{"id":496,"date":"2017-02-02T11:04:12","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T10:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/?p=496"},"modified":"2017-02-02T11:04:12","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T10:04:12","slug":"alphaday-7-season-xiii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/alphaday-7-season-xiii\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphaday 7 &#8211; Season XIII"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Hi Alphas,<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to Alphaday 7. We\u2019re now exactly half way through Season XIII with six Alphadays on either side of this one, and five of our ten challenges dusted off. In other words: we\u2019re at the summit of this season. That, to my mind, is a very desirable place to be, whether we\u2019re talking about our career, our skills or Season XIII.<\/p>\n<p>I hope this Alphaday will live up to the expectations I\u2019ve just raised. The Alpha team has been busy as usual to ensure just that, and we have prepared an agenda for this Alphaday that we\u2019re fairly certain you\u2019ll enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s today\u2019s agenda:<\/p>\n<p>This bulletin from me<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The results of the Troobell Prize acceptance speech from Christine<\/li>\n<li>The collated entries for the 2018 current affairs interview from Sally<\/li>\n<li>The brief for Challenge 6 from Chris<\/li>\n<li>The latest edition of the Log from Sally<\/li>\n<li>A Writers\u2019 Reads prompt from Morgen<\/li>\n<li>A Showcase piece presented by Suzanne (if we\u2019re lucky!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All the above-mentioned items should find their way to your in-box some time today in no particular order. We\u2019re grateful to the special Alpha team who\u2019ve been busy preparing all these goodies, but we mustn\u2019t forget that they\u2019re merely processing input from all Alpha members. So we\u2019ll thank every one of us for our generous and illuminating writerly contributions to the success of this Alphaday.<\/p>\n<p><u>Alpha news: <\/u><\/p>\n<p><u><\/u>Manish contacted Olaf to enquire about membership. He lives in Leicester and is a keen writer of short stories and interested in \u2018meeting\u2019 other writers and taking part in writing related activities. Admittedly it is a bit late for Manish to take full part in this season, but we welcome him to the group as an observer. He\u2019ll join in as much as he can, and he\u2019ll be ready for full membership next season, if he likes what he sees \u2013 as we hope he will.<\/p>\n<p>Manish will be on the address list for this Bulletin. Could you please include him in group emails from now on.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><u>General news:<\/u><\/p>\n<p>Poor old Plato would turn in his grave if he knew what was happening to the ideas of democracy that he so carefully set out for us in <em>De Re Publica<\/em> (380 BC).<\/p>\n<p>So let\u2019s turn to literature. I do enjoy seeing who is crowned with glory and the latest is the 2016 Costa Book of the Year Award for <em>Days Without End<\/em> by Sebastian Barry. It\u2019s the second time he\u2019s won the prize, and as we\u2019ve just dabbled in acceptance speeches I expect many of our clich\u00e9s might have come in useful. I toyed with the idea of \u201cOh gosh, so unexpected! I never thought a speech would be needed. But here\u2019s one I prepared eight years ago.\u201d (I\u2019m still laughing so much at my own joke that I can\u2019t see the keyboard for tears.)<\/p>\n<p>Seriously, though, writing doesn\u2019t go stale like cakes even after eight years have gone by. I expect Sebastian Barry\u2019s 8-year-old speech was full of gems. Our writing from many years ago was written with enthusiasm for our subject and a commitment to getting as close to perfection as possible. So don\u2019t throw anything away. (You should see my attic!) I think it\u2019s useful sometimes to read through half-forgotten work from the past and feel good about it. There are stories she wrote when she was about 11 years old in Jane Austen\u2019s Juvenilia. (Oh, dear! I\u2019m afraid I\u2019ve lost the stuff I wrote when I was that age, so nobody will ever dig that out.)<\/p>\n<p>Christine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Hi Alphas, Welcome to Alphaday 7. We\u2019re now exactly half way through Season XIII with six Alphadays on either side of this one, and five of our ten challenges dusted off&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphaday-bulletins","tag-alphaday-bulletins-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}