In which Chris starts a Revolution

(Written by Annie posted by Rob.) 

Our new member Izzie Anderton was in attendance. We met at my house and (with minutes to spare) I managed to make a chocolate fridge cake topped with some festive cranberries.

News:

 Tony told us about the recent publication of his article. Izzie is working on a short story. Rob had no news and then proceeded to tell us about an article written about ’50 Shades of Grey’ by Victoria Coren. She advises men not to rush to emulate the behaviour of Christian Grey, ‘Even the guy in the book is silly, never mind you pretending to be him, on a Thursday night after too much Theakston's Old Peculier.’

Although this perhaps isn’t ‘writerly’ news Jayne did recommend, ‘Heat-Holder Socks’ but I don’t think it had any links to 50 Shades. Linda has had a break from ‘writing’ to spend some time researching and preparing to submit her novel to agents.

We looked at Chris’s piece which was a pitch to an agent. He had written to her many years ago and had decided to contact her again with a much more substantial project than before. Also included was a synopsis of the ‘Karl Marx and Careful Driving Trilogy’.

Well you learn something new every writing group and this week’s surprise from Chris was that there was an English revolution. A quick consultation with Wikipedia (as I have already forgotten the facts) tells me:

The Glorious Revolution of 1688, whereby James II was replaced by William III and Mary II as monarch and a constitutional monarchy established, was described by Whig historians as the English Revolution.

Linda enjoyed the pieces and so did Jayne. It reminded Jayne of ‘The Life of Pi’ and she thought it sharply written. Rob had concerns about Chris’s self-effacing manner in the covering letter and wanted a clearer structure. Tony felt that the letter was well-written but wanted Chris to produce a professional letterhead than included all contact details. Chris had written the postal address at the top and Tony felt it, ‘gave the impression that he was still scribbling away with a fountain pen on Basildon Bond.’ I am sure Chris will agree that half the fun of writing group is having the absolute bleeding obvious pointed out in a tongue-in-cheek way!

Other facts that we learnt from Chris are that the ‘Velvet Revolution’ took place in Prague, Czechoslovakia in November 1989 and refers to the bloodless relinquishing of political power by the Communists.

And finally…

I was asked to post this information that I have recently taught to 8 and 9 year olds so that members of the group could be reminded of some of the finer points of pluralisation. 

Pluralising words ending in Y

The rules that need to be followed are: look to the letter immediately before the y.

If it is a vowel then simply add an ‘s’

e.g. monkey to monkeys, donkey to donkeys, survey to surveys,

If the letter is a consonant then remove the y and add –ies

e.g. party to parties, family to families, jelly to jellies, pony to ponies

And suddenly the penny drops…