Hi Alphas,
Welcome to Alphaday 4, Season XII. We’ve had a busy three-week interlude now that all our activities are up and running. I hope you’re looking forward to continuing at this breathtaking pace for the rest of the season. I’m sure it’ll be filled with useful exchanges on a variety of topics – all of them of writerly interest ranging from essentials to trivialities, from the serious to the wildly esoteric.
In other words: like all writing at its best.
This Alphaday agenda offers a mouth-watering selection of treats, as follows:
- This bulleting from me as per usual
- The results of the dialogue challenge from Olaf
- The collated entries for the ‘save our planet’ challenge from Morgen
- The brief for Challenge 4 from Sally
- The Log from Sally
- The Writers’ Reads from Morgen
- Perhaps – if you’re lucky – a showcase item from Suzanne
As you can see, a couple of our members have been working overtime providing not just one, but two slots for your benefit. I’m afraid I can’t promise to change that in the immediate future, but I’m working on it. The Alpha idea is that everyone should volunteer to set and run one of the ten challenges, including and actually favouring the rank and file members.
Don’t worry newbies! Your turn will come next season. We will of course also have rank and file members doing their stints this season. It’s just that coincidences happen!
Alpha news:
I’ve already given you an update on progress with the Decade Book. I still need a couple of pieces in and I’m confident these will very soon materialise. I’ve had excellent cooperation from those involved in this venture, and I’m very grateful for your help. I’d welcome any further comments on the latest chapters.
I can’t wait to move on to the next stage where all my accumulated separate pieces of the jigsaw will be put together to form one pleasing (??) whole picture.
We’ve had plenty of spirited exchanges on matters that sort of fell of the back of an Alpha slot. Writers grow animated, tangential and verbose on the subject of books; that’s normal. The Log is our ‘outside Alpha’ line of info and that’s where the ‘inside Alpha’ is intended to encourage us to go. It helps us along in the desired direction.
Don’t forget to send your showcase items to Suzanne. As a writers’ group this is an important step for us all: sharing a piece of writing with our writing friends and getting feedback. Just a few words would be welcome. When it’s your turn to share your writing I’m sure you’ll appreciate comments. We get ample feedback practice with the challenges. That acquired skill could be put to good use for the showcase pieces.
General news:
Upsetting. Very upsetting. Carnage in Paris and a Russian plane full of tourists. Such a shameful waste.
TS Eliot: The Waste Land: (a beautiful poem that I come back to often)
“…so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.”
Good news about writers gaining recognition for giving readers a different view of the world is preferable by far.
Christine