A useful round up of writing links

They're right here, courtesy of Paul Raven's Velco City Tourist Board. Some excellent and very useful stuff there. Give them a read.

New Writing Prize - £50,000!

The University of Warwick has just launched the Warwick Prize for Writing, with a purse of £50,000. A panel of five judges, headed by China Miéville and including mathematician Ian Stewart and literary blogger Stephen Mitchelmore, will announce a list of 15 to 20 titles in October. A short-list of six titles will follow January 2009, and the winner will be announced the month after.

While the award describes itself as focused on innovative writing on a theme - this year's in Complexity - it's interesting to see it embrace genre fiction. Not all such prizes do... unless of course the writer doesn't identify as a genre writer. Like Jeanette Winterson, or Margaret Atwood, or PD James... Of course, it remains to be seen if Miéville's leadership, and Stewart's presence, will result in a list which includes science fiction or fantasy works. I expect we'll see something not unlike this year's Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist.

Something Worth Reading...

There's an interesting article on making writing groups work here on The Fix review site. It's all very much common sense, of course - or at the very least common courtesy. But it's worth reminding ourselves sometimes what it is we ought to be doing, both in our writing and in our commenting on others' writing.

July Meeting

Bit late posting this. Sorry.

This month's meeting - Monday 7th July. Old Queen's Head, upstairs, 7:30 pm.

Second June Meeting

Monday 16 June. Old Queen's Head, upstairs room, 7:30 pm onwards.

Next Meeting

The next meeting is Monday May 19th at the usual place and time: Old Queen's Head, seven o'clock onwards. Let's hope more turn up than to the last meeting.

A Useful Article on Writing

This piece here in the Austin Chronicle makes some good points about creative writing. But like the writer himself says, it should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, I think he's unnecessarily harsh on workshops:

Be careful of "workshop" classes in which you present your writing for the criticism of classmates and the teacher. Your classmates don't know any more than you; their comments will be mere opinions, backed by scant knowledge and experience – but they have the power to hurt you. You want your writing to be approved, of course; when it's not approved, that's painful. But if you shape your writing to the opinions of the inexperienced and unknowledgeable, you'll set yourself back years.

The above is probably far more true of online writing workshops than it is face-to-face groups. The size of online workshops, the drive-by critique nature of many of them, and the lack of clues in online dialogue make it difficult to assess the knowledge and experience of commenters. That's not so true of groups that meet in person.