I’m a bit worried. Gill Sherry’s excellent advice at her workshop was: articles aimed for general magazines should be engaging, informative, well researched, passionate and… Read More »Write from your Heart – Gill Sherry’s ‘Writing for Magazines’ Workshop – 7 April 2021
I’m still reeling. I’m wondering where on earth to start. I know, Susan would have emphatically told me to start in Irvine because that, she… Read More »From heroes and heroines to infinity and beyond: writing for the mass-market with Susan Wilson – 31 March 2021
Weren’t we, those who Zoomed, the lucky ones on Wednesday night? Being read were successes from the previous weekend’s Scottish Association of Writers competitions and… Read More »SAW Successes Take A Bow – 24th March 2021
Wednesday night came round again, with its now familiar routine of logging on to Zoom with my fellow AWC members. This week our Club Night… Read More »Want playtime to be dramatic? Check out your seven deadly sins…. Revealing Characters through Dialogue, led by Helena Sheridan – 10 March 2021
On Wednesday evening, Ayr Writers’ Club were treated to a workshop run by our very own Janice Johnston. Janice joined the Club in the mid-’90s, serving as both Treasurer and President on more than one occasion. She is currently SAW Competition Secretary and has had many writing successes, writing for BBC radio in the forms… Read More »Ayr Writers’ Club Embrace Their Inner Child – 24 February 2021
Carolyn O’Hara’s infectious enthusiasm and passion for historical non-fiction writing brought our screens to life, guiding a busy Zoom session of nineteen participants through her Bringing the Past to Life workshop. A talented poet and non-fiction writer, with articles published in a variety of magazines (Scottish Memories, Highlander and Best of British) Carolyn has also… Read More »Truth is Stranger Than Fiction* – Bringing the Past to Life – Non-Fiction Workshop with Carolyn O’Hara – 17 February 2021
Flash Fiction is all about compression. Take a short story you like, halve it, again, then again. Make every word earn its keep, cut out whole paragraphs and ‘filler’ words like articles and qualifiers, expand and contract according to the word count of the competition … cutting down is easy if you’re ruthless. Karen’s own… Read More »Karen Jones on Flash Competitions – 3 February 2021
A.W.C. was treated to a highly enjoyable and informative evening as our own Ken McGaffin and journalist John Crowley shared their expertise. Co-authors of their, soon to be published A Digital PR Recipe Book (tip number one there, by the way – start promoting your work before it’s finished) they gave us a wealth of… Read More »Grab yourself a journalist: self-publishing and self-promotion with Ken McGaffin and John Crowley – 27 January 2021
To do justice to the wealth of advice and ideas Linda Strachan shared with the assembled Zoom Squares on Wednesday evening it would simply require a transcript. Alternately, you could buy her 2019 title Guide to Writing for Children and YA (Go on, I’m sure you got some book tokens for Christmas). The pearls and… Read More »Subverting the obvious from Tuscany to the bathroom: Writing for children with Linda Strachan – 20 January 2021
Ken McGaffin, committee member and moderator for the evening, gave a warm and enthusiastic introduction for Henry Bell: the editor-in-chief of the award-winning Gutter magazine, widely published poet and most recently a successful biographer. The evening was organised in two parts, the first an exploration of Bell’s biography – John Maclean, Hero of Red Clydeside.… Read More »An evening with Henry Bell: biographer, poet, editor – 13 January 2021
Gathered round our screens, we waited for the Sanquhar Santa (aka Jeanette our President) to read us a story, to give us some cheer, to reassure us about whichever Covid Christmas ghost might haunt our festive prospects. Instead, we were encouraged to time-shift – between a balmy May evening and driech gloomy one of mid-December.… Read More »‘Twas the night before Christmas: a Party and Awards Evening – 9 December 2020
There was a good turn-out for this extremely lively, entertaining and (exercise-wise) challenging talk by Jenny Lindsay. As one of Scotland’s best known spoken words performers and winner this year of a prestigious John Byrne award for critical thinking (the only award she has ever won, she told us modestly), she had plenty to impart.… Read More »Poetically Performing Spoken Theatre, with Jenny Lindsay – 2 December 2020