First Tuesday 6th January 2015

2.0 to 4.0 pm

'The Five Senses'

 

By prize winning local author

Rosie Gilligan

 

Chesterfield Library

'First  Tuesday' Meetings are held every month except August and are suitable for anyone  who is interested in discussing and undertaking practical exercises in creative writing - prose or poetry

They are held in the Meeting Room Lower Ground Floor - Next to 'Browser' Cafe 

No booking necessary- just turn up

New Book Published by Moorside Writer Chris Fewtrell

It has finally happened...the perfect Christmas present...


The Young Thrusters - 

An Affectionate History of an Extraordinary Football Team

Has been published in paper and digital formats!

The book can be found on Amazon via this link

If you can't afford £11.99 (currently discounted to £10.18) then the ebook is only 96p!

The ebook can be found on Amazon via this link

Free Kindle for app so you can read on every major smartphone, tablet, and computer

Buy Once, Read Everywhere: You don't need to own a Kindle device to enjoy Kindle books. Download one of Amazon's free Kindle apps to start reading Kindle books on all your devices. The Kindle app is available for every major smartphone, tablet, and computer. That means with Amazon free Kindle Reading apps, you can buy a Kindle book once, and read it on any device with the Kindle app installed. And of course, you can also read that same Kindle book on a Kindle, Kindle Touch, or Kindle Keyboard if you own one.

DOWNLOAD FREE KINDLE APP FROM AMAZON

http://www.chrisfewtrell.co.uk/youngthrusters.htm

'First Tuesday' 2nd December ------------------ Only Twelve Days To Go!

2.0 to 4.0 pm

'It's Panto Time'

 

with 

John Pratt

Last year an audio version of Aladdin as written and performed by Moorside Writers at Chesterfield Library between 2pm and 4pm on 3rd December 2013.

Watch on Youtube....

 

Chesterfield Library

'First  Tuesday' Meetings are held every month except August and are suitable for anyone  who is interested in discussing and undertaking practical exercises in creative writing - prose or poetry

They are held in the Meeting Room Lower Ground Floor - Next to 'Browser' Cafe 

No booking necessary- just turn up

The Mulberry Fugue by Heather Shaw

Daphne has lived in Mulberry House for decades and is terrified of losing her home. Alison has inherited the property and has no idea why. Thomas resents leaving the medieval world he has created to deal with the will’s increasingly complicated bequests. Bryn is escaping from the mess his life has become. 

We rarely understand the complex reasons behind the actions of others.

This novel is a why-dun-it? The story brings together four very different characters whose lives intersect on Romney Marsh, a place where wetland becomes field, field becomes coast. Each of them must deal with the past before the past deals with them.

Extract from The Mulberry Fugue

[Alison has inherited a house on the south coast of England from a woman she has never heard of. At a point when things are going very wrong in her life, Alison travels from her home in Derbyshire to Kent, to view her inheritance.]

‘No roses round the gate then,’ Alison said when the taxi bumped to a stop in front of Mulberry House.

The driver eased himself out of the car and waddled to the boot. Puffing with the effort, he heaved out Alison’s suitcase and dropped it onto the pavement. ‘Mrs. Kulman preferred trees, I reckon,’ he said.

‘Did you know Mrs. Kulman?’ Alison said.

‘Comes in from the continent you know,’ he said, looking towards the sea. ‘The rain. Just the one bag is it? You’ll not be staying long then.’

A slammed door, a revved engine and a squealing of tyres left Alison alone, facing the rendered garden wall of Mulberry House. Behind her, beyond the road and a low fence, the sea whispered and lapped up the shingle. Squawking gulls, silhouetted against the sky, wheeled and circled above her. It was getting dark.

Why, she wondered, hadn’t she considered what this would be like? Across the networks of travel, in trains, buses and taxis, from a landscape of moorland and dales, to this wide-skied, open flatness, the situation had remained unreal. The house had been an idea, a refuge. But now, the dim shape was waiting to confront her, a property which, for some undiscovered reason, was a stranger’s legacy.

Alison grabbed the handle of her suitcase. She would go back home right now, put the wretched property on the market, take a holiday, buy some clothes, have fun.

But taxis weren’t exactly ranked along the kerb nor was there a bus stop in sight. To the right of the house gleamed a row of stuccoed bungalows, like a curving string of square beads in pastel colours. To the left, tattered RNLI posters obscured the windows of a narrow, Georgian building.

The gate to one of the bungalows creaked open and a small white poodle trotted out followed by a man carrying a dog lead. When he saw Alison, the man’s mouth tightened and his eyes slitted with consternation. Scooping up the poodle, he scurried away.

‘The natives are friendly I see,’ Alison told her suitcase. She dug in her handbag for her mobile. But whom could she phone? She needed a bed for the night but options were limited. Trudging back along the coast road to book into a hotel did not appeal and the strung-bead bungalows showed no sign of hospitality. Anyway, now she was a only a step away from Mulberry House, curiosity had sneaked up on her.

‘I’ll just stay one night.’ Alison decided, ‘if there’s anything to sleep on that is.’ House and contents the solicitor had said but what did that mean? She opened the gate and stepped into the garden. The taxi man had been right. There were no flowers. Of the mulberry tree, after which the house was presumably named, there was no sign. She’d been imagining an orange-brown trunk with wide, sinewy crevices in the bark, twisty branches, pale green leaves and fruit with sweetness oozing from claret-red clusters. All she could make out were stunted Monterey pines straining away from the harshness of a marine climate towards the comforts of home.

And so they faced each other, Alison and Mulberry House. Set back from Marine Drive, on a corner plot, the house offered white, weather-boarded walls for inspection while Alison’s was an appearance crumpled by recent emotional turmoil and creased by today’s travel. The house’s asymmetry was pleasing. On the left, two dormers sat above multi-paned, ground floor windows with the third above a porch, formed from ivy-covered trellis, around the front door. To the right of the front door was what looked like an extension to the original building. She craned her neck to look up at the steeply-pitched roof of terracotta tiles stretching between brick chimney stacks. ‘How long have you been here?’ Alison said under her breath. ‘And why are you mine?’

If the house voiced an answer, it was drowned by a screeching of gulls.

Available from Amazon  Click Here

You couldn't make it up! Part Two

Well you can actually...

Shakespeare is believed to have made up hundreds of words and phrases many of which are still used today.

See words invented by Shakespeare

I have made up a few myself. 

'digiphonic'  appears in the novel 'Muddled Daze' in the sentence:

"And to think it is all because of one of those newfangled digiphonic radios or whatever they call them."

Go to 'Muddled Daze'

'snazzled' appears in the novel 'Slurry' in the sentence:

"I'd been spot on - she was already snazzled."

Go to 'Slurry'

  'plodges' appears in the, as yet unfinished, novel 'Terminal One' in the sentence:

"He plodges down in the armchair as if misjudging its height."

 Go to 'Terminal One'

And 'poly-ath' appears in

'The Young Thrusters -An Affectionate History of an Extraordinary Football Team'

in the sentence:

"Paul is a football man with no particular connection to rugby so it is probable that, if they exist, they are proper footballers rather than the 'poly-aths' who turned out in the past."

 

Go to 'The Young Thrusters'

Can you guess what any of these words mean?

By the way, nobody actually knows whether the above picture is actually of Shakespeare although it is frequently used to represent him.

Chris Fewtrell

'First Tuesday' 2nd December

2.0 to 4.0 pm

'It's Panto Time'

 

with 

John Pratt

Last year an audio version of Aladdin as written and performed by Moorside Writers at Chesterfield Library between 2pm and 4pm on 3rd December 2013.

Watch on Youtube....

 

Chesterfield Library

'First  Tuesday' Meetings are held every month except August and are suitable for anyone  who is interested in discussing and undertaking practical exercises in creative writing - prose or poetry

They are held in the Meeting Room Lower Ground Floor - Next to 'Browser' Cafe 

No booking necessary- just turn up

You couldn't make it up!

Well you can actually...

Shakespeare is believed to have made up hundreds of words and phrases many of which are still used today.

See words invented by Shakespeare

I have made up a few myself. 

'digiphonic'  appears in the novel 'Muddled Daze'

Go to 'Muddled Daze'

'snazzled' appears in the novel 'Slurry'

Go to 'Slurry'

And 'plodged' appears in the, as yet unfinished, novel 'Terminal One'

 Go to 'Terminal One'

Can you guess what any of these words mean?

In a future post there will be sentences in which the words above appear, as a further clue.

Chris Fewtrell

'First Tuesday' Meeting 4th November

2.0 to 4.0 pm

'Hope you are feeling better'

 

Stuart Randall 

 

Chesterfield Library

'First  Tuesday' Meetings are held every month except August and are suitable for anyone  who is interested in discussing and undertaking practical exercises in creative writing - prose or poetry

They are held in the Meeting Room Lower Ground Floor - Next to 'Browser' Cafe 

No booking necessary- just turn up

Highlights of 'Going Places'

 'Going Places' now available on You Tube

Going Places Highlights

Going Places Highlights

The Mulberry Fugue by Heather Shaw

Daphne has lived in Mulberry House for decades and is terrified of losing her home. Alison has inherited the property and has no idea why. Thomas resents leaving the medieval world he has created to deal with the will’s increasingly complicated bequests. Bryn is escaping from the mess his life has become. 

We rarely understand the complex reasons behind the actions of others.

This novel is a why-dun-it? The story brings together four very different characters whose lives intersect on Romney Marsh, a place where wetland becomes field, field becomes coast. Each of them must deal with the past before the past deals with them.

Available from Amazon  Click Here

Performance 26th September Dronfield

Ten Rules for a Happy Writing Life

I was tidying my writing space and found this cutting buried under a pile of other things. It’s now pinned up where I can see it every time I sit at the computer:

TEN RULES FOR A HAPPY WRITING LIFE

Don’t wait for inspiration

Establish a writing routine

Take time off

Read voraciously

Shut out the inner critic

Claim a space

Accept rejection

Expect success

Live fully

Wish others well

(From Monica Wood - The Pocket Muse)

Heather Shaw

Moorside are 'Going Places'

Moorside Writers present an evening of poetry and prose with musical interludes 

at  The Peel Centre, High Street, Dronfield, S18 1PX 

on Friday 26^th September at 7.30 pm.

The theme for the show, 'Going Places', is followed in poetry and short stories and takes the audience on a smorgasbord of exotic journeys. All the poems and stories are originals performed by the authors. More visits to distant places are made by the talented jazz duo, ‘A Little Jazz’. accompanied by singer Beth Newton.

So get your tickets for what promises to be a memorable and entertaining show.

Tickets are just £5 including wine and soft drinks.

For information and tickets contact Dorothy Cooke on: 

01246 414642

Moorside Writers on Stage

Competitions – a judge’s view

If you’re in a writers’ group, chances are that you’ve entered competitions. Once your entry has disappeared into post box or cyberspace, it will be jostling for attention amongst all the other entries.

In ‘Death by Art Deco’, a short story by Shena Mackay, a published writer regrets having agreed to judge a short story competition. Her attitude to the entries is shown by her knocking a glass of red wine over one story and not being able to read another because it’s covered with her cat’s muddy paw prints. She chooses the winner only because, despite using the word faux thirteen times, the writer has invented an unlikely plot line which involves murder by means of a rare Amazonian venom being injected into pearl cufflinks – faux, of course. 

 

But most people asked to judge a writing competition are much more conscientious and recognise the hard work that has gone into the entries. This was certainly how I felt when judging a recent short story competition. I discovered some very good writing, some outstanding writing but also writing that didn’t do justice to the talent of the author. 

 

So, how can you maximise your story’s chances?

1. Read the rules. The competition I judged asked for entries to be written in the first person. The one story written in the third person had to be disqualified despite being creative and well-crafted.

2. Think carefully about your title. It has two jobs to do – intriguing the judge and suggesting the story’s theme. Something bland like ‘A Trip to the Seaside’ won’t fare as well as ‘Mermaids Deserve Favours’.

3. Having made it over the title hurdle, the story’s first paragraph has the most difficult task of all – making the reader want to read on. Sadly, descriptions of weather, setting, or explanations of how the character came to be on the page don’t do that, however beautifully written. Grabbing the reader with a credible character in conflict does.

4. We all know about those seven basic plots and how everything has been done before, so coming up with an original plot-line is not easy. What is original is you, the only person to see the world through your eyes. You may have a phobia about snakes. Turning that on its head and writing in the viewpoint of a snake with human-phobia will get your story noticed.

5. The ‘show don’t tell’ rule is carved on our writing hearts though it’s not always easy to follow it. Dialogue is a wonderful help here. Instead of explaining that the protagonist, despite being forty-five years old, is still under his mother’s influence [telling] write a conversation between the two of them where she obliterates his opinions with her own [showing].

Dialogue does another job too: it breaks up the page and makes the reading easier on the reader’s eyes, a small but important point when the judge has many scripts to read.

6. Make the judge laugh. After reading story after story full of angst, self-doubt and keeping a cruel world at bay, a witty story is a wonderful relief. There were three outstanding stories in the entries I judged, each of them worthy of winning first prize, each of them fulfilling all the criteria I’d decided were important. The one I chose was funny, full of black humour that really appealed to me.

That’s what we’re all up against when we enter competitions – the subjective preference of the judges. We can’t do anything about that but I hope my thoughts on my own experience of being a judge, will help you give your own stories a fighting chance of success.

Good luck.

Heather Shaw

Moorside Dominates Grindleford Show Writing Competition

Congratulations are in order, as Moorside's Stuart Randall has won first prize in the Grindleford Annual Show writing competition!

 

The judge was Helen Mort the new Derbyshire Poet Laureate. You can follow the laureate blog here. Her comments included ‘the lines just trip off the tongue’ and ‘evocative and resonant’. 

 

Helen Mort

Moorside's Anne Norman came second, and Moorside's John Pratt's entry was commended. 

 

Well done all!

‘First Tuesday’ Poetry workshop with Helen Mort Derbyshire Poet Laureate

Helen Mort will be leading a poetry writing workshop for the ‘First Tuesday’ open meeting on

7th October 2014 2pm to 4pm Chesterfield Library

Free event, to book places please contact Chesterfield Library on 01629 533400

‘First Tuesday’ open meetings are organised by Moorside Writers  and are suitable for anyone with an interest in creative writing

www.derbyshire.gov.uk/libraries