Angela Locke writes …

Dear fellow writers,

What a brilliant beginning to our term at Mungrisdale! It was a packed session, with such fantastic writing. Unforgettable, and ‘glorious’, to borrow Julie Carter’s word. I hope some of these pieces will find their way on to our mungrisdalewriters.com website. How lovely to see old friends after the summer. And to be delighted by special cakes to celebrate the meeting – a year ago – of our first MWG romance! And a double celebration as it is our 20th birthday, since we began at The Mill Inn, Mungrisdale in 1998, only much later moving to the brand-new village hall. It is wonderful to me that there are original members still attending, providing that precious continuity, as well as the wonderful flow of new people who have come to bring fresh lifeblood to our dynamic group.

As a celebration of our 20th year, I am asking everyone in the group to step up and begin to write that book which has always been there, nurtured with passion, something you care about profoundly. It can be a poetry collection, a novel, or even a collection of short stories. We began today in the class, and it was stunning.

Homework is to continue for another two pages, at least 300 words if it is prose. I echo Ann Miller’s words today, after that first writing session: ‘I really am going to write that book!’ That book is what is inside all of us, if we are writers.

I would like you to think too about the cover and the presentation, as Julie Carter so evocatively described, for her new poetry collection. And a title! This is the book you could open if you were in a quiet room, in isolation, by yourself, even in a cell. The book you would like to read, which says so much about you, which gives so much back to you, and to others.

Every session I am going to ask you to write at least another two pages. There will be other homeworks too, as options, but not something you have to do. This is a discipline. I would like you to keep going for the whole of the term, and at the end you will, if you keep going, have a surprising body of work. We may only have time to read the next 300 words in class, but please do more if the Muse takes you. It is your work, what defines you!

I am looking forward so much to hearing you all.

Love and light, Angela x