Our New Member

This is Mr Boots, Puss to his friends! He joined us at our last meeting at the Prince Albert Hotel in Gawler. I'm hoping he will continue to be a friendly face at our meetings. 

If you'd like to have him in your home for a week, let me know at the meeting, and you can take him home with you. Make sure you bring him back though!

We had fun writing short stories last Thursday, using some interesting bits of writing as our story prompt. These 'bits of writing' were something I'd never heard of, that were emailed to me by a friend, Jocelyn. They're called a Paraprosdokian. Apparently Winston Churchill liked them. That may or may not tempt you to give them a try.

I was certainly inspired by the two I chose, my story flowed along very easily. I'm happy with my story, and I look forward to hearing the others again, when they're properly finished off. Another very pleasant afternoon of friends and words.

Another New Member

Well, at our meeting yesterday, we were missing a member, but we had a potential new member arrive. She hasn't handed in for membership form or membership fee yet, but I certainly think she'll be coming back!

We had fun again, and some of us read our homework from last week. We all seem to have had a good think about the books we read way back when we were kids, and it was fascinating to hear what books members remembered from when they were younger.

We did a writing exercise too, one from the wonderful book 'Poetic Medicine The Healing Art of Poem-Making' by John Fox - many many thanks Colleen for passing that one on to me! I feel like Colleen was fated to find this book at the Gawler Community Centre, so she could pass it on to me!

We talked about how our 'Fairy Story Twisted Sideways' is going - we've already received an entry! I've been getting emails every day from people wanting more information about it, and I'm getting even more excited about it.

I hope we get hundreds of great twisted fairy stories to choose from, to put into our collection! If you'd like to know more about this competition, feel free to send me an email about it jeebers@aussiebb.com.au

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!

Another Terrific Group Meeting!

We had another terrific meeting today/tonight. It ended earlier than usual, due to commitments of group members. We had a great time catching up though, and general chit chat before getting down to business!

Our task was to write a super-short story (76 words). The results were all outstanding stories, with beginning, middle and ending, fantastic stuff! Paragraph Planet publishes something similar to this, but they require 75 words, with the first few words becoming the title of the story. Click on the name Paragraph Planet for a link to their website for more information.

For next week, we are all to 'Write from the point of view of a disgruntled kitchen or bedroom object. When you've finished, respond as you would to a lover/partner.'

How does that sound? Something you'd like to get your writing teeth into? Go for it, and come back here, or come to the meeting next week and tell us all about it! 3.30 pm, Prince Albert Hotel, Gawler.

What is this all about?

This is a blog created to introduce the brand new writing group 'Adelaide Plains Chapter and Verse' to the world. It was begun recently by two women with time on their hands, and a desire to take their writing further.

The group meets weekly at the Prince Albert Hotel in Gawler, South Australia. The hotel was well known to one of the two, Carolyn, because she is involved in Gawler Poets at the Pub, which takes place monthly at the Prince Albert. Colleen, the other group member knew of the hotel, because she lives close to Gawler.

So far, there have only been two members of the group, but people have been sniffing around the edges, and with a Facebook Page set up, and a recent article in the local newspaper, the Bunyip, things are beginning to take off!

Carolyn is mostly a poet, with some interest in longer forms of writing, while Colleen has been writing short stories for many years and is now exploring poetry more as well as prose. Between them, these two have years of experience in helping people to achieve better things in their lives. With this new writing group, they both hope to continue doing the same, for others and for themselves!

The group shares words, reading their poetry, or in written word format, and we do writing exercises there too. Any new members are encouraged to bring notebooks to write in, bits of their writing to share, and something to write with!

One of the first poetry writing exercises the group did, was for each member to think of themselves as a herb or spice, and write a poem about it. Group members got stuck into it, after much thinking, to produce two very different poems. Neither of them could think of an appropriate herb of spice, so creatively side-stepped and chose a different form of flavouring. - Colleen opted for Sugar and Carolyn went with Salt.

The results with the first drafts on the night were pleasing enough for them both to do further drafts, to create fine poems to share the next week. We envisage doing many more such writing exercises, and will continue to post details about what the group is doing here into the future.

If you're interested in this group, please get in contact - details are on this website - we'd love to hear from you!