I've officially left the Poised Pen writing group, in so much as such a thing can be official when there is not a membership per se–basically you go to a meeting and you pay your dues, that's your membership. I haven't been going for the last 20 months, so I've asked to be taken off the mailing list, as it gets frustrating reading the apologies. I stopped sending them in as it seemed superfluous when people aren't expecting me to be there. There are PP members now going who I have never met.

I think I went to one, maybe two, meetings once they changed from having the meetings in a real ale pub (the Fly in the Loaf) to the backroom of a restaurant (Porto).
.


It's a shame to cut the ties in some ways but I've just not been going and can't see me going back in the short to medium term. Ultimately I know where they are if I find I want to return in the future. The PP was my first and only writing group where I read out any of my stories, following my few appearances reading poetry at the Dead Good Poets. It also gave me my first opportunities to be published with the Poised Pen anthologies and I can't thank them enough for that: these were 'Half Baked' (2014) and 'All Things Considered' (2016).

I used to be a very regular attendee, pretty much ever present after I started going in 2013. I helped produce Half Baked including sorting it out for the Kindle and using my photo for the cover: unfortunately I was also responsible for a typo on the spine. I enjoyed meeting at the Fly as it combined two of my loves (ale & writing) and cutting one out was the driver for me stopping. Time is a finite resource and something had to give. The writing community outside of the group from, amongst others, the Flash Dogs and VSS365 guys and gals, has given me the confidence and pals I can call on for reading queries or writing advice–albeit without the pint in hand and a post reading chin-wag.

So I'll take this opportunity to say thanks to the Poised Pen for the friendships, the opportunities, the experience, for meeting a lovely group of writers, and for some of the best meetings ever. Good luck to all who sail with her and I look forward to reading your work in the wild–or hearing it on the radio or seeing it on the telly-box. I expect I'll still bump into you; be that in the Fly or at some book or screenwriting extravaganza.

Keep writing.

Not sure I'll be getting too much writing done throughout December but there will be bits of flash I dare say, or micro-micro flash in terms of the FlashDogs daily #VSS365 on Twitter. One thing I will be doing though is for the Poised Pen writing group, where each year we do a Secret Santa. Instead of buying some tat for a fiver made of meat products we write a piece for someone else in the group based on some Christmassy theme or other. I've been given my theme and it's... well I can't say. Not screaming out at me yet, but no doubt some muse or stick of holly will hit me.



The Secret Santa piece can be in any form (poem, prose, short story, play etc). I'm not sure about mine yet, but it won't be a novel or even a novella, but it will be longer than a FlashDog VSS365. Er, probably.

The only other creative writing I'll be doing this month is job applications and CV updates. I need a proper job. You know where I am, people!

Happy writing folks!