Penny Legg's Writing Buddies

At the last Writing Buddies meeting in Borders in Southampton, I was surprised to hear that the coffee and chat sessions have become a motivating force for the production of words. Writers are now being motivated to write because they know that a Writing Buddies meeting is coming up and they want to be able to tell the rest of the group about the writing they are currently working on. Writing Buddies are also getting fresh ideas from each other. I had not foreseen this when I started the group.

Readers of this blog will know that I set up the group in response to a need I had perceived for writers to get together and talk about what matters to them in the world of writing. It gave them a forum for discussing problems with plotting, characterisation and such like, to talk about markets and book selling, trends, successes, even the demise of the semi-colon! Anything in fact that affected them as writers. Over time we have tried to advise one writer on the problems he has had with time lines in his novel and commiserated with him when he recently announced that, after 120,000 words, he had abandoned the project. We have talked about writing courses and pooled knowledge of the good and the bad. We have always talked about the ongoing projects that we are working on. As we have a goodly sprinkle of novelists, poets, non-fiction writers, short story writers, diarists and children's writers it is good to hear of the multitude of work that we undertake. That we are now sparking ideas and motivating each other to produce work, is great to hear.

The next meeting of Writing Buddies is on Friday 28th August at 2pm. If you fancy dropping in for a cuppa and a chat, you will be very welcome.