Hi Alphas,
Welcome to Alphaday 6, the first Alphaday of 2017. Let me wish you all an excellent Writerly New Year. May inspired writing flow freely from your fingertips and lead you straight down the road to success. We love to follow everybody’s progress, and we haven’t the slightest doubt that we’ll see many Alpha triumphs in the course of 2017 that’ll make us proud of the good company we keep. We’re also here to cheer up those who come up against adversity… as who doesn’t every now and again?
We’ve had a four-week break to make room for seasonal festivities. I hope you enjoyed the break and are looking forward to getting back in the swing of things. To this end we’ve prepared an excellent agenda that hopefully will motivate you to produce some outstanding writing, as well as joining in conversations about writerly matters generally.
So here, without further ado, are the goodies we’ve put together for today’s agenda:
- This bulletin from me
- The results of the Synopsis challenge from Rosemary
- The collated entries for the Acceptance Speech from Christine
- The brief for Challenge 6 from Sally
- A Writers’ Reads prompt from Morgen
- The Log from Sally
- A showcase piece presented by Suzanne
These items will trickle into your in-box throughout the day. I think this gives us an excellent 2017 Alpha start and I hope you’ll agree with me. Your reactions and your pertinent and impertinent comments will liven up the day and involve us all.
There is no particular Alpha news this time other than what you’ll find in the Log where we always look forward to hearing about your writing adventures. Lesley’s temporary stay in the wings is over and we accept her permanent resignation. Steve is biding his time under too much snow while getting the feel of our activities. The rest of us try to make the most of everything – our writing, Alpha – life generally. Carpe diem.
As for general news it seems to me that optimism is a rare luxury amongst observers these days. I loved Meryl Streep’s acceptance speech at the recent Golden Globes ceremony. Maybe I enjoyed the coincidence with our Alpha challenge, but I’d have applauded her rapturously anyway for emphasising the power of art and artists to put the world to rights.
Art is positive. Even the most horrific representation of the horrors of war, Picasso’s Guernica for example, is beautiful even as it depicts the splintered, agonising screams. The sufferings of Tess of the d’Urbervilles are heart-rending but nevertheless as beautiful and reassuringly positive as Monet’s water lilies.
So let’s keep writing to put the world to rights. Show it from its worst possible side or from the most honeyed sugary-sweet side. Any striking picture that captures an audience will have the power of beauty… like Macbeth’s witches.
Christine