Book:
Sales: Reaction to the Writers News article and advert has been very disappointing, but readers don't always act immediately - they take time to read through a monthly magazine. My article in The Link published by NAWG won't appear until beginning of June (I thought it was a May edition), and that should produce a few sales. In addition, I am planning to spend time at the Writers Conference at Winchester on Friday/Saturday, June 23/24th, at the Book Fair.

Currently we have a net income of just over £20.

Writers Conference, Winchester Friday/Sunday June 23-25th
I've had the details of this Conference. It's a big weekend, with about 400 writers (from established authors to relative beginners) attending. On the Saturday, there are 12 parallel sessions, with 5 time slots - so there are 60 lectures available to choose from. In addition, there is a plenary lecture, this year given by Maureen Lipman. Friday evening and Sunday morning feature a variety of writing workshops. But it's not cheap! - £260 to include all meals and 2 nights accommodation: just to come for the Saturday talks costs £90.

Check it out on www.writersconference.co.uk.

Regular Challenges
Challenge 10: Judging gets more difficult with each challenge - so maybe we're all getting better! I like the range from extreme dramatic snowstorms to the dull unending greyness. The assessments are going out as an attachment to this email.

For Challenge 10, the assessments give Laura 3 points, Zena, Geoff, Christine and Ann 2 points each, with a ll others getting 1 point.

That makes the final leaders tally for all 10 challenges:

1: Ann 18pts (including 1 win)
=2: Geoff and Zena 17 pts (inc 1 win)
4: David 16pts (inc 1 win)
5: Christine 16 pts (no wins)
6: Laura 15 pts (inc 3 wins)
7: Sally 14 pts (inc 1 win)

So Ann is the overall winner for this year. But it was mighty close - On the last challenge Geoff just failed to win, while Ann just scraped into the runners-up position.

Well done, Ann - it's been a great achievement - you take over from Margaret who won last year - but it's only honour and glory that you've won! I must also say a word of praise for Laura, because she achieved 3 challenge wins, but lost out because she didn't enter all the challenges.

But it's really a case of well done everybody: we all know how difficult it's been in judging!

See the Challenges page for details and results of all this year's challenges.

Longitudinal experiment:

John has circulated the results of this exercise. I find it fascinating how a story can change in this way, and I hope you all have found the same.

A very big thank you to John for seeing this through for us - it's taken a load from me at a time when I was working on the book. If anyone wishes to make comments about this exercise, will they circulate them with the subject box marked LONGITUDINAL.
Click here for further details of the experiment and its conclusion.

Group Creative Writing:
Last Alpha day, I said I hoped that everyone should have received the story that involves his/her created character, and be ironing out all the discrepancies. I wanted to see the final versions by today - but I am rather a lot short!!! Can you please send them to me as soon as possible? - even if they aren't quite in the final form.

I'd like to get the total effort well on the way to being finished before we stop for the summer (Ann, please read Winter). Click here for more details.

Discussion:
Continuing: I've had quite a few comments about CONTINUING, and the general consensus is that almost all of us want to continue. So we will.

Challenges: If I can summarise from what's been written, it seems that the regular challenges are stimulating. That's what I intended, but it's good to know that it's still working out in that way. I believe that keeping writing - in response to different kinds of challenges - can only be beneficial to making us "rounder" writers. Being able to see what others have written is also good, and this last challenge had a superb selection of contributions.

One of the snags seems to be the judging. In the first year, I was happy to select judges, but it was pressure from members which led to a voting procedure with everyone participating. It has done one thing - it shows how difficult it is to judge. Even in this last challenge, there were no fewer than 8 selected as "best" entries, and there were only 12 entries. I went for a simplified scheme in which you just had to pick the "best" and four runners-up: some members then wanted to make it harder by picking the first four in order, or similar complications! But several of you have suggested a smaller group to judge each challenge, and I think we can adopt this easily enough - there are some minor difficulties, but it will reduce the considerable workload without impairing the feedback to members.

In judging, we are always up against a dilemma. A different type of writing might find approval from a single judge, but a group of judges voting will always tend to favour a more conventional form of writing, although it will always be good.

Most of you are happy to set challenges, and I am grateful to you for offering to do this. I'll make out a timetable for next year, based on every third Thursday as this year.

Longitudinal Exercise: At the moment, we have David's cliff-hanger exercise, and I don't think we should start anything else while that is progressing. But once that has finished, any suggestions from members will be welcome (I'll keep my own ideas on the back-burner).

Group Story: I have sent the details of my idea for a group novel to four members in all, and I have had responses from all of them, ranging from cautious welcome to enthusiasm. I will be discussing the idea further with them, but if anyone else would like to see the description of the plot, please let me know. If we adopt it as a group writing exercise, I will involve everyone.

Me: I did promise that I would give you a little more description about me - and I will do this with the last Alpha Day circular: I can't decide how much to write. Then, if you don't like what you read, you can drop out next year!!

Next Year's membership I am prepared to accept up to 3 more new members (just to keep new blood arriving). If anyone wishes to drop out - and I know that demands on one's time can change - please let me know as soon as possible. I'd be sorry to lose any of you, but I do understand how these things happen.

Best wishes to you all

- Olaf