General Chat

Or, here are a few more to add to the previous list.

First line:
There are a few things you need to know before we start".
Rachel's first trip to England didn't go as planned”
He seemed pleasant enough the first time we met him
This time there would be no witnesses
I had told him so many times not to run through the house
Ignoring his mother's pleas, he ...
Why couldn't my mouth, for once, just behave
My father was a self-made man and he believed ...


Or write a story using these situations situations:
1. an important decision needs to be made
2. a secret needs to be confessed to someone else
3. someone's pride has been injured
4. a death has occurred

Write a story using one from each of character, setting and time.
character
a new mother
a photographer
a recent high school graduate
a restaurant owner or manager
an alien from outer space

Setting
a shopping mall
a city park
the porch of an old farmhouse
a polluted stream
a college library

Time
sometime in December
late at night
after a big thunderstorm has passed
in early spring
first week of the school year

As you will see I was inspired by Silent witness, but I shall use these for the next time or maybe sooner, depending Regards Jan and thanks

Hello all, email just sent out please let me know if you ddidn't get it :-)

.....phew..... pulling our thread up to the top!

I've sent a story out at long last.

Mau xxx :-D

resurrecting the thread.

It has been suggested that we have a go at Dermots suggestion on the wordsmith thread. If I remember correctly it was write a piece 50 words long with no words repeated. And it goes without saying it should be grammatically readable.

I will try and have a go at this later. I know it is not as easy as it looks but it may be a good disciplinary exercise in word use and brevity.

Not sure what you could make of it Maggie but if anyone can do it you can. :-D

Gosh that took some concentration. I have sent out the 50 word piece without repetition of words. But have only sent to the few people who still appear to be active in the group.

'It has been suggested that we have a go at Dermots suggestion on the wordsmith thread.'

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Sorry don't think I've read it Ann.......but have replied to your pm thanks

Mau

Sorry Mau, Dermot put up a thread last week re Wordsmith suggesting people try and write a 50 word paragraph without repeating any words. I don't think anyone took up the challenge, or very few. It is quite hard.

Okay thanks Ann :-D

Sorry but I think I'll take a rest from the group for a while. Will still be writing but not sending out.

Mau xxx

That's fine Mau, I am doing the same myself for some time, not even writing at the moment. Maybe when autumn is here and the nights start getting longer we can get going again :-D

Seeing as that will only leave about 4 of us I think I shall do the same. Disappointing when there are so few and I have found without the encouragement of a lot of us I have flagged and stopped writing so I shall write for my self I think. :-(

Sad news, Scribblers.

Perhaps those few who are continuing could e-mail me please just to re-confirm their e-mail addresses.

As I'm unsure who is now 'in or out', this will stop me from sending my rubbish articles to those who have resigned.

Many thanks & good luck.

I haven't resigned Dermot merely taking a break. :-)

I am still in to receive Dermot but not writing at the moment

It is sad news for the thread has given me the impetus to write again after many years of doing nothing. Can we confirm by e mail who wishes to receive our efforts......looks like it will just be me and Dermot

Perhaps it will pick up in the dark months

I used to write short articles fiction or autobiographical (sometimes hard to tell the difference these days) for an online writing group known as Urbis.com but it seems to have folded unless some one can advise me otherwise.

No idea David, I will send out to usual suspects this week, but would be grateful for some guidance as to who still wishes to receive, as I would hate to send when not wanted

Have a good weekend

Jan

Not knowing who to e-mail, I'll take a chance by posting my feeble piece on here for a change. Anyone & everyone can read it at their convenience. Where would writers be without readers?

On that note, here it is. Be gentle with me this week as my brain has broken down or possibly overheated with all the Jubilee Celebrations. God Save Our Queen.

Don't Get Alarmed. (GR Writers Group).
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Is it a uniquely Irish thing to ignore ringing alarms and to get very annoyed if nobody rushes to turn them off.

By their nature, an alarm should normally indicate an emergency of some sort and the natural response should see you scurrying for the exit, or, if you’re a good neighbour, rushing towards the source of the noise to see if there’s a break-in or a problem you can help with.

Instead, when an alarm goes off in an Irish pub, for example, you presume it’s been triggered accidentally and if you sit tight supping your pint while trying to ignore the din for a few minutes, normality will be restored. It works sometime.

Equally, if the house alarm next door kicks off, you hope it will run out of battery power before you go to bed because it’s hard enough to listen to it during the daytime and it’s next to impossible to sleep through. Our dog dislikes the commotion too & begins to howl. And the cat has no time for a howling dog as it scurries out headlong through the cat-flap.

You never think for one minute that the reason the alarm is sounding is because the adjoining house has been burgled and the lone resident is lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor – any more than you think the pub is on fire and you’d better make for the exit.

I remember a night in Manchester some years ago – in fact it coincided with a Saw Doctors’ gig in the city but they had nothing to do with the incident – when a fire alarm sounded at about four in the morning in the hotel.

Now I presumed it was some eejit who’d had too much to drink and was running around the corridors – probably without some if not all of his/her clothes – who was hitting the button for the craic. But when hotel staff knocked on all doors, you knew it was time to take this a little more seriously.

So I got up, got dressed, put my contact lenses in so I could see where I was supposed to go, packed my case and headed for the emergency meeting point the adjacent car park – where I was greeted by the sight of several hundred people who obviously took the word ‘emergency’ in a more literal sense and had been standing there in the cold & drizzle in their pyjamas and underwear for the previous 20 minutes.

Now while I felt particularly snug and smug in my daytime apparel, it was only afterwards that I realised that, if there actually was a fire, I’d have been toast before I’d have my lenses back in to be able to see the flames.

On another occasion, at a time when I was working for a different newspaper, there was a particular editor who insisted that he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances while he was thinking.

As this was not a task he appeared to bother with too often in the normal course of events, these occasional bouts of thinking rarely presented a problem – but one day he was locked away in his office when a fire drill took place.

That involved all of the staff fleeing the building and, as it turned out, heading for the adjoining public house – which, if there had been a fire, would have burned every bit as quickly as the newspaper office itself.

The point was that, in the meantime, our editor concluded his bout of thinking and emerged from his office to find a newsroom which minutes earlier had housed three dozen journalists was now emptier than my bank account.

Which only goes to prove that too much thinking can be as bad for you as not thinking at all – or that the last thing you should ever do when you hear an alarm going off in any context is to get too alarmed about it.

Lol thank you dermot. You did get my message to say continue to send to me didn't you?