Tuesday 27th July 2010
The Severn Valley Authors met at the Arches to discuss another chapter from Chris's book 'Karl Marx and Careful Driving'.
Chris was picked up on his choice of sentence construction in the first paragraph.
Outnumbering the tractors in rural areas, where manual rather than mechanical labour still predominates, the horse and cart is a form of obstruction frequently encountered and roundly cursed on Poland’s main roads. A number of members agreed that the subject of the sentence (the horse and cart) coming so late in the sentence effected its flow.
Chris's Orwellian quote that 'some animals were after all more equal than others,' did cause me some confusion because I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of it. The other members agreed that there should be no dumbing down. Oh if only I could be as equal as the others.
There was also much discussion on how much 'heavy material' should be included. Rob asked for more showing rather than telling. He was particularily keen for an encounter with a 'suicidal pedestrian' and felt that anecdotes like these would contrast well with the complex sections. Members were still keen to hear more of Chris's experiences of life on the road. Chris assured the group that he had many of these still to add and was trying to get the structure of the academic material organised first.
I am and so I suspect are the rest of the group in awe at Chris's dedication to this task and look forward to future installments.
With holidays and other commitments looming the group decided to take a summer recess. Tony told of his recent success: a short story accepted by Aquila, a children's magazine on the condition that it was reduced by several hundred words. It was agreed that Tony would send his story on email and the group would make suggestions in order to reduce the word count. It would also allow the group to tick over during the summer.
Congratulations also to Rob for his entry 'My Dedication to Joe Crane' which secured him a plaque from Centro Mallorca.
I went away to Swanick Writers' School over the summer and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone. One guest speaker Roger Ellory gave some very useful advice on getting published and I have included the link for you here: http://swanwickwritersschool.co.uk/news.asp?id=27
Looking forward to seeing you all on Tuesday.
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