It’s marvellous that so many people are interested in writing, and being creative! As a member of U3A (University of the Third Age) I started leading a creative writing group last September… this is the second group in the area. There is now sufficient interest for a third group to start, and out first meeting will be on Monday, with four people definitely coming, another who will come next time, and two more who have expressed an interest but I haven’t been able to get hold of to see if they’ll join us.
The first group I have is one I tool over from someone else, although there are a couple of new people who have joined, so in a way I was following the pattern which had already been laid down. With my new group there is the possibility of going in a different direction. I think there are a couple of the new group who are interested in writing longer pieces; most of my other group like short stories, so what we discuss with the newbies might be about different processes, aspects and goals of writing. Each month I give the group a topic to write about if they would like… with the new group, if they already have a longer story they are working on they may not need that.
Our fist meeting will be an introduction where we will talk about what, how and possibly why we write; we will also discuss what they want from the meetings, how they would like things to progress. I have loads of ideas, so I hope they don’t feel that I am putting the initiative onto them, but it would be interesting if there were particular aspects people want to think and talk about… as well as write about too!
Lois Elsden 