Hi Alphas,
Welcome to Alphaday 1, season XVIII.
It’s great to start a new season, and we must be doing something right to have reached our 18th season and still be going strong – or rather going from strength to strength.
We’re a group of keen and brilliant writers, and we pool our ideas together to stimulate each other and encourage our talents to flourish. That’s the Alpha secret, I think: everyone is actively providing us with a wide range of approaches. We see the endless possibilities, while nobody claims to have the final answer (is it 42?) and we widen our scope by trying out new ways with words. There’s no limit to what you can do with words.
It’ll take us three Alphadays to crank up the Alpha machinery to full power. We’ll gently ease into the full swing of things, and I hope you’ll all enjoy the experience of writing that’s about to unfold during the Alpha Season XVIII.
The agenda for Alphaday 1 has the following items:
- This bulletin from me
- The brief for challenge 1 from Maria
- A call for Alpha Log entries from Phil
- The Alpha Calendar for Season XVIII
- A list of Alpha members for Season XVIII
- The instruction manual re. the challenges and the Open Page
Alpha news:
We’re pleased to welcome two new members into Alpha. Catherine has joined us from Canada, so she boosts our aspirations to being a cosmopolitan group. Catherine is primarily a poet, with an extra string to her bow as a ghost writer, who wishes to write more fiction.
Polly lives in Yorkshire which used to be densely populated by Alphas, but maybe that’s changed recently. Polly has tried her hand at a variety of styles and genres, and she wants to continue to develop her writing.
A warm welcome to Catherine and Polly, our newbies! Let me introduce the rest of the group to you.
I’m Christine, the group coordinator. I do the basic planning, and then I ask people to take on the various tasks. I’m lucky to be surrounded by willing members and everyone is involved in some way.
Ros is our long-standing web mistress. She’s also our most prolific novelist with a long list of published novels to her credit.
Sarah takes care of finding new Alphas whenever we have a vacancy. She explains what’s involved and checks credentials … as many of you will know.
Phil is in charge of the Alpha Log where members share news about their personal writing – outside the Alpha cocoon, that is – and report on successes, progress and disappointments. Phil will be in touch about the first Log of this season later today.
Morgen is our Alpha Laureate, whose brilliant work last season earned her that honourable position which she’ll occupy until ousted by the next Alpha Laureate.
Then there’s the rank and file. They’ll take on tasks during the season such as setting challenges and running the Open Pages.
Suzanne and Stephen are Alpha veterans. They’ve been with us for more seasons than I can remember off-hand. Elke and Cat are our cosmopolitans from opposite ends of the world. Elke is in Australia and Cat is in the US. (I live in France btw, Suzanne is dithering between France and Scotland, and Sarah is full-time in Scotland. So we are quite cosmopolitan.) Francesca, Gloria, Maria, Martin and Rick are scattered around in the UK and they complete the picture.
So much for introductions. As we share our writings we’ll come to know much more about our fellow Alphas. Writing is what we’re passionate about, and we look forward to a stimulating Season XVIII.
General news:
Instead of giving you my thoughts on some important aspect of how culture is thriving or disintegrating somewhere in this crazy world (I might get carried away) I’ll leave you with a quotation to persuade you to believe in yourself. We can do it; we know we can do it, and we’ll show them all that we can. Start with challenge 1, for example!
“The moment where you doubt you can fly, you cease forever being able to do it.” JM Barrie, Peter Pan.
Christine
α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α α