
                                   

Scottish Association of Writers Weekend Conference

Well, once again members of Erskine Writers are home from another SAW weekend conference with a host of awards. What a great weekend from start to finish: competition adjudications; entertaining speakers; informative workshops and seminars; evening of drama sketches from that particular competition; disco and poetry penthouse.

Not to mention the eating, chatting with friends old and new, and fun! Most of us came home inspired and raring to get on with writing, once we recover from the blinding tiredness.

We are especially delighted that one of our newer members, Morag, did so well at her first SAW conference. And that postal member, Bill, was also mentioned. Awards were presented by Crime Novelist and Honorary President, Alana Knight.

Photos by Joan Fleming

Here are the results for Erskine Writers:

Bill Daly:              2nd in Pitlochry Crime Novel

Myra Duffy:         Winner of Book Review

                            3rd in Sci-fi/Fantasy

                            Commended in Under 7s

Wilma Ferguson:   Commended in Drama

Morag Moffat:      Winner of General Article

                            3rd in General Short Story

                            3rd in Drama

Very well done to all!

Rosemary

(who was adjudicating the Castles in the Air Story!)

Short Story Adjudication

We were delighted that short story and serial writer Sheila Lewis agreed to adjudicate the Erskine Writers’ General Short Story competition this year. A founding member of Erskine Writers, Sheila is held in high esteem by members of the group. At the adjudication meeting yesterday, Sheila explained exactly what she was looking for in a general short story and gave detailed critiques of all the entries. The results were as follows:

1st     Helen Baxter

2nd    Elspeth Munro

3rd = Wilma Ferguson

3rd = Joan Fleming

Congratulations to all, and many thanks to Sheila for her adjudication.

Joan
Competition Secretary

Plots, Poetry and Queries

An interesting time was had by all on Tuesday when our own Scottish crime writer, Alex Gray (Sandra), gave a fascinating talk on plotting a crime novel. Hopefully, we are all a step closer to understanding the work that goes into writing a good story with enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing until the end.

This coming Tuesday, 28th March, members should bring in their poetry entry for our in-house competition which will now be judged by Marc Sherland. The theme is the Seven Deadly Sins - that should get the creative juices flowing!

We are also going to be looking at writing a query letter to publishers, and the dreaded synopsis. Please feel free to bring any information that might lessen the confusion.

Rosemary