{"id":835,"date":"2020-02-06T10:43:14","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T09:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/?p=835"},"modified":"2020-02-06T10:43:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T09:43:17","slug":"season-xvi-alphaday-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/season-xvi-alphaday-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Season XVI &#8211; Alphaday 8"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hi\nAlphas,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome\nto Alphaday 8, Season XVI. We have just \u2013 nonchalantly \u2013 passed the halfway\nmark and there\u2019s no sign of exhaustion as we prepare to complete the course.\nFar from it \u2013 and why should there be? The more Alpha energy we put into each\nAlphaday, the brighter our combined talents shine, giving us a satisfying\ninspirational buzz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today\u2019s\nagenda is packed full of enough treats to provide the buzz we look forward to\nevery Alphaday. As follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alpha Bulletin 8,\nSeason XVI agenda:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>This\n     bulletin from me<\/li><li>The\n     results of the fairy tale challenge from Maria<\/li><li>The\n     collated entries for the Open Page, 2<sup>nd<\/sup> edition, from Elke<\/li><li>The\n     brief for Challenge 6 from Stephen<\/li><li>Your\n     Log 5 news from Phil<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>All\nthis will arrive in your in-box some time in the course of this Alphaday to\nwhet your writerly appetite. Thank you to those who helped put this agenda\ntogether. It\u2019s particularly good to hear that some of these willing helpers\nactually enjoyed the hard work!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alpha News: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Olaf\u2019s\ndeath has touched us all deeply. His enthusiasm for the email writing group\nthat he created back in 2004 attracted a great many writers from all over the\nworld to join Alpha and to share his enthusiasm. Back in 2004 an email-based\ngroup was quite a pioneering adventure, allowing writers, who for some reason\nwere isolated from contact with fellow writers, to get together in a small\nfriendly group with just the one common passion: writing. The friendship we\nshare with our fellow Alpha writers is in a realm apart from our everyday lives\nbecause it concerns our main interest. Olaf made that possible for us and his achievement\nstill benefits us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nmet Olaf in person in 2016 when he visited Normandy with a friend. We spent a\ndelightful day together and discussed Alpha and other things over a lunch and a\nstroll round a small Norman town. I\u2019m glad we met, but our main personal\ninteraction was through Alpha and working together for Alpha to flourish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>**<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>General news: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which\nis best: bent cucumbers or chlorinated chickens? The UK is now free to choose\nand only the future will tell how this momentous decision will shape history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mary\nHiggins Clark died on the same day as Olaf. She published over 50 crime and\nsuspense thrillers. I came across her books at an Amnesty International book\nfair. Her books seemed to outnumber any other writer\u2019s. So I bought some and\nthey were certainly page-turners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\npattern is known to every writer: conflict, tension, resolution. The victim is\nin danger and comes close to disaster before being saved. The dragon-slaying\nSt. George pattern, you may call it. Sometimes there\u2019s collateral damage. The\nsheep plunge to their death over the cliff edge, and Bathsheba marries Troy\nbefore finally settling down with Gabriel Oak. In the Bible story about Noah\nand climate disaster the collateral damage is far greater. But good prevails\nover evil, we\u2019re told. Even in our stylised fairy tales, happiness is not\nalways doled out justly forever after, as our latest challenge demonstrated,\nbut the reader closes the book with satisfaction because victory is always on\nthe side of virtue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mary\nHiggins Clark understood this. She knew that her readers were looking for\nconfirmation of their instinctive optimism and wishful thinking. She gave them\nthat confirmation. There may be plenty of proofs to the contrary in the real\nworld, but writers like Mary Higgins Clark who encourage their readers to look\nfor something uplifting in very unfavourable settings are perhaps helping\npsychotherapists out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s\nkeep writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Alphas, Welcome to Alphaday 8, Season XVI. We have just \u2013 nonchalantly \u2013 passed the halfway mark and there\u2019s no sign of exhaustion as we prepare to complete the course. Far&#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-835","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\/835","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=835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}