Minutes of the meeting 05/01/17 at Neos Sports Club, Pegia.

Greetings scribes and a Happy new year to all.

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Welcome back our chairman John Goodwin after his break in the U.K. He was full of enthusiasm and looking forward to the challenges of the new year, especially as Paphos is now European Capital of Culture.

Present: John Goodwin, Rich Palmer, Dee Leigh, Stewart Waddell, Caroline Harman-Smith, Nicos Protopapas, Carol Robb and James Sweetman.

The meeting opened with suggestions from the floor regarding improvements and members aims for the following year. Members are invited to send in a short writing bio up to 200 words for sharing within the group.

John agreed to prepare a membership list, with contact details, to be made available by direct email to all members but not published on the website.

As promised John kicked of the new term with a tutorial and exercise on creating a memoir or biography. (Template and notes in the tutorial section of the website.).

As a result of the stories prompted by the exercise James suggested that as many of the members have memories of the 1960s we create a collection of anecdotes and short stories illustrating that epoch-making period as a social history. As one who was born long after that time, he agreed to provide feedback and edit the submissions. This was adopted as a project for the year with a view to gathering the submissions together by mid-September leaving the rest of the year to knock it into shape in time for possible publication by Christmas. We are mainly looking for 5-10,000 words for each entry but shorter pieces and poems that can add variety are OK too. This is not set as a homework but a separate long term project.

Readings:

Rich Poem The Writers Dilemma (Voted onto website)

Caroline Homework Why I want to write

Carol Homework My aims in writing group for 2017

Stewart Story Leanne (chapter from book)

Further discussion on the homework set before Christmas resulted in the proposal that members set their writing goals for 2017 and share them with the group so that their colleagues can offer targeted support to help achieve them.

Homework:

Write a story, or develop first chapter from the exercise on Memoirs.

Project for the year:

Write a biographical story of the 1960's, 7000 words plus. Prompts as in the exercise will be useful to give the atmosphere of the time by referring to themes, such as news items, cars, music, etc.

Thanks to all who attended. Next meeting 12/01/17 at Neos.

Rich Palmer, Secretary.