The monthly meetings always have a theme to entertain and

educate the group members. This month’s theme was Creative Writing and Glenn

Carmichael, tutor, performer, poet, host and novelist put on his hosting hat to

run the present the evening's theme. As a writer myself, I have been to many writing

events and was curious to see how this very brave man would deal with a room

full of more than fifty ladies wielding sharpened pencils.  Would he talk about his writing experience? Present

a selection of tips and tricks to producing a successful short story? No –

Glenn Carmichael had something entirely different in store for us all.

 

After handing out sheets of A4 paper containing the

rudiments of a short story, or a succinct recipe for success. Glenn formed us

into groups, gave us the theme of ‘The First Step’ designated each group with a

genre, such as, dramatic, funny, horror etc. and said ‘go!’

 

This had the desired effect, we all scribbled away

frantically until Glenn commanded us to stop and pass our papers onto the next

person. We were then given a few minutes respite to read the story so far

before we picked up the thread to continue weaving the tale. Scribble,

scribble, scribble, on we went until there was another command of ‘stop!’ from

the man with the flip chart at the front of the room.

 

The tea break was missed entirely and the table groaning

with delicious cakes went unplundered as many hands flew over many sheets of

paper. 

 

Now, we had a beginning and middle to all the stories being

passed around, and it was getting trickier as the different personalities in

the room were turning the tales this way and that. When we reached the

cliff-hanger section, heads were being scratched; groaning was heard in the far

reaches of the hall as the good ladies were finding tying up the loose ends was

like knitting in sheepskin mittens. Once more the stories were handed on for

the penning of the conclusion. After the final ‘stop!’ we all sat back and

tried to make sense of the tales that had been created. Apart from deciphering

the handwriting - some of which was flourishing to the point of Sanskrit – we

had to pick the best tales to present. Four stories were selected and read out

to a roomful of exhausted ladies, who were by this time, suffering from RSI and

carpal tunnel. One of the readers was so skilled with her inflection and dramatic

inference she had us all enthralled. Gasps rebounded around the walls, until we

all sighed with relief at the surprising ending.

 

Two previous meetings, Swishing! - and knitting have

resulted in much giggling, loud discourse and general good natured banter.

During the Creative Writing meeting you could have heard a pin drop. In fact,

at some point a pencil was dropped

onto the wooden floor, the noise echoed and resonated startling everyone away

from their deep thought and penwomanship.

 

I look forward to the next meeting.