Something to Celebrate!

What a great year and a great start to the Adelaide Plains Chapter & Verse writing group! We have come a long way since first forming only a couple of months ago.

We have shared ideas, supported each other, and produced some great stories and poems, both whimsical and deadly serious...and speaking of deadly serious, the group held our end of year dinner at the Prince Albert Hotel and we presented our first ever award on the night.

The lucky recipient was our lovely member Marilyn Simpson for her deadly serious poem based on the famous line 'It was a Dark and Stormy Night' by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Marilyn with her (tiny) trophy.
 

Here is Marilyn's effort:

Dark and Stormy

'It was a dark and stormy night
A night for staying in
The chairs were soft and comfy
They’d just had their din.
A knock at the door went un- heeded
The TV was too loud
Such a funny sitcom
Entertained that merry crowd.
Off to work in the morning
What’s that upon the ground?
A cold dead body of a girl
Stabbed, tied and bound.'

I love it! It's my kind of creepy twisted ending! Congratulations Marilyn! Well deserved.

Members of the APC&V celebrate along with some of Marily's family.
 

Looking to a Brand New Year!

Well, we've almost finished 2012, and 2013 is looking so sweet, for Adelaide Plains Chapter and Verse!

At our meeting last Thursday (20/12/12), the members present discussed the proposed plan for the group to run our first short story competition. There were ideas thrown around, shot at, hugged and kissed. The final result is one that will, we hope, appeal to a vast number of people!

For 2013, the Adelaide Plains Chapter and Verse group will run a national Short Story Competition, with rules and guidelines, and a theme. The rules and guidelines may not be finalised until after this seasonal madness/ Christmas fun is over, but in general these are the important points that have been decided.

• There will be a maximum word limit for each short story of 2,000 words. Shorter stories are fine, but stories longer than 2,000 words will not be judged, and there is no refund for such entries. The judge's opinion is final, as are the opinions of the competition secretary.
• It will be a competition for adults, with no student or child sections, adult only.
• Australians only please, because the competition secretary is somewhat compromised in regards to numeracy and needs to have Aussie money only or her head might explode, and we son't want that, do we? If people from overseas know ways to get around that without causing confusion, then hey, why not have a go! No promises though.
• The fee for each story entered in the competition will be $10. If you want to write more than one entry and can afford to pay the money for each entry, then go for it! The wonderful news is that after the first entry at $10, the cost goes down to $8 per story entered.
• There will be 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes, with selected other entries awarded as the judge sees fit, with the best of the stories received being published in a book. Everyone with a story in the book gets a free copy of the book, with further copies available for purchase if those published want to get something great for gifts next Christmas or birthdays!
• Most important point of all is the theme for this competition is. So, drum roll please, the theme of this inaugural competition is  . . . Fairy Tales Twisted Sideways! This means the stories we want for this competition are Fairy Tales that are not sweet or good or necessarily meant for children. We want bad arse fairy tales!
• There will be an example of such a story written by one of the group members posted on this site soon, but in the meantime think perhaps about Little Red Riding Hood selling drugs and getting busted by Detective Woolff. Or maybe the Ugly Duckling grows up to be even uglier, leading to some confessions from Mama Swan. Or you can tell a story from a different point of view, not Cinderella, but one of her stepsisters. As long as you take a Fairy Story we know and give it a big twist sideways, then you're getting the idea!

That's it for now, except to say, Merry Christmas, and I hope all of your hopes and dreams come true!

I'd like to say a big thank you to Nick Champion MP and his staff for their offer of assistance in the publishing of this fantastic fairy tale book!

What we did yesterday.

Yesterday was Thursday 13th December. This of course means it was the afternoon for the AP Chapter & Verse meeting. There were supposed to be four of us there, but in fact only two of us showed up. One of us didn't bring the homework she was supposed to bring, because she hasn't done it yet.

Did this mean the meeting yesterday was a failure? Oh no, it certainly didn't mean that! This meeting had one member's homework presented, and loved by the other member. It had a fun writing exercise that resulted in a lovely and heartfelt poem, and a weird and wonderful piece of flash fiction. Things were talked about, planned, expanded upon too. It was a fine meeting, by anyone's calculations.

And the evening didn't end at the usual venue for our meetings. Last night was the night of the Christmas Party for the North Eastern Writers in Tea Tree Gully. The members and a couple of potential members car pooled and tootled off to the RSL hall for a night of words and friendship.

Much fun was had on the night, with quizzes, a poetry slam, food and drink, and a new potential role for one of the members - a stand up comedian? Ah, make that sit down comedian and I may be in for that!

It was a late night, that's for sure, but it was an extremely enjoyable evening, well worth staying up for!

Moving into December!

Well, the Adelaide Plains Chapter and Verse group has survived through to the end of one month, and beyond! We began in November, with high hopes, and fair to middling expectations.
The reality is that this group has grown and far surpassed our hopes and expectations. The quality of the work that's been written by group members so far has been fantastically high, and I'm sure group members will continue to produce terrific writing.
Those of us who were at the last meeting shared out short stories, from the point of view of a disgruntled kitchen utensil, and then a lovey dovey sweet talk from another character.
The homework to be shared at the next meeting, on 12 December, at the Prince Albert Hotel in Gawler, South Australia is this:
write a short story based on a well-known story – biblical, myth or fairy tale, and change it by using a different point of view, or change the details of the story, make the main character bad instead of good, or in some other way.
Meetings are held every Thursday, starting at 3.30pm, and continuing until we run out of things to write, say, share etc!