Our Chairman, David Carson, was off performing Grandfatherly duties in the heart of Europe this week, so it’s still me with the latest update.
7 members of the Nethergate Writers faithful made it along tonight, for this extra, hastily arranged meeting.
We began with a discussion of a variety of different writing contests that members had brought along details of. Fiona began, with information on the Friends of Broughty Ferry Library Poetry and Prose competition, which is open to local writers and is looking for 500 words of prose or 5-20 lines of poetry on the subject of ‘Time and The Seasons’.
Roddie mentioned the various contests being promoted on the Scottish Book Trust website, and also the recent call for submissions from Gutter Magazine of new Scottish writing.
Craig also raised the Scottish Book Trust’s ‘Nourish’ contest – 1000 words of a true story on the theme of ‘Nourish’, to be included in an e-book to be published for Book Week Scotland 2017.
Moving away from contests, Rosie also mentioned the upcoming Scottish Association of Writers club representative meeting in Perth on 22nd April. No one present was able to attend, but Rosie has more details if someone would like to be the Nethergate Writers’ representative.
We then moved on to discussing the writing that people had brought along.
We began with a piece from Abby, which was the beginning of a longer story and based on a recent real life experience. It was well received, but there was some discussion of possible confusion regarding the various viewpoints used. It lead on to some interesting discussion of the possible motivations of one of the main characters, and her real life counterpart!
Roddie had brought a long a selection of 50 word poems for consideration for our upcoming collection. One the subject of ‘The Nethergate Writers’ and another composed entirely of song titles went down particularly well.
Ray read us a small poem about Bobbkin Bunny, who met a rather unfortunate end, but still managed to raise a laugh.
Craig also had some 50 word stories that were enjoyed by all. One prompted a discussion of the possible side effect on sales of an uncomplimentary mention of Fife, though!
And we finished up with Tom reading the introduction to a short story – a dark entry into a story of a not quite so dark dream. This lead to an interesting discussion of people’s various experiences of dreams, night time conversations and sleepwalking.