Another day another writing group

I had my writing group that I lead here at home yesterday afternoon, and today I had my writing group I am part of and we met at a friend’s hotel. We sat in her elegant lounge looking out across Weston bay, which used to be called Glentworth Bay, and having caught up with each other’s news we shared what we had written from last time we met.

We choose a topic, and up until recently it has been a single word suggested by something we can see, Wall, Driftwood, Menu, but last time someone thought of a title ‘Into the woods’. This isn’t a strict and rigid suggestion – anyone can write whatever they like in whatever form they like and I continued my episodic story of Clare Mason who meets up with someone she went to school with, someone who bullied her, but strangely, now mistakes her for the girl who was her best friend. I shared what I wrote this morning, and the link is below.

What a variety of creativity there was in that lovely lounge! One person wrote a dark and mysterious and enigmatic poem set in a night wood – it was cleverly ambiguous but once you saw or worked out who the main character was it was even more vivid. Someone else wrote an intense and in the end sadly horrific story of two elderly men who come across each other – one out walking his dogs, the other living it rough in a wood. There was a creative non-fiction story, blending two childhood memories – the story of a lost kite and the story of a lost girl.

One of us who was away in Cornwall had sent a poem, a beautiful poem describing the autumn colours  observed on a pleasant stroll through a wood. One of us had become so inspired by the idea that she had the outline of a novel with a very unexpected ending – unexpected because it revealed the truth about a couple of incidents which had opened the story! There was a  wonderful, unforgettable story of an African wood-carver and a young boy in a different world who was captivated by a beautiful painting of an African village – maybe the village where the wood-carver lived. It was an entrancing story verging on magic realism.

We had a great morning, an inspiring morning, and I think each of us came away with heads full of thoughts of what we were going to write next – not just for the next meeting, but for ourselves.

Here is a link to my story:

https://loiselsden.com/2018/10/09/into-the-wood/