Hi Alphas,
Welcome to Alphaday 2 of our 13th season. The build-up is going well and by next Alphaday we’ll be in full flow. The Alpha team in charge of our special niches have been busy and I expect you’ll find plenty of writerly inspiration and stimulation in the following Alphaday 2 agenda:
- This bulletin from me
- The collated entries for the Rain challenge from Olaf
- The brief for Challenge 2 from Sue
- The Log from Sally
- Another Writers’ Reads prompt from Morgen
- Perhaps… a Showcasing piece from Suzanne
The items on the above agenda are provided by Alphas who’ve volunteered to take charge of a particular area of writerly interest. What happens next is that we all chip in with whatever we’d like to contribute. And that’s the beauty of it. We’re all included and everyone can have their say.
I don’t even know whether Olaf has got a full set of entries, but I hope he has. Just as I hope Sue’s choice of challenge brief will get you all scribbling away eagerly. I look forward to news of how you’re doing with your personal writing projects in Sally’s Log, and I’m sure you’ll have plenty to say when Morgen gives you the next prompt. Hopefully you’ve been looking through your bulging files of writing and found something you’d like to share with the group in the showcasing slot. What would a writers’ group be without it?
Membership news:
We have a new member. Samantha will be joining us today. She’s studying English at a university in Dakota and she’s been trying to find a writers’ group for some time. Then, one day, she found Olaf’s invitation to join Alpha on her university notice board! We welcome her to our group and look forward to her input. I’ve included her in the address list for this bulletin. Please, could you all make sure she’s included in group emails.
I hope Dianne and Pamela are settling in nicely and enjoying the ride so far. We’re still cranking up the machinery, as I said, but we’re getting there and by next Alphaday it’ll all be in place. I think we’re getting rather good at picking up the Alpha routine after the break. We evolve all the time. Things change and if you see the need for something innovative, all you have to do is to tell us about your idea. It might catch on… and then again, it might not. The main thing is that we’re open-minded.
Don’t forget to look at our web site now and then. ( https://alphawriters.net/new/ ) Rosemary is constantly updating it to keep a record of everything. The members’ page is looking good. There are still a few photos and bios missing, but you get the gist of Alpha by looking at it. We’re a motley bunch of writers with a great diversity of ideas and opinions; all of them well worth – indeed, a privilege – to communicate with.
We had some lively exchanges about nature writing. Genres and their exact definitions are cans of worms. Take something along the lines of ‘How to Grow Your Own Venus Flytrap / Triffids.’ Or Beningfield’s ‘Butterflies’ (found it on my shelves; pretty water colours) and Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Flight Behaviour’. Nature is everywhere in all its splendid variety. Perhaps there should be a genre called ‘human writing’ defined as: writing featuring human beings? I don’t doubt that publishers need to compartmentalise the genres they specialise in. That in turn means that writers need to fit into one of those pigeonholes before they can choose the publisher they want to approach. For some that’s the easy part. But not for all.
Let’s see what food for thought will come our way this Alphaday. I’m looking forward to all of it.
Christine