{"id":567,"date":"2017-09-28T09:02:58","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T08:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/?p=567"},"modified":"2017-09-28T09:02:58","modified_gmt":"2017-09-28T08:02:58","slug":"alphaday-2-season-xvi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/alphaday-2-season-xvi\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphaday 2 &#8211; Season XVI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Alphas,<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to Alphaday 2, Season XIV. I hope you\u2019re all settling in and ready to tackle the next stages of this season. Starting up the Alpha machinery takes time, but we\u2019ve made a start and there\u2019s more to follow before we\u2019re in full flow. In fact we\u2019ve made an excellent start with every single member contributing to the first challenge. The resulting collation of stories will hit your inbox today \u2013 a real treat, I expect.<\/p>\n<p>The Log is being put together as well. We\u2019ll do it in two stages for this first Log of the season to make sure you get the full benefit. There\u2019ll be a \u2018taster\u2019 sent out today to give you an idea of what we like to hear about in the Log. A fuller version will be ready next Alphaday, giving everyone a chance to tell us something about the sort of writer you are.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s agenda is still a modest one, but it should make you feel that we\u2019re on our way to a great season.<\/p>\n<p>As follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This bulletin from me<\/li>\n<li>The collated entries for the \u2018Story\u2019 challenge from Rosemary<\/li>\n<li>The brief for Challenge 2 from Stephen (already there!)<\/li>\n<li>Part one of the Log from Sally<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><u>Alpha news:<\/u><\/p>\n<p>We have a new member joining us today: a warm welcome to <strong>Gloria! <\/strong>She is a novelist who lives in France. (That makes three of us over here!) She\u2019s looking forward to joining in our activities and we look forward to her input.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve included Gloria in the address list for this bulletin and will send out a revised list of members immediately after this.<\/p>\n<p><u>General news:<\/u><\/p>\n<p>I always find the Booker Prize an exciting event to follow. The long- and shortlists are presumably indicators of how literature is evolving in the present, and of what deserves our attention.<\/p>\n<p>It can\u2019t be easy to be a member of the judging panel and picking the best novels from a plethora of widely differing submissions. Some of the judging criteria seem baffling to me, a simple reader of good books. Apparently one of the star qualities this year is that the novels explore \u2018liminal spaces\u2019. Sounds interesting, but might be a difficult ingredient to pin down. They\u2019re also subjected to tests of \u2018technicality\u2019 (yea, okay), \u2018interiority\u2019 (hm, tricky one), and \u2018strength of character\u2019 (that one seems straightforward).<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve sometimes discussed what criteria to adopt for judging our challenge entries. Looking at the above makes me quite happy to accept that we judge by our own individual rules. If that means our judgements are subjective, then so be it. But we know a good piece of writing when we see one and the fact that we often agree is a good enough indication that we\u2019re doing just fine without having specific criteria to consult.<\/p>\n<p>Christine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Alphas, Welcome to Alphaday 2, Season XIV. I hope you\u2019re all settling in and ready to tackle the next stages of this season. Starting up the Alpha machinery takes time, but&#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-567","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\/567","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=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}